As we speculated previously, Valve have now officially announced their new version of 'Steam Play' for Linux gaming using a modified distribution of Wine called Proton, which is available on GitHub.
What does it do? In short: it allows you to play Windows games on Linux, directly through the Steam client as if they were a Linux game.
What many people suspected turned out to be true, DXVK development was actually funded by Valve. They actually employed the DXVK developer since February 2018. On top of that, they also helped to fund: vkd3d (Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan), OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges, wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11 and more.
The amount of work that has gone into this—it's ridiculous.
Here's what they say it improves:
- Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support.
- DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, resulting in improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact.
- Fullscreen support has been improved: fullscreen games will be seamlessly stretched to the desired display without interfering with the native monitor resolution or requiring the use of a virtual desktop.
- Improved game controller support: games will automatically recognize all controllers supported by Steam. Expect more out-of-the-box controller compatibility than even the original version of the game.
- Performance for multi-threaded games has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine.
It currently has a limited set of games that are supported, but even so it's quite an impressive list that they're putting out there. Which includes DOOM, FINAL FANTASY VI, Into The Breach, NieR: Automata, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and more. They will enable many more titles as progress on it all continues.
To be clear, this is available right now. To get it, you need to be in the Steam Client Beta.
There will be drawbacks, like possible performance issues and games that rely on some DRM might likely never be supported, but even so the amount of possibilities this opens up has literally split my head open with Thor's mighty hammer.
Holy shit. Please excuse the language, but honestly, I'm physically shaking right now I don't quite know how to process this.
Update #1: I spoke to Valve earlier, about how buying Windows games to play with this system counts, they said this:
Hey Liam, the normal algorithm is in effect, so if at the end of the two weeks you have more playtime on Linux, it'll be a Linux sale. Proton counts as Linux.
Quoting: lucifertdarkQuoting: MohandevirMy system is also Ubuntu 18.04 & Nvidia 396.54, lots of games that haven't been white listed are working for me. Fallout 3 & New Vegas, Far Cry 1&2 Bioshock Remastered, ALL of the Deus Ex games (Mankind Divided is Native), Borderlands, try some you might find a few more that work perfectly for you.Quoting: GuestEven with a whitelisted game, you have no total guarantee. :D
Really curious to try these and see by myself... My setup is Ubuntu 18.04 + Nvidia 396.54. I respect Valve's minimum requirements. I'm waiting for a sale to test Doom, Nier:Automata and Star Wars: Battlefront 2. The only Whitelisted game I tested is Fallout Shelter and it runs great.
Edit: I would like to see a filter, in the google docs, to classify the tests per system configurations so that we may relate to similar configurations while trying to see if a game will work or not on our own systems.
Thanks. It's already done. Bioshock Remastered works with texture issues (low rez?), but it's playable with good performances. Deus Ex: Human Revolution seems to be working fine and the same with Witcher Enhanced edition. I tested Quantum Break and it's a big thumbs up. I have to do a full run of all of these games to make sure there is no critical crashes, though. I also tested Lego Marvel's Avenger but it constantly crashes at the Loki custscene and Lego The Hobbit is just unstable and randomly crashes at every try.
As for my preferred game, Witcher 3, It's awesome. Ok got no hairworks, but personnally, I don't care. Such false "open source with limited access proprietary stuff" should not exist imo, anyway. I also have the invisible siren problem that's probably the same issue that makes Detlaff look like a flying wig wearing a coat, in the cutscenes. Lol!
Still, I can play my favorite game, and the performances are surprisingly great, so... In fact having played the game on "the other OS" and considering that I had to deal with major stuttering and tearing... The SteamPlay version is better ootb.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 31 August 2018 at 3:34 pm UTC
Quoting: hummer010Lutris also supports various emulators, DosBox, ScummVM, ResidualVM, etc. It really does a lot more than PlayOnLinux ever did.I forgot about the emulators but some of them are for stuff that's hard to get legally & aren't something to rely on for your continued existence.
I suspect Lutris will be just fine.
Quoting: MohandevirBioshock Remastered works with texture issues (low rez?), but it's playable with good performances.
For the low res issues try the launch option:
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%
Quoting: GuestThe one thing Lutris also does great is the ability to give you a choice of which runner to use for example when installing the old Doom and original Quake games. That is probably one of Lutris's greatest strengths, would be awesome if Steam Play did the same.
