Sounds like it may be caused by upstream Wine not having the esync/fsync patches maybe?

(You can of course run GOG games with Proton too, no need to buy stuff a second time!)

Quoting: whizseSounds like it may be caused by upstream Wine not having the esync/fsync patches maybe?

(You can of course run GOG games with Proton too, no need to buy stuff a second time!)

You make a good point. One upside of Steam is their easy refund process so worst case i'll have my $7 back in a few days. I hadn't thought of running a GOG game using Proton so it was an easy way to test. I use Lutris to run GOG games, I don't see a Proton runner but do see a Steam runner. How would I go about running a GOG game using Proton ? I tried enabling F-Sync and E-Sync using the toggle in Lutris for Wine but they won't enable so the Proton route would probably be next best.

I'm not sure how much of help I can be here. Like Koopacabras I usually just run Proton from the terminal for non-Steam games:

WINEPREFIX=/path/to/prefix /path/to/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Proton 7.0/dist/bin/wine HalfeLife3.exe  I then set up dxvk/enable esync manually for the prefix.

The easiest way is probably Bottles which comes with and recommends using Proton as a runner:
https://docs.usebottles.com/components/runners

For Lutris I'm not sure. I don't use it myself and I find some contradicting information if it supports Proton or not?

Another alternative is to add the (presumably already installed?) GOG game as a stand alone game in the Steam client. But once again I'm not sure how that works for non-native games.

You might get more eyeballs (and answers) on this if you create a new thread specifically about running non-steam games through Proton easiest.

Quoting: PublicNuisanceOne upside of Steam is their easy refund process so worst case i'll have my $7 back in a few days.

That's actually a very good point. I keep forgetting about Steam refunds!

So I found a solution. I'm honest with myself: I am far too lazy to start using terminal scripts. I gave Bottles a try but didn't like the UI. I then tried Heroic Games Launcher which looks similar enough to Lutris so I got it setup easily but also allows me to use E-Sync and F-Sync which allowed me to get the same performance on my GOG copy as I was getting on Steam. So while nobody specifically said to try HGL I still thank you all for getting me thinking of options other than Lutris as well as pointing out E-Sync and F-Sync as what I needed.

I wish I frequented the forums and had seen your query earlier PublicNuisance.

I've been through the similar headache of sorting out various performance issues and reached the same conclusion everyone here has: try running through Proton and with Esync/Fsync. And like you, Heroic met my needs.

I would like to add that as of right now the flatpaks for Lutris and Heroic are mature enough to use as solutions for Epic/GOG titles. If a GOG downloaded through Heroic doesn't work, try it in Lutris. And vice versa. Both developers do great consumer-friendly work!

Ultimately, do whatever works best for you.

Sometimes I forget how helpful this community can be! Thanks to all you fine GoL users and our host Liam :)

Hey, you folks know you can also use Steam's facilities to run a "non-Steam" game? If I'm having trouble with a game I'll sometimes test it with Proton in Steam. No, I've not found Lutris' Proton runners to be viable.

I had to do that the other night, I broke "Martha Is Dead" by upgrading my "system wine" (wine-tkg 8.0-rc2). The intro videos (unreal 4, mediafoundation bollocks) started crashing the game. Rather than go back to my previous wine-tkg (7.22) build on the system, I'll just finish that game in Steam with my Proton-tkg "valve bleeding edge" build that has the Valve media converter ("mfplay") that's better than the fake dlls in Wine.

Basically in Steam you just add a non steam game and browse for the executable. It's a bit of a funny UI, you have to then "add" the game to the list of suggested executables it presents. Check the paths in the dialog, force your desired compatibility tool in Properties and try to run it. It won't show dialogs like "Preparing to launch..." while it's generating your Wine prefix but it does it (and it updates it if you change Proton)

This runs the game from the installed location, but creates a new wine prefix in steam/steamapps/compatdata, with a steam appid number way out of range of appids in use. e.g. 10 digit number for directory name

That should work out of the box for most installed GoG games but in some cases you MAY have to install things with winetricks in that prefix though, like for example if the game needs vcrun2019 (the GoG installer would have installed that).