Quoting: slaapliedjeSo is Boxtron / Roberta supposed to autodetect MIDI devices? Doesn't seem to be working, had to manually set up the system's DOSBox, and still can't seem to get MIDI output for any of the ScummVM based games.

Boxtron: yes; there's explicit support for UM-ONE v2 and other hardware; if it does not work for you - maybe you have some HW we haven't seen before (very probable) - swing by the Discord server or create an issue in the Boxtron bugtracker on GitHub - I will need additional information to find out why it's not working for you. I also created brand new IRC channel #luxtorpeda on freenode, which is not hooked up to Discord yet, but you can ping me in there as well.

Roberta: no, it works exactly the same way as ScummVM (which has some form of autodetection, but I don't know the exact scope of it, and it probably depends on ScummVM version you have installed).

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Quoting: thelimeydragonWill there be one called Ken for native ResidualVM :P ?

Plan for ResidualVM is to add support in Roberta 0.2.0; there is no overlap between games supported by these two tools, so it seems appropriate.

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Quoting: HadBabitsI'm no expert in old point-and-click adventures, but I'm guessing the name's a cute reference [External Link] :)

:)

Quoting: eldakingI think it is really crazy that the Steam client can now support "compatibility tools" in general. Sure, Proton is the biggest and most important... but we can also have DOSBox and ScummVM, apparently. What next?

Luxtorpeda [External Link], for native Linux ports of games :) It's in a pre-release state, but you can already test it.

Quoting: eldakingEmulators for old-ish consoles?

I think RetroArch will take care of that, once it will be released on Steam in few months or so…

Quoting: eldakingSome Android compatibility layer to play mobile games?

I don't know if there are any games on Steam that could use such kind of emulation. If you know any, please list them on https://github.com/dreamer/luxtorpeda/wiki/Game-engines [External Link]

Quoting: eldakingWSL2 so we can run Linux games on Windows? :P

Compatibility tools are Linux-only thing now. In this way, Linux as a gaming platform is already better than Windows or OSX ;).

Quoting: slaapliedjeI highly recommend one, though I think I like the SC88-pro better. Also works with DosBox, though I haven't tried that many through Boxtron, I will say Doom + MIDI sounds AMAZING!

Boxtron caters to this use-case by automatically detecting hardware configuration (so you don't need to manually edit DOSBox config to update Alsa sequencer port number), pre-configurig known games to use MIDI instead of SoundBlaster emulation (so there's no need to hunt programs like SETSOUND.EXE) and running software MIDI synthesiser if there's no hardware option. Hopefully, HW auto-detection will work for your MIDI setup - but if it won't, then ping me!

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Quoting: monnefI hacked together a small userscript [External Link] (tested in FF with Greasemonkey and Chromium with Tampermonkey). I hope by PCGW you meant PCGamingWiki.

It works exactly how I wanted, thanks! :)

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Quoting: TriasAre you trying to do something complex? Because this simple extension [External Link] (shows Proton rating in Steam store) works just fine...

I was talking about extensions for ProtonDB to implement missing functionality on ProtonDB site.

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Quoting: const

Quoting: dreamer_

• Games with native Linux versions sometimes are visible as Windows only (and the other way around).

That's actually rooted in SteamDB - it's their data source. I contacted both ProtonDB and SteamDB regarding some games that have a native linux client, but in the end it seems to be up to the developer to click a check box.

I have this problem with games that are marked correctly on Steam and SteamDB, but appear broken only on ProtonDB; one of such games is Shank 2 (which was always Linux native): ProtonDB shows it as Linux-supporting, non-native game awaiting reports [External Link].

For a similar reason, it's impossible to add reports about games that are no longer sold or are being added to the library as part of a bundle (despite information about such games still being available through SteamDB) - this is another factor contributing to ProtonDB data being unreliable.

Users are reporting this problem over and over again at Discord - to no response.

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Quoting: monnefMeasured https://www.protondb.com/help [External Link] (to not pick up images and other page specific stuff) and got 1.9MB (transferred only 642kB), so nothing extraordinary, just average compared to an year old stats, so probably bellow average now = lighter than average.

This is probably the least important out of the points I listed. But just so we are clear. Clear cache, visit main page (help page size is rather meaningless): 2.6MB transferred, 5.8MB of resources, 31.51s of load time. Now navigate to "Explore": 6.3MB transferred, 12.8MB of resources; now click "Lack reports": 13.1MB transferred (!), 21MB of resources (there is NO information shown on this page aside of 50 small thumbnails - where does 13.1MB of compressed data come from? - this is not normal). Each visited page adds several more megabytes.

Quoting: monnefI don't see any unusual tech, it seems to be an SPA in React with css modules and/or css-in-js. Sure, it won't be trivial to write userscripts/addons for it, but since they seem to retain some readable information in css classes (as prefixes), it shouldn't be too hard to collect all classes at start, build translation table and use this table later.

There are no "all classes at start". They are loaded dynamically, each click generates hundreds, maybe thousands of classes with new prefixes.

I tried, I failed, lost several hours. I just want to have a link to PCGW for each game - next to e.g. GitHub search link (e.g. via PCGW search) - this was my first feature request to ProtonDB (almost a year ago) but it was never implemented. React is designed to make this *borderline* impossible. If you know how to do it, or have an example of webextension working with a React page (any extension, any React page), I am all ears.