Lutris is troublesome when compared to the Steam Play alternative. Buy, download and play all in one package... that's too hard to beat. If Steam Play figured out the DRM aspect of things.. where we get 98% windows games being able to be played on day 1 release... I wouldn't expect Lutris survival. Keep in mind... Steam Play is beta and people are already wanting/expecting the world.... wait till they figure out runner solutions (which I think they probably have) and DRM.... it's only been a few days guys ;-)
Last edited by ShoNuff!!! on 31 August 2018 at 4:04 pm UTC
Quoting: MohandevirQuoting: GuestEven with a whitelisted game, you have no total guarantee. :D
Really curious to try these and see by myself... My setup is Ubuntu 18.04 + Nvidia 396.54. I respect Valve's minimum requirements. I'm waiting for a sale to test Doom, Nier:Automata and Star Wars: Battlefront 2. The only Whitelisted game I tested is Fallout Shelter and it runs great.
Edit: I would like to see a filter, in the google docs, to classify the tests per system configurations so that we may relate to similar configurations while trying to see if a game will work or not on our own systems.
I bought my Doom Steam code from here, Doom from Wingamestore. It was $6.59 a week ago, bought it to test with the beta of Steam Play. Works great, although I had to add a start command to force starting the game in Vulkan.
Quoting: MohandevirOk got no hairworks, but personnally, I don't care. Such false "open source with limited access proprietary stuff" should not exist imo, anyway.Hairworks doesn't work because it needs Stream Output. It's using standard Dx11 features.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Cyba.Cowboy<snip>
Apple have made absolutely no attempt at grabbing some marketshare when it comes to PC gaming, and even their high-end computers are mostly rubbish when it comes to gaming... Not to mention the fact that most of Apple's range is financially out of reach for a significant portion of the population, even if they were (hypothetically) great for PC gaming.
That was more long-winded than I intended...
To get to my point, whatever the reasoning behind "Proton" (and Steam Machines, for that matter!), the PC industry could do with a little more competition because as the old saying goes, "competition breeds innovation".
Half-assed efforts at increasing competition - such as those efforts from GOG.com - do little in the grand scheme of things... Real efforts - such as those from Valve - actually make a difference when you look at the big picture.
Yeah people have been saying it's "the year of the Linux desktop" for as long as I can remember and realistically, that's probably a long way off... But when it happens - and there's a good chance it might - I guarantee Valve Software will be a part of the reason why it has happened.
If GNU/Linux desktop becomes more widespread, then it would be very, very bad if Steam holds dominance on gaming for the same reasons - and actually worse, because a core concept of GNU/Linux is to be open.
But, while Valve can play a part, I always point out that Valve never did so much alone, but are standing on the backs of giants: wine, AMD (opening up drivers, donating Mantle to Khronos, and more), radv, Intel (their drivers always were open), nvidia (drivers and long time OpenGL support), Unity3D (engine support before Steam was even thought to be on GNU/Linux), and of course TTimo and iD Software. And more.
And yes, Valve has been heavily involved in Vulkan from the start, and has contributions to Mesa, X, and porting their own games across. Valve definitely help improve - but the foundations were already laid out.
True, Valve stand on the shoulders of giants, like we all do, whatever we do. What I find most important is: They let others stand on their backs too. Aside from their client, everything they did is freely usable by competitors or the public, a lot of it is even open source. They truely seem to live openness (yes, maybe mainly because that serves their cause, but hey..). What else could we want?
Last edited by Nevertheless on 1 September 2018 at 9:39 am UTC
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Nevertheless<snip>
True, Valve stand on the shoulders of giants, like we all do, whatever we do. What I find most important is: They let others stand on their backs too. Aside from their client, everything they did is freely usable by competitors or the public, a lot of it is even open source. They truely seem to live openness (yes, maybe mainly because that serves their cause, but hey..). What else could we want?
Well you did ask...
Personally, I think Valve is a good example of how using open source can benefit and grow a company. ARM are showing it as well in the embedded world, and have done for a long time, but desktop often lags behind, and gaming in particular seems to want an iron grip on everything these days. So bear in mind that I've nothing against Valve at all, despite what many may think!
But, what I want more is less reliance on Steam itself for games. I just want to use Steam as a way to download and keep games up to date. Basically like what GOG Galaxy is supposed to be. Optional extras on top for using some of the Steam stuff for multiplayer games, but I would like game developers to really make it an optional thing - so that I can run the game without Steam, at least in single player mode.
And a little less reliance on the "steam runtime" would be nice. Mostly because it's outdated and is the entire reason that I can't play a few games (including Deus Ex: MD, DoWII:Retribution, and a couple others).
