Playing Rome 2 on Linux/Wine? Try the OpenGL renderer

**Nicollo da Conti** · January 29, 2015, 07:58 AM

Since the Mac version released, Rome 2 has a native OpenGL renderer. The renderer is also available in the Windows version, which means it's also available via Wine.

And it runs spectacularly, but as there's no DirectX-to-OpenGL translation, that's to be expected. My framerate in the benchmark was up 10fps, but in-game it almost doubles, and is much smoother even in large siege battles.

Try it yourself:

Navigate to your preferences_script.txt, by default in /.wine/drive_c/users/USERNAME/Application Data/The Creative Assembly/Rome2/scripts/
If gfx_device_type already exists, you can skip the next step.
rename 'preferences_script.txt' to something else (for backup). Run R2TW and it will regenerate a new version of this file
Open the new version of preferences_script.txt in a text editor.
for gfx_device_type, use a '2' setting, so the line looks like this:

gfx_device_type 2; # gfx_device_type <int>, Set device type, 0-D3D9, 1-D3D11, 2-GL3 #

save the preferences_script.txt file and relaunch R2TW.

**alQamar** · February 05, 2015, 06:19 AM

any performance comparisons done with the benchmark comparing OpenGL to DX11? Have you used MSI Afterburner to be sure he is actually rendering using openGL, because if you switch this, he will also lower the shader model, won't he?

**Nicollo da Conti** · February 05, 2015, 08:42 AM

Originally Posted by alQamar

any performance comparisons done with the benchmark comparing OpenGL to DX11? Have you used MSI Afterburner to be sure he is actually rendering using openGL, because if you switch this, he will also lower the shader model, won't he?

DX11 doesn't work on Wine (and I've no Windows partition), so I can't compare it against OpenGL. It's definitely a big performance leap over Wine's DX9 implementation, though.

It's definitely using the GL pipeline. When selected, the graphic options are limited differently than DX9, most notably 'unlimited video memory' is turned off, and 'trilinear' is the only filtering option (though I handle this and AA via nvidia-settings). The visuals are also improved over DX9, with some elements that I've not seen before with DX9. The 'shader model' setting is limited to '3' (as it is with DX9), but as the gfx_device_type setting is labeled 'GL3' I'm guessing that means OpenGL 3, which gives it roughly the same feature set as DX10, so the extra visuals I've noticed would make sense.

Either way, it's a massive improvement and I've been playing non-stop since finding it. Still can't wait for a real native version, though.