santiquiroz/gears-of-war-2-pc-port v0.3.9

on GitHub

What's new

• Mali GPUs reach the game on Android (issue #27). After 0.3.8 let them past vertexPipelineStoresAndAtomics, the Android build no longer requires fillModeNonSolid either (line and point polygon modes draw filled). Players report it running on a Poco X6 Pro (Mali-G615) and a Dimensity 8300 phone (Mali-G720), still slow; thanks @samuel5g, @keevsalinasojeda-jpg and @mobinhch. Nothing changes on Adreno. (The 0.3.8 APK was updated with this fix the same night.)
• Skip intro videos. PC Options → System → Skip intro videos removes the Epic Games and Microsoft Game Studios logos at start (gow2_skip_intro_movies, restart). The title screen comes up in about 2 s instead of about 20 s; the game's own cinematics still play.
• Fill a wide phone screen (issue #33). Android: Display → Keep 16:9 shape → Off fills the screen: the picture is cropped up to 10 % at the top and bottom (the TV safe area, so the HUD stays in) and stretched sideways for the rest (present_letterbox). It applies at once.
• The log says which default.xex you have (issue #34). The port was recompiled from the US retail disc; the first lines of gow2.log now say XEX default.xex fnv1a64 FAC26BECC11DA6A6: the US retail release ..., or warn that another release (European, Japanese, a demo) is untested and can crash at random points.
• From 0.3.8, in case you skipped it: the native front end is off by default on PC (263 fps instead of 151 in the chapter 2 hospital on an RX 7800 XT), Vulkan on PC (experimental), and the native renderer by default on NVIDIA.

Measured and left out

• Higher texture detail from the game's settings. Lowering the retail LODBias of the texture groups (one level, or all to 0, with and without a bigger texture pool) turns some objects black: the disc's textures do not carry the mip levels the retail settings skip. Sharper textures come from texture packs (Graphics → Texture packs).

Known issues

• SteamOS / Proton: reported working with both Direct3D 12 and Vulkan; one Direct3D 12 crash while firing. If it happens to you, please attach gow2.log and gow2_crash.log from the game folder to a new issue, and try Graphics → Graphics API → Vulkan meanwhile.
• Every player in a System Link or co-op session should run the same release.

Downloads

• gow2-recomp-0.3.9-win64.zip: Windows 10/11 x64. Bring your own game files: your .iso or an extracted folder (see QUICKSTART.txt).
• gow2-recomp-0.3.9-android-arm64.apk: Android 10+ arm64, experimental.

Both files were scanned with Microsoft Defender before upload. Windows 11 "Bad Image ... 0xc0e90002" is Smart App Control blocking the unsigned DLLs (see the README).