SonnyX

Might be worth a shot to try that out sometime since our current rendering process on linux is: dx9 -> OpenGL, but with dx11 we can go dx11 -> Vulkan. Which may result in greater performance on newer graphic cards. But before I go down that rabbit hole I'll first make sure there is a Linux launcher

Wait, there is an dx11 mode? That's good to know, might make Linux performance go up once again. Edit: But to clarify: this is not a map bug, nor is it a RenX bug, this is a "Wine" related rendering bug. "Wine" is a compatibility layer between Windows software and Linux. All I wondered was, since this map has this rendering bug in the most obvious ways, what the difference between those rocks and other non-bugged textures are as to figure out why this rendering issue occurs. e.g. use of bump map, diffuse map, or other texture enhancing overlays?

I've been calling myself SonnyX since the original westwood went offline, they didn't allow for dashes in the name anymore sadly, afterwards you could still play through the renegade westwood option in the game untill the replacement westwood also was killed afaik. Beforehand I was named Mr-x, if anybody played kamuix and whitebolx, I used to play there a lot and script some lua plugins for them Other instances such as steam and origin I try something that matches SonnyX, but I was way too late on that hype train

Linux sure doesn't like this map, somehow it has to do with the textures of some of the rocks. Any clue as to what may cause this?

So experimented a bit with wine, wine-tricks and the likes. Figured out, at least for my system vcrun2005 is a must, `mono` or `mono-complete` are not needed as this is provided by dotnet40/dotnet45. Using this along with the rest of the libraries (xact, d3dx9) allowed me to run the game, with broken audio that is, the audio did work however everything was at the same maximum volume, running a "directx june 2010" installer manually did fix the issue along with setting the library xaudio2_7.dll to native only. There is a package named directx9 in winetricks which I assume does the same, will try that out soon. Since lutris uses the same install process, anybody using lutris at the moment will also most likely have defect audio. I also saw quite some visual strangeness: decals (rocks) re-rendering is what I assume as they have black pixels all over them when it happens.

@Agent Does the downloader also split individual files such as the various CnC-Maps up into several blocks by using range headers? These maps are usually between 50 - 100 MB compressed from what I've seen. The biggest one I've seen so far being 600 MB compressed ("UDKGame\CookedPC\Maps\RenX\RenX-MenuMap.udk").

Okay, so made a little proof of concept for the native linux launcher, compiling and running this will be able to decode the first file in the instructions.json. From this point onward I will see if I can turn this into a library, this would allow it to be used for GUI's on different platforms. That way the GUI doesn't have to contain the logic, just has to call the corresponding function in order to download, update or launch the game. If there any developers are interested in thinking along or helping please open an issue here. The library will be programmed in Rust as shown in the proof of concept, this may be a nice opportunity to learn it, as it is for me. Also for any GUI programmers: Some thoughts on required/useful API functions are naturally appreciated, if you do have suggestions please open an issue here. (Rust has language bindings to most languages such as Go, Vala, C, C++, Python and thus the library can be used in the language of your choice)

"Can I have some shoes?"

The game will run then, the issues lies with the launcher. Got the launcher to work on my distribution as well, however in my case it somehow had to do with network connectivity. I think the following commands may have been the solution for me: sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi /usr/bin/wine-preloader sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi /usr/bin/wine sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi /usr/bin/wine64-preloader sudo setcap cap_net_raw+epi /usr/bin/wine64 These allow wine to actually ping the servers, then again not sure if this is what fixed it. (in the case of Lutris you may need to change the /usr/bin/ part.) However in my late night test I had no in-game sounds, plus pretty poor performance since I am running the game on a brick (actually a laptop).

You're not into curved? Is there anything specific you want from a monitor? min/max size, certain connections, certain color-accuracy?

Hehe, it seems that I was not the first with this idea...

Neat, thanks for checking! I've submitted the install script to Lutris. I've started working on the back-end of the launcher, planning to make the back-end and front-end separated, this way different operating systems or/and distro's can make native implementations of the launcher. The code-base will be in Rust which will be a fun challenge, will set up a GitHub repository once I get it to decode it's first file. Fun times: open-vcdiff does not implement secondary compression such as lzma which is being used by the current launcher. Will have to figure out a way to decompress it, perhaps by wrapping xdelta3.

Did you use the installer as is, without modifications that is? Does in-game sounds work as is? If so then you are running the proton version of Wine; Can you say anything about performance, any difference compared to the instance you were running before? Also which distro you are rocking, which version of that distro? Also do you know if you're currently using wayland or X.org?

That was my first thought too, however the Rx_launcher project makes use of the WPF Toolkit which is Windows exclusive as far as I know, there are some projects that try to implement a cross-platform version but are either in pre-alpha stages or are very limited. Using the current launcher in Wine also isn't a good option for me, nor for anybody as it is probably the only reason we need the .net dependency in Wine. Besides that, even if we manage to cross-compile it to Linux it would still come with issues such as it not knowing how to run a wine instance, the current launcher "works" since it exists inside of the wine instance. That being said making a native Linux launcher may be easier, downloading and patching the game is fairly simple: The download servers are available through a static link which provides the current version of the game. All servers contain the full game (in VCDIFF patch format) and also patch files since the previous patch. A easy to use VCDIFF library in most languages should be able to decode/apply these patch files. I haven't looked into the following but I assume the actual RenegadeX exe takes arguments to be able to connect to a game-server, therefor the game should be easy to launch as well. Kind of curious if the current launcher handles an update correctly if somebody has missed a patch by checking the check-sums of all files.

Since you mentioned Lutris I experimented a bit with it, I made a script which could automate all of the installation steps: Even though it installs and might work for you; the launcher does not run as intended on my distribution, for example it will not download the game nor show the servers that are currently online. 32-bit architecture fails completely to run the launcher, where-as I can get the 64-bit architecture to show at least some screens with some visual glitches. Since .Net has always been an issue for wine I might make a native Linux launcher doing so also might address functionalities such as DRI_PRIME not being initialized in hybrid graphics situations. I took a look at the current launcher and it seems like it is very feasible to make a native linux launcher. I myself however am not a UI designer, so if anybody here has experience with GTK-design (native applications of the newest Ubuntu and Fedora use this) and wants to help to do the visual part I'd be grateful.