An nameless reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years now, Valve has been slowly enhancing the capabilities of the Proton compatibility layer that lets hundreds of Home windows video games work seamlessly on the Linux-based SteamOS. However Valve’s Home windows-to-Linux compatibility layer typically solely extends again to video games written for Direct3D 8, the proprietary Home windows graphics API Microsoft launched in late 2000. Now, a brand new open supply mission is looking for to increase Linux interoperability additional again into PC gaming historical past. The d7vk mission describes itself as “a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 7 [D3D7], which permits working 3D functions on Linux utilizing Wine.”
The brand new mission is not the primary try and get Direct3D 7 video games working on Linux. Wine’s personal built-in WineD3D compatibility layer has supported D3D7 in some type or one other for at the very least twenty years now. However the brand new d7vk mission as an alternative branches off the present dxvk compatibility layer, which is already utilized by Valve’s Proton for SteamOS and which reportedly provides higher efficiency than WineD3D on many video games. D7vk mission writer WinterSnowfall writes that whereas they do not anticipate this new mission to be upstreamed into the primary dxvk sooner or later, the brand new model ought to have “the identical degree of per software/focused configuration profiles and fixes that you simply’re used to seeing in dxvk correct.” And although d7vk won’t carry out universally higher than the present alternate options, WinterSnowfall writes that “having extra choices on the desk is an efficient factor in my e-book at the very least.” The report notes that the PC Gaming Wiki lists greater than 400 video games constructed on the growing older D3D7 APIs, spanning largely early-2000s releases however with a trickle of recent titles nonetheless showing by way of 2022. Notable classics embrace Escape from Monkey Island and Hitman: Codename 47.
