Wine-Staging 6.16 Implements Two More D3DX Functions To Help Some Windows Games

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wine-Staging 6.16 Implements Two More D3DX Functions To Help Some Windows Games

It's been a relatively quiet summer in the Wine-Staging world with not many new patches surfacing for testing/experimental purposes for this more bleeding edge version of Wine. However, with Wine-Staging 6.16 there are at least some new patches now to talk about...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wine-Staging-6.16

[Linuxxx]

D3DX11GetImageInfoFromMemory meanwhile has been needed by games like STALKER: Call of Pripyat.

Note that it was still possible to successfully launch & fully complete this (IMHO weakest) part of the series with the GOG version + installing the necessary Windows DLL natively via winetricks.
However, if you own the game on Steam, here's how one can achieve the same with Proton, which I'm shamelessly going to copy here from a fellow Ubuntu 20.04 LTS comrade:

Runs smoothly with max settings in DirectX11 mode

IMPORTANT: it is possible to make the game run in DirectX11 mode

1. Use a stable Proton version (I used 6.3-5, Proton Experimental didn’t work for me)
2. Install protontricks
3. Launch the game at least once (so it creates compatdata directory)
4. Install the required DLL: protontricks 41700 d3dx11_42
5. Switch to DirectX11 mode
6. It starts minimized. Expand the window, and intro begins.

Don’t use dx10! If you switched to dx10 and can’t run the game anymore, force Proton version v3.7-8, the game will fall back to dx9 mode.

[Snaipersky]

CoP the weakest? Maybe if you're orphaning Clear Sky. Clear Sky tried to do too much in the story, too much "ooh, shiny" with the engine, nothing really felt polished. The only interesting things from CS got reimplemented by the community into the other two titles, and did so better.
that said, Anomaly is the true star of the series.

[Linuxxx]

CoP the weakest? Maybe if you're orphaning Clear Sky. Clear Sky tried to do too much in the story, too much "ooh, shiny" with the engine, nothing really felt polished. The only interesting things from CS got reimplemented by the community into the other two titles, and did so better.
that said, Anomaly is the true star of the series.

I'll admit that it has been some time since I played it, so my memory might be failing me here; however, it wasn't the atmosphere which I found the weakest but it felt like the story was especially cringe-worthy this time around & I remember being absolutely disappointed by the overall anti-climax finale.

With that said, I'm definitely planning to give Anomaly a try sometime.