GXVK translates 3Dfx Glide to Vulkan on Linux, and its first alpha already runs Diablo II

A new DXVK fork gives Wine a way to run games written for 3Dfx Voodoo cards. It is an early, one-person prototype, and plenty still breaks.

AI-drafted from 3 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

GXVK is a new translation layer that turns 3Dfx Glide calls into Vulkan, so Windows games written for Voodoo cards can run on Linux through Wine. Its developer, CkNoSFeRaTU, put out version 0.1 on 17 October and calls it an alpha at an early prototype stage. GamingOnLinux picked it up alongside D7VK 2.4 and says certain games, Diablo II among them, already run, but not to expect a good experience yet.

The gap it fills is plain. The README says Wine does not implement Glide at all, so GXVK's DLLs need no overrides to be picked up.

A new frontend, not a D7VK sibling

GXVK is forked from DXVK, but the README describes it as a completely new frontend. That is the difference from D7VK, which leans on DXVK's mature Direct3D 9 code for the hard work. Glide is different enough from Direct3D, the developer argues, that it should be translated directly rather than through another API, which means many things have to be redesigned or written from scratch.

That has costs. DXVK's Direct3D config options do not apply, so GXVK needs its own, and the README says the DXVK team has no interest in taking on new APIs, so this will not be merged upstream. It is also one person's spare-time project, and the README asks readers to expect a snail's pace rather than the quick progress D7VK made.

What runs and what does not

The release shows screenshots from Diablo II, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, Carmageddon II, Mortal Kombat 4, MDK and Need for Speed III and IV, among others, covering all three Windows variants of Glide. The developer says games run to a varying degree, and that the focus for now is compatibility, not performance. The HUD in those shots reports a Radeon RX 7900 XTX, so they say little about how it behaves on modest hardware.

The issue tracker gives a fairer picture. Tomb Raider starts with its videos and sound working, but with most textures and the text missing, and the developer says it seems to rely on high-level guTex functions that are not implemented yet. Earth 2150: Lost Souls failed its graphics test on v0.1 and passed on a newer build from the project's Actions page. It then would not start properly until a problem with its videos was dealt with, and the tester still saw some texture flicker.

What an emulation fan should know

Trying it means copying the matching glide.dll, glide2x.dll or glide3x.dll next to the game's executable, or into the Wine prefix so every game there uses it. Deleting the files removes it. A tester ran it under Proton Experimental. Setting DXVK_HUD turns on the overlay, which is the way to confirm GXVK is in use if you have other Glide wrappers installed.

The limits are clear too. Windows is neither tested nor supported, the README does not mention the Steam Deck, and the DOS side of Glide is not planned. A request for native Linux builds, so that DOSBox-X and other forks could pass Glide calls to GXVK, was answered as out of scope for now, though perhaps not once the project is more mature. So for DOS-era Voodoo games, this changes nothing yet. For the 32-bit Windows ones, it is a project worth watching, and the code is under the zlib licence.

Sources

Image: Image: GXVK

More news from Gaming World