Proton: Mafia II won't launch (50130)

[tfaller]

The game does not launch. It does some preparations, like installing DirectX and Nvidia PhysX as well as
running a "Wine Installer". But that's all.
The "steam-50130.log" file contains nothing special.

OS: Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 620
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
Driver Version: Mesa 18.3.0-devel - padoka PPA

[samU231]

Tried Mafia II as well and fetched following from the terminal (don´t know if that can be helpful)
Mafia II log.txt

OS: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS 64-bit
CPU: Intel i7402MQ
GPU: NVIDIA GT 740M
Driver Version: NVIDIA 296.54

[mimattr]

@tfaller Not tested _Proton_ but can confirm Mafia II functions as expected on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (x64) with Wine Staging 3.14:

Steam System Information

Additionally used:

• winetricks corefonts directx9 physx win7
• export WINEDLLOVERRIDES="msdmo=b"

Hope that helps.

[tfaller]

@mimattr Thank you. I did winetricks corefonts directx9 physx win7 on the proton prefix. And set the environment variable. But unfortunately Mafia II does still not launch.

I tried running Steam and Mafia with vanilla wine (devel) and it actually worked, even without installing your mentioned components.

[whizse]

Mafia II is one of several titles that uses Valve CEG DRM. It has always caused problems for Wine:
https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32515

It tends to work or break depending on what Wine release you use, your system, phases of the moon, etc. Hopefully Valve themselves can do something about it this time.

For me, I can sometimes launch Mafia with Wine 3.14. Other times I get interrupted halfway with an error message "The Steam servers are too busy to handle your request for Mafia II. Error Code (2)" when it tries to validate the game files. No luck at all with Proton.

(I can launch one other CEG title (Duke Nukem Forever) with vanilla Wine 3.14, which again doesn't run at all with Proton.)

[tfaller]

@whizse You are right. This might be the problem. Thank you.
According to the wine bug tracker Sniper Elite V2 seems to be affected as well ... and yes I can confirm. I already opened a Proton issue #392 for this game.
And probably Hitman is affected as well #282.

Maybe we should open a separate issue to collect all affected games?
Is there an easy way to check which games use Valves CEG DRM?

[samU231]

Checking for CEG is simple: Go to https://steamdb.info/, find your game, and click the Configuration tab. If you see anything that says checkguid or cegpublickey, then the game has CEG,

taken from https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_to_run_steam_games_offline_forever_tutorial/page1

[tfaller]

@samU231 Thank you. As already supposed Hitman: Absolution is indeed a CEG game was well.
We should really open a CEG DRM issue.

[liberodark]

same for me :

Distro: Manjaro XFCE 17.1.12
GPU: GTX 1060, Nvidia proprietary driver 396.54
Resolution: 1920x1080
RAM: 8GB
Proton 3.7-4 Beta

[kattjevfel]

Still same issue with Proton 4.2-1
steam-50130.log

[rdlf4]

Proton 4.2-2 isn't a different story, sadly.
steam-50130.log

[HunterCZ122]

For temporary solution, download this patched executable without CEG <Link removed by moderator> . To install, go to your game directory and replace the original mafia2.exe from pc folder with this and that's all. Game will should now work properly.

After playing for some time I also noticed sky flickering when driving vehicle. To fix this, you need to disable some post-processing effects. You can find this fix in video description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLvcyyTDGPQ

[kisak-valve]

Hello @HunterCZ122, please don't link to executables. There's an example of how to workaround the CEG issue at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/530#issuecomment-431513884.

[rdlf4]

If sky flickering was the only problem, I'd say we're done with this game but the reality is, performance is all over the place for Mafia II, thanks to WineD3D. After the game is loaded, if you get killed and the game reloads, from this point forward the game becomes highly unstable. Literally.
Pop-ins: when driving a car, you can see the CPU-GPU gap becomes more evident, as building show up in mid air, driving becomes very tricky, as I constantly crash into another car that wasn't even there - until the game draws it afterwards. Same thing with enemies.
Animations break the immersion with the game. When fighting, a melee animation takes up to 9 seconds to load during a gameplay session and until it is loaded, the game freezes on me. It's like that until I die and the game reloads, and then everything mentioned up to this point takes place again; Adding up to the frustration, cutscenes are broken as hell, it's almost as if it was a powerpoint presentation, audio is not synced with the video. This happens for the most part but if I struggle and endure this game for like half an hour, as long as I don't die, cutscenes become less unstable (with few frame skips) but are never enjoyable to watch.
Would this be the case if D9VK was a thing and Proton supported it? Only future will tell. All I know is that there is no other option to go other than WineD3D and that is really a shame.