Quoting: dreamer_I agree with other points. I hope it gets better...

I am definitely salty, as I was quite active on ProtonDB Discord until ~January 2019. I lost hope :(.

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Quoting: ShmerlThat's a huge proportion of AMD GPUs and CPUs in those reports. Different ratio than in GOL stats.

I would trust GoL stats over ProtonDB. ProtonDB decided to do a pretty stupid thing and store Steam System Information in a cookie file (ok) and basically never invalidate it (not ok). In the result, we get a disproportionate view on driver versions and likely other information in there as well.

There are other issues with ProtonDB:

• Games with native Linux versions sometimes are visible as Windows only (and the other way around).


• Regional Steam policies make it impossible to report specific games (ProtonDB could work around this, but nope).


• List of whitelisted games is updated by hand (not updated since November, I think? there are still only 32 games in there).


• There is no way to distinguish different compatibility tools (so positive reports for wine, lutris, proton-tkg, proton-ge, boxtron and possibly luxtorpeda are making stats too optimistic) - owner knows about this feature request for about a month now, did nothing.


• The owner promised to release source code of ProtonDB on day 1, but never did it and likely never will (in fact, it was very difficult to force him to release user data in the first place).


• Site is very heavy (several megabytes) and full of Google tracking.


• It is impossible to write browser extensions for it due to technologies used.


• There is no API to access specific reports (it can be reverse-engineered - I did it, but got tired of playing whack-a-mole with owner changing the hash values to obscure the url).


• Even typos reported several times since December are still left unfixed ("N VIDIA" in the stats).

At this point we can conclude ProtonDB was abandoned by its creator and source code will not be released. Linux gaming community needs a proper, open-source replacement.

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Quoting: SalvatosSo, to clarify, if you buy a Windows-only game on Steam that runs on an old engine that has a native Linux emulator (?), Boxtron integrates with Steam to run that game through that emulator rather than Proton? This is getting too complicated for me.

Old DOS games on Steam all come bundled with DOSBox, sometimes in very old version (like 0.63 released in 2004). So right now you would play this game in old, Windows version of DOS emulator, running through Wine supplied with Proton (bleh). With Boxtron you can run it using your new, native DOSBox supplied by your Linux distro (or any fork you like), without involving Wine.

Quoting: SalvatosWould that be essentially similar to "adding a non-Steam game" to Steam and setting it to run something like "dosbox game/launcher.exe", except now you can set that option straight from your library item instead of adding the game from outside Steam?

Well, you can do that, but in the process you will loose many Steam features (like e.g. Cloud saves) and it won't work out-of-the-box for 99% of games you are going to try. That's because dosbox configuration files supplied with the games are not portable from Windows to Linux. Boxtron fixes this problem (and several more :) ).

Quoting: SalvatosI'd chip in either way if it's more useful to have it on Steam than the way it currently works. I'm sure you could raise 95 dollars in a matter of minutes if you set up a donation page :) Would that also install and manage your (e.g.) DOSBox version for you, kind of like PoL and Lutris do with Wine?

That's an option to be explored. At the moment I am hesistant about receiving donations for this purpose. Going by official Steam rules, this tool would not be allowed on Steam Store [External Link] - and there's simply no precedent here. I will investigate this option again when 1.0.0 release will be in sight :).

Going to Steam Store would imply supplying a DOSBox version built for Steam Runtime and maintained by Luxtorpeda/Boxtron project, yes.

Quoting: anarchist_tomatoSorry, I should clarify for anyone who might be following along. I was referring to the ambient background noise during levels and the menu music with the TR theme tune, which were in the PC version.

You are right, the music is missing! I falsely presumed the ambient music will appear in some specific level areas - thanks for pointing this out. I managed to manually bring it back by converting mp3s to ogg (ffmpeg -i 02.mp3 02.ogg) and editing .cue file (GAME.DAT). SDL1.2_mixer has some wonky dependencies when it comes to playing mp3s, so that's the culprit. There is other .cue related bug [External Link] present, so I might as well make this fix automatic for future Boxtron versions and kill 2 bugs with one change. Thanks again for steering me in the right direction!

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Quoting: anarchist_tomatoI just tried with Boxtron then, works with what appears to be full stability, though there is no "CD audio" (is it modified to run in the background by mp3 or something?). It's also running with original software rendering, and I still had to reduce the screensize 20+ years later! ;) My brother says it runs better through straight dosbox though. Maybe it's set to run like a 486 or early Pentium or something?

Steam version (PC version in general) was released without music - only PlayStation version had it :( There are ways to bring it back, documented on PCGW [External Link].

Re: performance - with Boxtron you *are* running it through straight DOSBox, maybe your brother was using one of many, many DOSBox forks that include OpenGLide patches (which were rejected upstream). Anyway, hop onto our Discord server [External Link] and let's discuss the performance problem there :)

Quoting: stud68I wonder can I get it to run a tweaked Dosbox with Glide…

Yes, you can. [External Link]

Quoting: EikeWhat costs (how much) would that be?

It might differ by region, I'm not sure - for my region it's 95USD which would be reimbursed after reaching 1000USD in sales. Somehow I was convinced it was 400USD until I checked just now.

Quoting: Maweki So let's hope we get native ScummVM-support for some of the DOSbox and windows-scummvm distributed games.

You can follow up on this feature request here [External Link] :)

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