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[Help] Weird game breaking graphical glitches in some games (PlayOnLinux)

Discussion in 'Crashed!' started by TI-Thor, Jul 3, 2021.

  1. TI-Thor

    TI-Thor New Member

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    Hello, this is my first post here, so I don't know if this is the correct section, move if is not please.

    As the title suggest, I'm having quite a big problem with some old school games on my (also) old school laptop, I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 equipped with an outstanding ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 with 64mb of VRAM and a wapping Intel Centrino Duo T2300 @1.66Ghz with 2GB DDR2 Dual Channel for hardcore... office applications, I used to have a very much powerful desktop PC but since the pandemic begin and I lost my job and due to that I had to sell it to pay the bills, so I had to return to this old laptop that was laying around in my closet for more than a decade, it is amazing how resistant this thing is because I just connected it and it turned on with the old fashion Windows XP still running, and it was running old games with no problems at all, but I was having a lot of problems with web browsers and stuff because as everyone knows XP is cold dead since a long time ago so I made the decision to migrate to some Linux distro, specifically Lubuntu 18.04 x86 which works great with the latest Firefox version and with some tweaks I also could get YouTube and Netflix working smoothly with 720p videos, what is great since this computer is so limited compared to today's standards, but something was missing and it was the games, the I made some investigation and learned how to use Wine and run Windows apps, actually I play World of Warcraft WoTLK with no glitches at all but for other games I had to use PlayOnLinux, with the first ones like Fable: The lost Chapters I just followed the instructions and everything went fine, but things started to become weird with games like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Halo: Combat Evolved, both games run but when they start the graphics on screen go bananas, I don't know how to explain the issue so just watch the screen caps and judge for yourselves:

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    Before you ask I already used different Wine versions and tried to install DirectX9 with the same results, the thing is that on XP it used to work nice and smooth with no problems at all and I don't use dual boot because I made a clean install of Lubuntu and I don't want to start from scratch again and restart my computer anytime I want to play. Sorry for extending me too long here, I hope someone can lend me a hand, thanks for reading and have a nice day or night depending of your time zone lol.
  2. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    I have a feeling this could be a driver issue. Depending on the game dependencies some older Linux drivers might not be able to handle the DirectX 10/11 compatibilities. With newer hardware you would be able to run Vulkan and newer Wine/Proton which is Vulkan compatiible. You may be stuck with really old games for now. Honestly there are thousands of games that should still run.

    Some games can be forced into directX 9 mode with a console command, check that out for the games you are experiencing issues with.
    cmdl likes this.
  3. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    Older AMD/ATI GPU's are not exactly great on Linux. The newer AMDGPU driver does not support that old cards, so you are essentially stuck with the older open source radeon driver, which is STILL lacking in features for many old GPUs. To put it blunt, you don't stand a chance to have comparable performance and 3D support that Windows would give you.

    But, you are on Lubuntu 18.04, if you are lucky it might be old enough that it still ships the discontinued FGLRX/Catalyst driver. It is not guaranteed to provide better performance, but it is worth a try. You should have the option to select driver from system settings somewhere.

    In any case, you can always play DosBox games, they should run fine, and you have a large selection of games that run on DosBox.
  4. TI-Thor

    TI-Thor New Member

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    LOL my laptop has a mobility Radeon x1300 and I'm just trying to play 16+ years old games because I know how limited I am, the funny thing is that I can play games like Stardew Valley, Kingdom: New Lands or Among us which are relatively modern games but I can't make Halo: Combat Evolved or Prince of Persia, along with other games work, I think there might be some kind of incompatibility with my old Raedeon card and the Ubuntu drivers.
  5. TI-Thor

    TI-Thor New Member

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    Yeah, I figured out that my old GPU is not well supported by the Ubuntu drivers and I made my own investigation and this Mobility Radeon X1300 is no longer included in the AMD drivers so I'm stuck with the default generic drivers, paradoxically even if I can't play Halo CE from 2003ish (can't remember lol) and other random games, I can play some relatively modern games like Stardew Valley with no problems, so it is a matter of trial and error for me, and I play old DOSBOX games of course! like Lemmings, Out of This World, Duke Nukem, Jill of The Jungle (lol) with the AdLib emulator and with no problems at all, also old school emulators for SNES, SEGA, Game Boy, MAME, N64, PS1, so I'm well covered, and I'm a simple man, I don't need RTX real time Ray Tracing to be amused by a good game ;) (but i miss my desktop :c)
    stormpower7, Daerandin and booman like this.
  6. cmdl

    cmdl New Member

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    I searched for “game graphics half screen diagonal glitch” and found some useful results. Listing just a few (they may not be exactly like your issue but worth a try):
    1. Graphics drivers - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/diagonal-line-screen-glitch/td-p/7662054 - you could consider switching to a different driver even if not the latest.
    2. Reduce resolution (perhaps even windowed mode) - https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/diagonal-distortion.117254/
    3. Vsync on/off - https://steamcommunity.com/app/322170/discussions/0/620700960776218985/
    There’s also the option of upgrading the distro - booman recently recommended doing that for me for an older game and that made it work.
    None of these may help but are worth a try. Finally, try searching further with the search terms I mentioned earlier - may yield something that fixes it.
    stormpower7 likes this.
  7. TI-Thor

    TI-Thor New Member

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    Thanks for your help but I can't switch my graphics drivers also tried the resolution method with no luck and changing my distro is out of the discussion because this is the only that "works" fine on my old laptop, at least I can play many other games without any problem.

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