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Valve are continuing their polishing effort to make the Steam Client work better, with a load of work from the recent Beta releases now out for everyone.

This Steam Client update includes an updated version of their embedded Chromium build, it adds in a Big Picture Mode library filter for local multiplayer games, multiple changes to Steam Input including a new "Controller Connected" notification (which can be turned off), the ability to blacklist individual DirectInput and Xinput devices in the controller settings menu, improvements to in-home streaming, Vulkan pipeline dumping and collection if Shader Pre-Caching is enabled and more.

As I understand it, the Vulkan part above is so the shader cache for a Vulkan game can be uploaded to Steam and shared, so we would hopefully see less stuttering which would be a big improvement.

For Linux specifically, these issues were fixed and improved:

  • Fixed more instances of 0-byte downloads and missing Proton or data files for Steam Play titles
  • Added Steam Play configuration settings in Big Picture Mode
  • Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor would be invisible in the Steam Overlay when playing games through Steam Play
  • Fixed an issue where the Steam Client wouldn’t automatically update or download Proton before launching games through Steam Play
  • Fixed additional cursor and mouse grabbing issues with the overlay on Steam Play games.
  • Improve support for Steam Library on NTFS mounts

See the release notes here.

Nice to see a bunch of Steam Play fixes make it in, the experience is really coming along now which has enabled me to enjoy Deep Rock Galactic greatly.

What would you like to see improved next in the Steam Client?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam, Valve
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g000h Apr 19, 2019
Quoting: elmapul"What would you like to see improved next in the Steam Client?"
updates to the oficial list of games white listed by valve.
it may seem something small, but the protonDB database isnt realiable, some people rate the game as platinum without knowing about all the features that the game have in order to be able to test it and make sure everything is working, so some "platinum" or "gold" ratings are false positives.
example: guilty gear dont have any videos on proton (neither the intro, nor the extras nor anything else that the game may have, looks like the issue is that the codec for then is WMV, but that is an issue that valve can easily fix asking devs to convert the videos and distribute alongside the game (or convert then selfs asking permission to redistribute it)
another issue is features like hair works that may not work on linux, but the game be rated platinum regardless.

Related to this request of yours, I feel like mentioning that I have had a couple of ProtonDB and Steam purchase experiences recently that might help you (and others reading).

I wanted to purchase the Windows-only game "UnExplored" which was on sale on Steam a few weeks ago. My reasoning was - It is listed as Bronze status on ProtonDB - and I can purchase it, test it for 2 hours, and if it fails to run with Proton/Steam Play then I can request a refund. Well, the game didn't run for me with Proton :( so I made a refund request to Steam, got the refund, the game was removed from my library - All good. It might be possible to get UnExplored working, using tweaks, but I didn't discover one during my short test. (I reported my BORKED failure back onto ProtonDB list, and note that some other people have got it working.) My advice: Get the game, and take advantage of the grace period, and get refunded if it doesn't work.

Proton/Steam Play is a work in progress and as much as it is getting better and better, I'm aware that there is potential for some games to work and others to fail and there might be tweaks needed for some games. That is the nature of it. I'm happy for progress to be going ahead, and it would be good if the Supported Games list was swelled, but give them a chance - This is quite new, experimental work going on here.

Back to my latest (yesterday's 4.2-3 release) experiences with Proton and ProtonDB. Hurray! Of my 16 installed Proton games, currently only one game isn't working (The game which is failing is "Antihero".)

I have at last got Fallout 3 GOTY and Elder Scrolls Skyrim SE working with full NPC audio and all working as expected, BUT I needed to apply relatively simple "Set Launch Options" into the game's Properties dialogue for the games to run correctly.

Fallout 3 GOTY - Here is my SET LAUNCH OPTION:
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition - Here is my SET LAUNCH OPTION:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="xaudio2_7=n,b" %command%

Note that I got both these tweaks from reading user comments on ProtonDB - Cheers for that!
Eike Apr 19, 2019
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Quoting: elmapul"What would you like to see improved next in the Steam Client?"
updates to the oficial list of games white listed by valve.

By the way, did we give up on "Show games released natively for Linux!"...?


Last edited by Eike on 19 April 2019 at 8:35 pm UTC
g000h Apr 19, 2019
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: g000hupdates to the oficial list of games white listed by valve.

By the way, did we give up on "Show games released natively for Linux!"...?

You messed up that quote. elmapul made it, I quoted him/her in my quote. Not sure why you're jumping from 'my' conversation to 'did we give up on...', I can't see how it links up.
Eike Apr 19, 2019
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Quoting: g000h
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: g000hupdates to the oficial list of games white listed by valve.

By the way, did we give up on "Show games released natively for Linux!"...?

You messed up that quote. elmapul made it, I quoted him/her in my quote. Not sure why you're jumping from 'my' conversation to 'did we give up on...', I can't see how it links up.

Sorry, I had messed up that quote.
Fixed now.
thykr Apr 20, 2019
Valve broke the steam-native package on Arch Linux (and Arch-based distros).

Story and bug report there, good read (Timothee Besset is in there and plays the villain apparently hehe):
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/62095
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6156
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/1848072002764995823

Granted they are in private discussion with some participants in the github issue and might look into the issue in the next few weeks.

I think this might be news-worthy. Maybe?
elmapul Apr 21, 2019
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: elmapul"What would you like to see improved next in the Steam Client?"
updates to the oficial list of games white listed by valve.

By the way, did we give up on "Show games released natively for Linux!"...?

i dont need to quote this, this is implicit.
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