DXVK is a Direct3D 9/10/11 to Vulkan compatibilty layer. This provides the best compatibilty with newer and old versions of the game as it implements vertex shaders and makes better use of the hardware.
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk
Make sure you have a Vulkan-enabled graphics card with compatible drivers, as well as Vulkan packages that provide libraries for 32-bit applications.
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Create a new prefix for The Sims 2 and run through installation as normal.
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Download the latest "passed" build of DXVK:
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Extract the ZIP and install DXVK into the Wine prefix:
export WINEPREFIX=/path/to/sims2_prefix dxvk-*/setup_dxvk.sh installDXVK writes a set of DLLs that overlay WineD3D, allowing this work to with whichever version of Wine you have installed.
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Start The Sims 2!
If you see any of these errors:
0009:err:vulkan:wine_vk_init Failed to load libvulkan.so.1.
0009:err:vulkan:wine_vk_init Failed to load Wine graphics driver supporting Vulkan..
0009:err:module:find_forwarded_export module not found for forward 'winevulkan.wine_vkGetInstanceProcAddr' used by L"C:\\windows\\system32\\vulkan-1.dll"
It's likely your system is missing the necessary Vulkan packages. Use your package manager to install them. 32-bit libraries may be required too.
If the game still fails to load, it's possible your graphics card or graphics driver does not support the Vulkan API.
There may be bugs! See here for problems that may occur under D9VK:
This also happens under the NVIDIA driver on Windows.
This can be fixed by installing the Sim Shadow Fix (v0.4) mod.
Extract this into My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads.