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For those of you sticking with the stable channel of Steam Play's Proton system, Valve have today rolled out all the recent beta changes for everyone.

Previously, you had access to Proton 3.7-3 which was what everyone used by default and you could also use the "Compatibility tool" dropdown in the Steam Play options section to switch to a beta to have the latest updates. Valve must now consider all the changes stable enough, as Proton 3.7-6 is now the default. There's another beta channel now, which is still currently at 3.7-6 but it should remain where the latest changes go.

There's quite a lot of improvements included since the initial release, like: automatic mouse capturing in fullscreen windows by default, performance improvements, certain game compatibility improvements, an updated build of DXVK, more display resolution support and so on. You can see the full changelog here.

If you missed them, we had an interview with the creator of DXVK which is part of Steam Play's Proton and an interview with Linux game porter Ethan Lee recently. We will have another article up having a chat with a few developers about it all in a few days. Given that we're approaching the weekend, it will probably be early next week. We have some interesting people lined up for it, stay tuned.

It's really fun to watch it progress, I'm pretty excited personally to see how it evolves over the next year. It's still early days, but it has been rather promising so far. How have you all been finding it so far? What has been your biggest surprise with it? Let us know in the comments.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam Play, Valve
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Cyba.Cowboy Sep 13, 2018
Quoting: lucifertdarkOne day perhaps, right now all problems in games running under Proton are to be directed to Valve & not the developers. The Developers on the whole are hands off at the moment.

Isn't that part of the appeal though - for developers to be hands-off?

I mean, then Valve Software could push SteamOS/Steam Machines and say "most of our catalog runs perfectly", and they wouldn't need to sit there listening to the million excuses developers have for being anti-Linux...
lucifertdark Sep 13, 2018
Quoting: chancho_zombievr portal demo??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93hPzWGesJw
Perhaps but the page was only set up yesterday, the vr demo was done in 2007.


Quoting: Cyba.CowboyIsn't that part of the appeal though - for developers to be hands-off?

I mean, then Valve Software could push SteamOS/Steam Machines and say "most of our catalog runs perfectly", and they wouldn't need to sit there listening to the million excuses developers have for being anti-Linux...
I may have misread what Swiftpaw was saying, it's late & I'm starting to wilt, might be time for me to push off to bed.
tonR Sep 13, 2018
Well, Windows 7 EOL getting nearer and nearer.....
Nevertheless Sep 13, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: GuestI just want voices and music in Skyrim Special Edition....
I believe FAudio will fix that, which Ethan Lee is working on. Let's hope Valve hire him, full speed ahead number 1!

That will be the solution to make it work out of the box. However there is a workaround for Skyrim Special Edition. Works for me..

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/99i4se/skyrim_on_linux_steam_play_no_voiceno_music_audio/
I like the "works for me" part, when you clearly haven't tested the workaround...

When you're in the middle of a dungeon, there is not much need for fast travelling.. If you by "clearly haven't tested" mean that I didn't play the game through, then you're right. ;-)
lucifertdark Sep 14, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: GuestI just want voices and music in Skyrim Special Edition....
I believe FAudio will fix that, which Ethan Lee is working on. Let's hope Valve hire him, full speed ahead number 1!

That will be the solution to make it work out of the box. However there is a workaround for Skyrim Special Edition. Works for me..

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/99i4se/skyrim_on_linux_steam_play_no_voiceno_music_audio/

I like the "works for me" part, when you clearly haven't tested the workaround...
That workaround, slightly modified, works for the original version of Skyrim, all it did for me with the SE version was crash it.
jarhead_h Sep 14, 2018
Quoting: GuestI just want to know if the Wine fruit is hanging low enough now that any game developers who previously haven't supported us are starting to plan on officially supporting Linux via that path, such as Bethesda and id software. Bring on that tux/SteamOS icon so we can throw them our bux!

I don't agree with this. I am Valve's biggest cheerleader in this project, but I am absolutely against the idea of giving Proton the Linux/SteamOS icon. Perhaps a brand new Proton icon is in order, but the SteamOS icon should be reserved strictly for native ports only. The two should remain separate if only to make everybody stop and realize just how much work is going into this. I like the warning signs telling the user that this is running on SteamPlay. First the public pressure will be on the publishers to put in the token effort to help Valve get their game working. Then the pressure will be on native ports with only the worst devs relying on Proton which should be pretty close to a native experience by that point. But the two need to remain separate for that to happen.

As for the current state of Proton, there are a bunch of games that still require special launch options and I believe we need to find some efficient way to document that and keep that documentation current. But more to the point we need to keep track of the growing list of titles that just work, because seamless integration is the point here. The point of this is not to have to hassle with wine prefixes and such. I have no doubt Valve will keep this going until we get there, but until then we need to do our part.


Last edited by jarhead_h on 14 September 2018 at 12:13 am UTC
Dunc Sep 14, 2018
Quoting: lucifertdark32bit Prefixes for those games that absolutely need it.
.NET working in 64bit prefixes if possible, we wouldn't need 32bit prefixes that way.
Definitely. .NET's a big sticking-point for a lot of games. And it really shouldn't be.

QuoteNo more 0byte downloads every time I fire up Steam.
I was getting a lot of those for a couple of months before Proton dropped. Whether it's related or not, I don't know. But they do need to figure out a better way of updating Proton itself.

QuoteAn easier way to configure prefixes than Winetricks, or a proper gui for it that makes sense.
I don't know if that'll happen, given that the whole point is to make it seamless so you don't have to configure anything.

Something in the Beta channel, to help users try out and suggest fixes, wouldn't be a bad idea though. But I expect Valve probably assume that anyone doing that kind of thing already knows how Winetricks works.
Nevertheless Sep 14, 2018
Quoting: lucifertdark
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: GuestI just want voices and music in Skyrim Special Edition....
I believe FAudio will fix that, which Ethan Lee is working on. Let's hope Valve hire him, full speed ahead number 1!

That will be the solution to make it work out of the box. However there is a workaround for Skyrim Special Edition. Works for me..

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/99i4se/skyrim_on_linux_steam_play_no_voiceno_music_audio/

I like the "works for me" part, when you clearly haven't tested the workaround...
That workaround, slightly modified, works for the original version of Skyrim, all it did for me with the SE version was crash it.

In my case it changed from mute companion to talking companion. I must say I never would have guessed that something not sound related could break it again, but ok, you never stop learning..
Adam_eM Sep 14, 2018
Quoting: GuestI just want voices and music in Skyrim Special Edition....

I just finished my skyrim session for today, and, to be honest, I had no issues with sound at all. I mean it's a bit choppy from time to time, but I have the music and voice acting as well. The game's performance could be better, it's not that bad actually but sometimes I encounter some slight slowdowns. I also cannot quit to the desktop since the game freezes and it needs to be killed, but that's all. I also have had some problems with mouse and keyboard, since they didn't work, but I've disabled steam overlay and then unplugged my usb controller and it solved the issue.


Last edited by Adam_eM on 14 September 2018 at 1:10 am UTC
TheRiddick Sep 14, 2018
-Valve just needs to maybe make XACT dlls integrate with games better,
-better esync support by having a work around for open file limit because it seems nobody increases it!,
-a solution to nvapi nvapi64 needs to be implemented still.

All these issues can be worked around but from what I have seen, most common people DON'T read documents or know howto apply these things or even know about them at all. So it should be done automatically by proton for end users, somehow.

The sound cutout issue is a common SkyrimSE and Fallout4 creation engine bug, I and many others have worked on a solution with only seemingly random successes....


Last edited by TheRiddick on 14 September 2018 at 1:46 am UTC
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