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Proton Experimental has been updated from Valve with some new features like initial speech synthesis support, along with the usual assortment of fixes for specific games running on Steam Deck and Desktop Linux. Confused on what Proton is and how to use it? See my beginner's guide.

The initial addition of speech synthesis currently requires you to manually install "Proton Voice Files", something people saw pop up recently that led to some wild speculation. They've confirmed it works with Infinite Stars - The Visual Novel.

Other changes from this update include:

  • Now Playable: VIDEO GAME.
  • Fixed Star Wars Outlaws not being playable on some setups.
  • Fixed Hell Let Loose crashing when joining a server after a recent game update.
  • Fixed Rivals of Aether II crashing with Intel GPUs.
  • Fixed fullscreen mode in The Bright Star Of Seraph-Katis.
  • Improved video playback in Max: The Curse of Brotherhood.
  • Fixed Dread X Collection 3 Bete Grise minigame.
  • Fixed Proton Experimental regressions:
    • Progressbar95 no longer has crackling audio when using mouse.
    • Hell Let Loose again plays audio when showing developer logos.
    • Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin no longer requries constant mouse movement to progress.
    • Fixed Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered crashing when playing some of the HD bonus videos.
  • Fixed CPU topology override issues on machines with more than 32 logical cores.
  • Added support for game mods that load via custom dinput8.dll.
  • Fixed Space Engineers not registering trigger input with controllers.

All from the changelog.

Writing about the update, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais posted this on Bluesky:

On new Proton Experimental, most mods can now just be extracted/copied next to the game .exe, without requiring any extra steps like setting WINEDLLOVERRIDES. This change will also be in future stable Proton releases.

Modding Windows games through Proton has long been a nuisance, so removing a barrier like this is fantastic news.

In case you missed it a previous Proton Experimental update added support for NVIDIA Optical Flow API and DLSS 3 Frame Generation for Desktop Linux. We're getting some great stuff for gaming on Linux lately.

On top of that don't miss that Proton 9.0-4 is currently in testing as the next stable version of Proton that most games will be expected to use.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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17 comments

Linas Dec 10
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Wait, what? Is speech synthesis something that is built into Windows, and games actually use it?
_Mars Dec 10
Quote
  • Now Playable: VIDEO GAME.

Thank god. We finally got gaming on Linux.
Stella Dec 10
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Quoting: _Mars
Quote
  • Now Playable: VIDEO GAME.

Thank god. We finally got gaming on Linux.
hehe, fun fact, VIDEO GAME is just a wildcard placeholder for every game out there
Highball Dec 10
Quoting: _Mars
Quote
  • Now Playable: VIDEO GAME.

Thank god. We finally got gaming on Linux.

100% of VIDEO GAME are playable on Linux. We made it boys.
poke86 Dec 10
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Hopefully it fixes voice recognition in Phasmophobia!
hardpenguin Dec 10
Quoting: LinasWait, what? Is speech synthesis something that is built into Windows, and games actually use it?
I am surprised as well but if it helps with accessibility then I am all for it!
williamjcm Dec 10
Quoting: poke86Hopefully it fixes voice recognition in Phasmophobia!
No, this is only for speech synthesis. Voice recognition is still not supported in my experience.
poke86 Dec 10
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Quoting: williamjcm
Quoting: poke86Hopefully it fixes voice recognition in Phasmophobia!
No, this is only for speech synthesis. Voice recognition is still not supported in my experience.
Oh right I got those confused, thanks
LoudTechie Dec 10
Quoting: LinasWait, what? Is speech synthesis something that is built into Windows, and games actually use it?

Yes, it's build in and I've already experienced that I had to get something working on Linux that used it and I failed.
It's part of the dotnet framework(which is the part of C# specifically designed to be Windows specific(a.k.a everything that was not reverse engineered by the XAMARIN before Microsoft bought it))

A classmate wrote some code we wanted to get running on a pi and I failed.


Last edited by LoudTechie on 10 December 2024 at 2:06 pm UTC
elmapul Dec 10
hopefully we can finally have speatch synth on linux, eSpeak sucks and the solutions based on ai might be good (never tested) but are tricky to configure/install.

i hope valve can also fix speach recognition and... they open source their solutions for both.
its trick to do that in one language, let alone all of then...
Liam Dawe Dec 10
Updated with post from Valve developer.
dpanter Dec 10
The modding support is potentially enormous news.
whizse Dec 10
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In case anyone else is interested, they went with Piper as the TTS.
Linux_Rocks Dec 10
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WMan22 Dec 10
Quoting: dpanterThe modding support is potentially enormous news.
For sure, I hope we also get an official GUI interface within steam itself to run third party mod loader .exe files inside of a prefix too, then the modding support will really be nice. People shouldn't have to rely on third party stuff like Protontricks to do this.
Liam Dawe Dec 11
Quoting: WMan22
Quoting: dpanterThe modding support is potentially enormous news.
For sure, I hope we also get an official GUI interface within steam itself to run third party mod loader .exe files inside of a prefix too, then the modding support will really be nice. People shouldn't have to rely on third party stuff like Protontricks to do this.
Sounds like something along those lines is planned to come!
WMan22 Dec 11
Quoting: Liam DaweSounds like something along those lines is planned to come!

Yeah that was me plagman was responding to, really chuffed to be noticed twice in one week by someone from valve, one for an anv driver bug report I made on gitlab for Marvel Rivals by kisak-valve, and now by plagman.


Last edited by WMan22 on 11 December 2024 at 8:05 pm UTC
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