Compatibility Report

If you change the prfix to xp .net will install but unfortunately the games launcher works but it still won't play. It says running but it isn't. This is with the 3.16.1 beta.

Still doesn't work with Proton 4.2.

Log: steam-223220.log
Systeminfo: https://gist.github.com/NoXPhasma/b6e8c494cc5f92bbae4aae1f81cb25ee

I managed to get it working, including D3D11, with Proton outside of Steam but you need to install xact and wmp9 with winetricks. The launcher doesn't work due to Mono but if the defaults are okay then you don't need it. Otherwise you can run it with another version of Wine. XInput only seems to work under Proton even though Wine has supported this for a while. Most importantly, you need to interrupt the brief BFG clip at the start where the wolf howls because if you don't, it crashes with an error. It took me a while to realise this!

The launcher is now working with Proton 4.2-3 but it crashes as soon as I press the play button.
steam-223220.log

Just played a bit with it again.
Results (the same also applies to "Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - Rise of the Owlverlord" (246960)):

• the game refuses to start because wmvcore:WMReader_Open hangs when trying to open the intro video:
  010c:fixme:wmvcore:WMReader_Open (02160740)->(L"data_common\\BFG Logo 1080p.wmv" 4A256270 00000000)
• wine upstream bug for this wmvcore problem is here: https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38278
• this hang can be circumvented by installing "wmp10". Unfortunately, MS did not only remove the MP10Setup.exe from their servers, but it is also no longer available on archive.org

# md5sum MP10Setup.exe
e57645c5ab34485d56d019aaa17c3150  MP10Setup.exe

• in fact, it is not necessary to install the whole MP10Setup, but extracting and copying

8f8e038d81e16103cfb2772e13bf2d1a  WMASF.DLL
110a38fda648c87f2212d8b50424ffcf  WMVCORE.DLL

into "${STEAM_COMPAT_DATA_PATH}/pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64/" is already enough

• wine ships its own (lowercase) "wmpasf.dll" and "wmvcore.dll" which need to be removed from the same directory.

• with above dlls ready the intro video still doesn't play, but shows a black screen and doesn't freeze the game

• there is a dummy skip-intro video on https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Giana_Sisters:_Twisted_Dreams
  which unfortunately crashes back to the desktop, so unfortunately no solution to shorten the ~10sec black screen
  (audio/video codecs do match, so the 00:00:00.00 duration might be the problem - or the resolution))
  original BFG Logo 1080p.wmv

  Duration: 00:00:09.47, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1283 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Audio: wmav2 (a[1][0][0] / 0x0161), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 48 kb/s
  Stream #0:1: Video: wmv3 (Main) (WMV3 / 0x33564D57), yuv420p, 1920x1080, 7000 kb/s, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc

dummy video:

  Duration: 00:00:00.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 48240 kb/s
  Stream #0:0(ger): Audio: wmav2 (a[1][0][0] / 0x0161), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s
  Stream #0:1(ger): Video: wmv3 (Main) (WMV3 / 0x33564D57), yuv420p, 1280x720, 8035 kb/s, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc

• the game forces an "unskippable" game launcher which seems to cause other issues as well (forks the game exe)
  so it launches much cleaner, when starting the DX10/11 game exe GSGameExe.exe directly.
  (I use my steamtinkerlaunch for this)

Edit:
copying both dlls directly into the game directory (besides the GSGameExe.exe) works as well, so modifying anything in compatdata/wineprefix is not necessary (tested with proton 6.3-5.)

Edit 2:
ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -to 00:00:00.01 -i BFG\ Logo\ 1080p.wmv -c copy BFG\ Logo\ 1080p_dummy.wmv
generates a very short, compatible dummy intro video (the files need to be renamed of course :))

Edit 3:
simply returning S_OK for (!strcmp(sgi, "223220") | !strcmp(sgi, "246960")
in WMReader_Open is not enough :(

The game can be installed. After starting the game, the launcher appears. However, the game does not start.

You can make various settings for the controls, graphics and audio there and otherwise press the "Play" button. But after that nothing happens, the game doesn't start at all.

Linux Mint 20
5.12.8-051208-generic
16 GB
4.6 Mesa 21.1.3 - kisak-mesa PPA
AMD AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (NAVI10, DRM 3.40.0, 5.12.8-051208-generic, LLVM 12.0.0)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core

you might want t o read my 2 comments above, @KuJo-Ger

you might want t o read my 2 comments above, @KuJo-Ger

Thank you. I have seen. And I have also tried, but it still does not work:

• WindowsMedia-KB891122-x86-ENU.exe downloaded and unpacked (Google helped).
• Unpacked WMASF.DLL and WMVCORE.DLL from wmfdist95.exe
• copied to the folder "${STEAM_COMPAT_DATA_PATH}/pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64/" and deleted the lowercase files
• additionally copied to the folder where the file GSGameExe.exe is located
• downloaded the skip intro video
• with ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.00 -to 00:00:00.01 -i BFG\ Logo\ 1080p.wmv -c copy BFG\ Logo\ 1080p_dummy.wmv created the dummy video file and renamed it to BFG Logo 1080p.wmv

With your "Edit 3"
(simply returning S_OK for (!strcmp(sgi, "223220") | !strcmp(sgi, "246960")

I can't do anything with it. Where do I have to insert what? (I am not completely new to Linux/Wine and Proton. But I am not that deep in the matter).