Before anyone jumps up & down, that's all in the hands of developers. Valve don't stop any of the above actually. I mention because it's in relation to the use of Steam, and I still very much think that _Valve_ dictate what games I can play, and when, because of reliance on Steam. Being able to rollback versions mean an update that breaks a game could be undone for me, and not needing Steam means I'm in control of when and where I want to play a game. Which is why, despite all the benefits of Steam, I will buy single player games from GOG, given the choice.
....but again, nothing to do with Valve, everything with to do with developers & publishers.
I've got no problem with your opinion at all. It's reasonable enough!
Just out of curiosity.. You can't play several games because the Steam runtime is outdated and does not work properly with your distro, or because you replaced it with something different and the games won't work with that?
Quoting: GuestQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: GuestQuoting: Nevertheless<snip>
True, Valve stand on the shoulders of giants, like we all do, whatever we do. What I find most important is: They let others stand on their backs too. Aside from their client, everything they did is freely usable by competitors or the public, a lot of it is even open source. They truely seem to live openness (yes, maybe mainly because that serves their cause, but hey..). What else could we want?
Well you did ask...
Personally, I think Valve is a good example of how using open source can benefit and grow a company. ARM are showing it as well in the embedded world, and have done for a long time, but desktop often lags behind, and gaming in particular seems to want an iron grip on everything these days. So bear in mind that I've nothing against Valve at all, despite what many may think!
But, what I want more is less reliance on Steam itself for games. I just want to use Steam as a way to download and keep games up to date. Basically like what GOG Galaxy is supposed to be. Optional extras on top for using some of the Steam stuff for multiplayer games, but I would like game developers to really make it an optional thing - so that I can run the game without Steam, at least in single player mode.
And a little less reliance on the "steam runtime" would be nice. Mostly because it's outdated and is the entire reason that I can't play a few games (including Deus Ex: MD, DoWII:Retribution, and a couple others).
Before anyone jumps up & down, that's all in the hands of developers. Valve don't stop any of the above actually. I mention because it's in relation to the use of Steam, and I still very much think that _Valve_ dictate what games I can play, and when, because of reliance on Steam. Being able to rollback versions mean an update that breaks a game could be undone for me, and not needing Steam means I'm in control of when and where I want to play a game. Which is why, despite all the benefits of Steam, I will buy single player games from GOG, given the choice.
....but again, nothing to do with Valve, everything with to do with developers & publishers.
I've got no problem with your opinion at all. It's reasonable enough!
Just out of curiosity.. You can't play several games because the Steam runtime is outdated and does not work properly with your distro, or because you replaced it with something different and the games won't work with that?
Distro I think. Some of the games are because of a version screwup with libssl I believe (it's not compatible with the rest of my system). Other games are a distro thing I think, and because I'm just the right size of crazy to stick with mesa-git (I _think_ that's why Rise of the Tomb Raider stopped working for me, but it was a Steam update and a mesa-git update at the same time, so can't be entirely sure).
Dawn of War II: Retribution (just that one it seems) has another incompatibility with it that causes it crash as soon as speaking starts. Library version, and I think it's again because of my choice of distro. Did talk to Feral about it, but they can't do much; they needed the library, and so had to choose a version for a more widespread distro (Ubuntu something-or-other) and were aware it might not work on other distros. This is fine with me; I accept a few compatibility problems when using Gentoo!
Because of some of these reasons, I actually play a few games with native versions through wine instead. Things like flatpak might make it unnecessary in the longer run - more complex games tend to pull in lots of libraries, and it makes it that much easier for something to break, so wine or flatpak, or whatever, might help out there.
--edit: Rise of the Tomb Raider does now spit out loads of SPIR-V warnings, so that's a strong indication that it's a mesa (radv) update.
I gave up on Gentoo years ago, mainly because I found it too complicated to keep working after updates. Live is generally harder upstream. I found out I'm more happy with (Ku,Xu)buntu, Debian or Mint.
But yes Flatpak might be a solution for you, at least for everything driver unrelated.
Quoting: YoRHa-2BHairworks doesn't work because it needs Stream Output. It's using standard Dx11 features.
Sweet! So we may see a working Proton/Wine/DXVK Hairworks if Vulkan implements a similar feature? So, does that means that you can't completely turn off Hairworks in Witcher3? Unless some other features make use of Stream Outputs?
Sorry, for the questions. I'm asking because I tought I turned off Hairworks (my GTX 960 can't handle it correctly, no matter the OS), but I still have the issues related to it. Stream Outputs seems to be the major roadblock for this game.
Thanks for your awesome work on DXVK.
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