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Another exciting set of changes for Valve's new Steam Play system. This time the Proton beta 3.16-4 includes some really good stuff. If you don't see it show up, restart Steam.

Here's what's changed:

  • Proton now ships with corefonts support. This should fix many games with missing text, or that crash due to missing font support.
  • Significant Steamworks compatibility improvements. This should fix SOULCALIBUR VI's network failure when launched through Steam Play.
  • For Direct3D games (both DXVK and wined3d), Nvidia cards are now reported as if they are actually AMD cards. This prevents games from trying to load the Windows-only nvapi library and crashing or giving very bad performance.
  • Mouse focus and clipping improvements.
  • Upgrade OpenVR SDK support.
  • Fix for a keyboard input issue in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.

See the full changelog here, as a reminder the changelog moved from a file in the repo to GitHub's Wiki system.

It's really great to see the Steamworks fix which caused some issues for people. Hopefully there won't be too many hidden gotchas like that buried in it but only time will tell as more people try out Steam Play. I was also hoping Valve would do something about corefonts, since it was an issue in quite a number of games and a barrier for seamless play. For corefonts, they're not using the actual MSFT fonts, instead they're using liberation-fonts as seen from this commit.

As a reminder, Steam Play needs a driver version of 396.54 or newer at a minimum for NVIDIA and AMD ideally Mesa 18.2. For Transform Feedback support from DXVK you need the 396.54.09 Vulkan Beta Driver on NVIDIA and Mesa git for AMD, this fixes missing models in a bunch of DX11 games.

What I'm looking forward to now are Valve finding a way to deal with all those zero-byte updates and seeing how they advertise Steam Play on store pages. On top of that, what I'm also curious about is how Valve will move forwards with updates to their whitelist, it would be interesting if they had a way to notify you if a game on your wishlist gained "official" Steam Play support.

If you have issues with games not working correctly with Steam Play, do ensure you make a bug report on GitHub to help Valve and co improve the system.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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54 comments
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Shmerl Nov 2, 2018
Quoting: YoRHa-2BIn case of UE4, you might partially blame Nvidia because they are Epic's tech partner, but ultimately this issue wouldn't exist if developers didn't make poor assumptions and used error handling instead.

Same goes for AGS.

Is there a point to report this to Epic, or it's not something they'll care to fix?
Captain Spirit is working too..
elmapul Nov 2, 2018
"This should fix SOULCALIBUR VI's network failure when launched through Steam Play."
can some one test if Soul calibur is fully playable now?
MysticTempest Nov 2, 2018
Quoting: no_information_here
QuoteWhat I'm looking forward to now are Valve finding a way to deal with all those zero-byte updates
What is up with those? I figured that it was just small and rounded down to zero, rather than actually zero. However, Valdis has been doing almost one of these a day for over a week now. I don't mind if they are actually fixing things, but some kind of changelog would be nice.

The 0-byte updates are a bug. Steam's stuck in an "update loop" modifying the appmanifests for these SteamPlay(Proton) games.

Basically, Proton is added as a "shared depot", to the manifests of these SteamPlay(Proton) games in order for them to run. It's supposed to add the depot when the game is played, and clear it out later.

But, some games will start up with the 'shared depot' already enabled. So at startup, Steam will try adding the depot, and then remove it. That triggers Steam to detect that a 'major change' has occurred, and queues it for an update.
The update then re-adds the shared depot regardless of whether or not you launched the game this time around.
Those are the recurring '0 byte updates', and visible in the logs.

You can see my github comment where I added some relevant logs: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5644#issuecomment-423718402
nded Nov 2, 2018
Quoting: elmapul"This should fix SOULCALIBUR VI's network failure when launched through Steam Play."
can some one test if Soul calibur is fully playable now?
I can confirm that SC6 no longer throws up connection errors and I was able to join lobbies and play online matches.
Scoopta Nov 2, 2018
Quoting: Ardje
Quoting: Scoopta
Quoting: loggeHaha, now Nvidia gets their parts of being closed-source only! What a day!
I'm not sure what exactly you were trying to say but it sounds sort of like a dig on Nvidia yet you have an nvidia card?
He has a core i7-920, that's 2009 calling.
And an nvidia gtx 1060? How would that work?
@logge: I really want to know, because I have an 920 too. Still with 6GB, but the CPU seems faster than the i5 in my steam machine (with unfortunately an Nvidia card).
I wonder if an R9-270 would be able to run new drivers.
Technically amdgpu only officially supports GCN 1.2(R9 Fury) and up however there is experimental support for GCN 1.0(HD 7000) and 1.1(RX 200, RX 300). One of my friends has an R9 390 and amdgpu works great for him so I would think an R9 270 would be fine as well since they're both GCN 1.1. I've also heard radeon performance isn't bad although I've never personally used it.


Last edited by Scoopta on 2 November 2018 at 8:34 am UTC
cprn Nov 2, 2018
I can confirm Steam Controller can finally be set to mouse input (as opposed to joystick-mouse) without hitting the "invisible walls" in Kingdom Come: Deliverance (btw. very good game, works with Steam Play after linking missing DLLs between folders as described on ProtonDB).
anarchist_tomato Nov 2, 2018
Oh cool, does that work in FPS games too? I've been playing Deus Ex 2 today, and haven't had a single mouse issue, so maybe it's been fixed this release?

Quoting: Guest
Quoting: anarchist_tomatoMy chief concern is fixing that mouse problem that's been in Wine since forever and is still in Proton, where you're in an FPS and can suddenly only turn about 270 degrees. I usually fix it by exiting into the game menu and going into the controls menu and then back into the game. That *should* be gone from Wine/Proton though now, it's been decades!

I fix it by just holding the Right Mouse Button then start moving the mouse cursor while in-game.
wvstolzing Nov 2, 2018
Quoting: anarchist_tomatoOh cool, does that work in FPS games too? I've been playing Deus Ex 2 today, and haven't had a single mouse issue, so maybe it's been fixed this release?

Are you using the 'vanilla' .exe provided by Steam, or any kind of launcher?

I used to run DXIW using this (link 'unofficial patch/launcher' because the executable on Steam had some sort of issue -- though what it was, I can't exactly recall right now. I'm curious whether that's been fixed; because I don't feel like setting up any launchers when I'm in the mood to finally finish DXIW (I still haven't ... it's not as captivating as the first one.)
Quoting: MysticTempest
Quoting: no_information_hereI figured that it was just small and rounded down to zero, rather than actually zero.
The 0-byte updates are a bug. Steam's stuck in an "update loop" modifying the appmanifests for these SteamPlay(Proton) games.
Thanks for the very clear explanation! That makes more sense now.
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