Maybe it's because I can't implement "Edit 3", but the game doesn't start. No video is played and no black screen is displayed. After clicking "Play", the hourglass runs for a short time and then the game ends.

@frostworx I installed the latest steamtinkerlaunch from github and got the wmasf and wmvcore with the correct checksum. I tried to launch it in combination with Proton-6.12-GE-1 but I can only get it to run the GSGameExe when using the one time launch option, the menu to set the custom command doesn't seem to work for some reason.
After launching it it says that some shaders couldn't be loaded and crashes. Is there anything I have missed to get it running?
I have also tried the regular proton 6.3-5 but with it GSLauncher didn't even work and the changed exe as well.

@LittleStinky123 please open an issue with logs on the project page.

@frostworx Ok nevermind, I moved proton 6.3-5 and giana sisters to a linux filesystem and stl worked without problems. A bit of a hassle but it seems to work very well.

steam-223220.log

I still can't load the game with protonGE 7 RC2.

sadly, i hoped with wine 6.22 (solution of this bug: https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38278 )the problem of the codec was solved.
@frostworx

with a further examination i noticed this:

[00000128:] EXCEPTION handling: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'F:\home\noi.steam\debian-installation\steamapps\common\Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams\launcher\en-US\GSLauncher.resources.dll' or one of its dependencies.
it seems giana sisters doesn't start because it can't find this file. the correct path of this file in my PC is:

/home/noi/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/common/Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams/launcher/en/

the program searches the executable in launcher/en-US/ insteand launche/en/ . after renaming the error message disappears but i cannot load the game anyway

The $PWD issue described in an earlier comment is still present and needs to be solved before this can work.

Exceptions loading .resources.dll files are usually not a problem, in this case the exception is being caught, and you can see from the log that the resources dll has been loaded.

Both Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams (223220) and Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - Rise of the Owlverlord (246960)
have the following issues - the first is "fatal", the 2nd a minor issue:

1) The incorrect $PWD set by default is still an issue.

A simple

if [ "$STEAM_COMPAT_APP_ID" -eq 223220 ]; then
  echo "got  '$STEAM_COMPAT_APP_ID' as STEAM_COMPAT_APP_ID - need to change pwd from '$PWD' to '$STEAM_COMPAT_INSTALL_PATH'" | tee /tmp/debug.txt
  echo "current wrong pwd: '$PWD'" | tee -a /tmp/debug.txt
  cd "${STEAM_COMPAT_INSTALL_PATH}/launcher" || return
  echo "new correct pwd: '$PWD'" | tee -a /tmp/debug.txt
fi

squeezed before the actual game start does fix this (just committed a little function into steamtinkerlaunch which does this automatically for both Giana Sister games)
(doing so starting the actual game exe instead of the launcher is no longer required any more btw)

2) The intro video is also still a problem.

Depending on the proton version used, it is not fatal, though:
When using proton-7.0-1 the game starts fine (assuming issue 1 above was fixed by one or another way),
but the intro video only shows the proton internal placeholder video.
Using Proton-7.2-GE-2 the game freezes when the video is supposed to start.
(haven't tested any other proton versions)

You could probably put the cd command in a custom command-line, like cd "${STEAM_COMPAT_INSTALL_PATH}/launcher"; %command%

@madewokherd @frostworx finally, after 8 painful years, i could get to run giana sisters TD without excessive tinkering.
I just had to follow the hint of madewokherd and put the custom command line cd "${STEAM_COMPAT_INSTALL_PATH}/launcher"; %command%, ensuring to load it with proton 7.0-1
is there anything that can be done to pull this commandline in standard proton configs?

is there anything that can be done to pull this commandline in standard proton configs?

You could make a custom script and put it in your path. Something like:

#!/bin/bash

cd ${STEAM_COMPAT_INSTALL_PATH}/launcher

GAME=$1
shift
exec $GAME $@

call it something like "launcher.sh" and put it in your path. Then set up steam to launch the game with "launcher.sh %command%"

I tried to do this, but have this message:

Works without tinkering with Proton 7.0-4. Fedora Linux 35 (Workstation Edition), AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT.

I can confirm. Works on both my PC and steamdeck. However one issue with PC: xbox pad is not being detected (works in other games)

For me it works great, I uninstalled and reinstalled many times to test. It seems that it needs wmp9 but sometimes it doesn´t work until I install wmp11 after wmp9. Menu seems to be workking fine, I did the installation using Heroic Games Launcher from GOG.

I installed it and chose Proton_Experimental and used winetricks to install the next packages

d3dcompiler_47 d3d11_42 d3d11_43 directx9 vcrun2015 wmp9 wmp11 xact64

Remember to install wmp11 again at the end, then choose winecfg to change to wine to windows 10.

Press ok and enjoy,