Strike Fighters 2 on Linux (SteamOS) and Mac (M4) — Crash Analysis & Call for Help

[wigoplus]

Hi all,

I've spent considerable time trying to get SF2 running on non-Windows hardware and wanted to document what I found in case anyone else has been down this road, or has a solution.

HARDWARE TESTED

Lenovo Legion Go 2 - SteamOS 3.8.2 (AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, Radeon 890M)
Apple M4 Max MacBook Pro - macOS

LEGION GO 2 / SteamOS - What I tried:

Bottles with DXVK enabled - instant crash inside GraphicsEngineDX10.dll at a consistent address, null pointer dereference. DXVK threads are running but the game never reaches the menu.

Bottles with DXVK disabled (wined3d) - silent exit, or a black "Program Error" dialog with no visible text.

Bottles + Proton-GE - same MODULE_NOT_FOUND exception (0xc06d007e) thrown from inside GraphicsEngineDX10.dll at init. Identical crash across Wine 10.0 Staging, Wine 11.0, and multiple Proton-GE versions.

Steam directly (non-Steam game, forced Proton-GE) - same result.

Tried ForceDX9=TRUE in Options.ini - no effect. The game always loads GraphicsEngineDX10.dll regardless. There is no GraphicsEngineDX9.dll in this installation.

Copied d3dcompiler_43.dll and other DLLs from a working Windows 11 install into the bottle - no change.

The crash address inside graphicsenginedx10 is identical across every Wine/Proton version tested, which suggests either a missing delay-loaded DLL or an unimplemented Wine DX10 interface returning null.

Mac M4 Max - What I tried:

CrossOver - crashes or black screen, no graphics output.

Windows 11 ARM on Parallels - game launches but no graphics at all. Parallels runs Windows on ARM and emulates x86. SF2's 32-bit DX10 engine appears to fail in this emulation layer, likely an architectural dead end.

For reference, the game runs perfectly on native Windows 11 x86, so this is purely a Wine/compatibility layer issue.

Questions for the community:

Has anyone successfully run SF2 under Wine, Proton, or any compatibility layer on Linux?
Is there a known workaround for the DX10 engine crash under Wine?
Does anyone know what specific DLL or COM interface GraphicsEngineDX10.dll is probing for at startup?

Happy to provide full crash logs if useful. Any leads appreciated.

Thanks

Edited Friday at 10:59 PM by wigoplus

[Wrench]

PLEASE do NOT post in the Knowledge Base!!! Moved to a more appropriate Forum.  

People will actually SEE the question in the regular forums, and perhaps even discuss it. 

The KB* exists as a repository of answers, not discussions. That's what these main forums are for. Once this topic has been 'worked out' to a viable, easily used operational fix, we can move it TO the KB, and then lock it down.

 

*=I mean, people hardly uses the f'ing thing, no matter how much we try and even post links. So sad.

[Erik]

Where was this? The only place it could have been posted in the KB is in General Discussions which is what that sub-forum is there for, or at least that's what I thought you wanted it there for. Let me know and I can append the permissions as necessary which will prevent this from happening again. 

[Wrench]

yes, it was in the General Discussion, iirc. The thing being, discussions should happen only in the main forums. The KB is, and always was, a repository of Answers (tm) 

So, yes, removing the ability of non Staff to post in KB is a good idea. That way, we have better control of what important information gets locked in place. Real Answers, for mainstream users etc.