[rdlf4]

Hello @HunterCZ122, please don't link to modified executables. There's an example of how to workaround the CEG issue at #530 (comment).

I don't mean to support @HunterCZ122 's post, but there is no way we can actually know that, because there is no sticky posts/threads/solutions to proposed issues with Valve's CEG DRM and until the moment he posted that solution, you hadn't provided a "workaround" (As you described it).

[HunterCZ122]

If sky flickering was the only problem, I'd say we're done with this game but the reality is, performance is all over the place for Mafia II, thanks to WineD3D. After the game is loaded, if you get killed and the game reloads, from this point forward the game becomes highly unstable. Literally.
Pop-ins: when driving a car, you can see the CPU-GPU gap becomes more evident, as building show up in mid air, driving becomes very tricky, as I constantly crash into another car that wasn't even there - until the game draws it afterwards. Same thing with enemies.
Animations break the immersion with the game. When fighting, a melee animation takes up to 9 seconds to load during a gameplay session and until it is loaded, the game freezes on me. It's like that until I die and the game reloads, and then everything mentioned up to this point takes place again; Adding up to the frustration, cutscenes are broken as hell, it's almost as if it was a powerpoint presentation, audio is not synced with the video. This happens for the most part but if I struggle and endure this game for like half an hour, as long as I don't die, cutscenes become less unstable (with few frame skips) but are never enjoyable to watch.
Would this be the case if D9VK was a thing and Proton supported it? Only future will tell. All I know is that there is no other option to go other than WineD3D and that is really a shame.

For some reason mine gameplay is really stable on maximum settings (except PhysX and AA) running about 30fps minimum, average 45fps and 60fps maximum. No popping textures or objects issues, cutscenes and audio were synchronized, only one thing i got is crash during Chapter 2 when Joe arrives to bar but after that, no crashes at all. I am still at Chapter 7 so things can still go wrong. I also tried little bit of modding to fix sky flickering and it worked fine.
I also forgot to mention that i was also getting frequent stutters at start due to shader cache but after Chapter 3, gameplay was stutter free.

I am using latest 418.56 NVIDIA drivers and Pop!_OS 18.04 LTS distro.
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 4GB DDR3
CPU: Intel Core i5-6300HQ @ 2.30GHz
Game is installed on 5400rpm 1TB hard drive.

If you really want that executable you can get it from GameCopyWorld or on ProtonDB i posted.

[Kreyren]

Same issue here

LOG: http://ix.io/1P6T (proton 4.2-9)

aptli: http://ix.io/1P6U

EDIT: same issue on proton 3.7-8 http://ix.io/1P6W

[Kreyren]

Hello @HunterCZ122, please don't link to executables. There's an example of how to workaround the CEG issue at #530 (comment).

@kisak-valve Afaik this is Valve technology, any ETA on compatibility for proton or is it function that is not going to be merged?

[frostworx]

most of you probably already know that the gog binary works fine with proton but earlier today I found the (huge!) Old Time Reality Mod (here3.5-123-Beta3-5, f.e. on nexus) for Mafia 2 which also contains a mafia2.exe allowing you to play the game on steam via proton.

[jqadev]

I replaced mafia2.exe from Steam (containing Valve CEG DRM) with mafia2.exe from GOG (without DRM, file available on ProtonDB) and the game launches now and works like a charm under Proton 5.0.7.
IMHO, it should be at Gold Tier on ProtonDB, not at current Silver.

[jqadev]

@kisak-valve saves still aren't uploaded to Steam Cloud.
I've checked that against this fix

from an update from 14 May published here https://store.steampowered.com/news/?feed=steam_client

[xDShot]

https://steamdb.info/app/50130/ufs/

These files are synced. GOG release might put them somewhere else.