It’ll still take some time until GTA VI will be released for PC, but I was in the mood for this kind of game and searched through my pile of Grand Theft Auto games. GTA V was the obvious choice but then I remembered the really good story from it’s predecessor and decided to give it a spin. Out if curiositiy I also checked out available mods for the game and found a few that promised to enhance the gaming experience and fix bugs, that Rockstar wouldn’t take care of.

It’s actually only FusionFix, the other two are required for FusionFix to run. Well, I can say it certainly worked and once you find the proper path to the wine prefix on your disk the installation of mods is trivial.

However, I did stumble upon an issue that is hard to debug. The first time I started the game with Mods it ran really well with around 165 frames. A day later, this was around the time I tried several other mods, the frames dropped to single digits and the game was no longer playable. I played around with the settings and disabled several mods. In the end I reinstalled the game but the issue persists. After a day of trial and error I arrived at acceptable 60 frames, but it still feels more sluggish then before. But it’s good enough for now and instead I want to focus on the compelling story again.

(Now, while writing this post I remember that I also updated my system. So maybe this is issue is linked to updated drives. I will have to investigate this later.)

Update: After encountering the same FPS drop in a different game it became clear, that system updates were the culprit. Bless BTRFS snapshots! I was able to jump back to a “pre pacman -Syu” state and confirmed that my games had no FPS drop then.

Now the question remains: Which of these packages packs an update that breaks my gaming performance?

29  cachyos-v3/python                  3.14.7-2                   -> 3.14.8-1
28  cachyos-v3/sqlite                  3.53.4-1                   -> 3.54.0-1
27  cachyos-v3/zstd                    1.5.7-2                    -> 1.5.7-4
26  cachyos-extra-v3/fastfetch         2.69.0-1.1                 -> 2.70.0-1.1
25  cachyos-extra-v3/graphicsmagick    1.3.49-1.1                 -> 1.3.49-2.1
24  cachyos-extra-v3/gumbo-parser      0.13.2-1.1                 -> 0.14.1-1.1
23  cachyos-extra-v3/hwloc             2.14.0-1.1                 -> 2.15.0-1.1
22  cachyos-extra-v3/imagemagick       7.1.2.33-1.1               -> 7.1.2.33-3.1
21  cachyos-extra-v3/jbigkit           2.1-8.1                    -> 2.2-1.1
20  cachyos-extra-v3/libtiff           4.7.2-1.1                  -> 4.7.2-2.1
19  cachyos-extra-v3/litehtml          0.10-1.1                   -> 0.10-2.1
18  cachyos-extra-v3/luajit            2.1.1788856981+c6ffc14-1.1 -> 2.1.1791988261+2a8e017-1.1
17  cachyos-extra-v3/podman            6.1.3-1.1                  -> 6.1.4-1.1
16  cachyos-extra-v3/python-fonttools  4.66.1-1.1                 -> 4.67.0-1.1
15  cachyos-extra-v3/rsync             3.5.1-2.1                  -> 3.5.1-3.1
14  cachyos-extra-v3/snappy            1.2.2-3.1                  -> 1.3.1-1.1
13  cachyos/cachy-update               4.4.2-1                    -> 4.4.3-1
12  cachyos/limine                     12.9.0-1                   -> 12.9.3-2
11  cachyos/onlyoffice-bin             9.4.0-1                    -> 10.0.0-1
10  cachyos/protonup-qt                2.15.1-2                   -> 2.16.0-1
 9  extra/electron42                   42.11.11-1                 -> 42.11.14-1
 8  extra/electron43                   43.7.9-1                   -> 43.7.11-1
 7  extra/electron44                   44.6.0-1                   -> 44.7.2-1
 6  extra/goverlay                     1.9.3-1.1                  -> 1.9.4-1
 5  extra/kirigami                     6.30.0-1.1                 -> 6.31.0-1
 4  extra/python-filelock              4.0.1-1                    -> 4.0.10-1
 3  extra/python-markdown              3.11.0-1                   -> 3.11.1-1
 2  extra/python-more-itertools        11.1.0-1                   -> 11.2.0-1
 1  extra/python-sentry_sdk            2.71.0-1                   -> 2.72.0-1

It could be #6 goverlay, since the whole overlay thing was part of CachyOS’ gaming enhancements. It could also be #5 kirigami from what I read, since it interacts with various windows on the screen. But this mystery will be solved another time. For now, I try to stay clear of these two.