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As expected, Valve have pushed out an update to Proton for their Steam Play system with a new beta version.

I wrote about an upcoming update recently going over a few of the changes coming, but I didn't expect them to push it out to a beta so soon.

The changelog is small but the improvements are great:

  • Improvements to alt-tab and fullscreen behavior in many games.
  • Fix mouse behavior in some games and mice with high sample rates.
  • Update DXVK to v0.80.

The is in the Proton 3.7-7 beta version, which you need to opt into manually in the Steam Settings:

The upgrade to DXVK alone should bring much better game compatibility, considering the amount of improvements that has gone into it since Steam Play only had DXVK 0.70 before.

I'm hoping the fullscreen improvements will stop the issue I had with DOOM from happening again, where on a two monitor setup it gave me a tiny screen on the wrong monitor.

Great to see progress. Do let us know how you're getting on with it and your thoughts on the new beta in the comments.

Ps. Apologies for the lack of content today, I am sick.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Proton, Beta, Steam
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43 comments
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Joeyboots80 Sep 28, 2018
Valve is killing it! Exciting times friends! :D
Windousico Sep 28, 2018
For me, not even one game starts with it :D ... not even those reported working.
Try this.
legluondunet Sep 28, 2018
Valve is killing it! Exciting times friends! :D

What do you mean by "Valve is killing it"?
lejimster Sep 28, 2018
I hope it won't be too long for stream output support to arrive. The only frustrating thing I'm finding is many games work fine on nvidia but fail to start on my Vega/radv setup, it always seems no matter how good AMD drivers improve, they're always behind in compatibility.
YoRHa-2B Sep 28, 2018
I think something like stream output support to stream it somewhere else in your house should be on LOW priority myself.
Stream Output is used to generate vertex data on your GPU, and I would assume that your GPU is in the same room as you are.
sarmad Sep 29, 2018
Is there a way in Steam to search for games and filter out the ones that don't work on Linux, neither natively nor through Steam Play?

Look here for Steamplay compatibility:
https://spcr.netlify.com/

Wow, nice. It's a bummer that Valve isn't providing the filtering itself. I mean, they already have the white listing feature, so why don't thy give an option to filter search result by whitelisting status?
Goldpaw Sep 29, 2018
In my account, the 3.7-7 beta is not yet available.

Go into the menu and click "Check for Steam Client Updates..." to download the latest version. Then restart it.
Comandante Ñoñardo Sep 29, 2018
3.7-7 beta is here..
Good job, Valve!

But....
Proton must be an "out of the box" experience without any workarounds or Protontricks needed...
And that's why Proton Devs MUST focus first in the compatibility with the Big AAA games and BIG Franchises..
Call of Duty's... The Bioshock's (We have Infinite, now give Us the rest of the franchise).. The Batman games.. The Resident Evil franchise... Fallout 4... The Elder scrolls V: Skyrim... The Witcher's (We have the number 2, We want 1 and 3).. etc..

Unless Valve start to add more and more games to the white list, something tells me that Proton/Steamplay will never leave the Beta stage..
jens Sep 29, 2018
  • Supporter
3.7-7 beta is here..
Good job, Valve!

But....
Proton must be an "out of the box" experience without any workarounds or Protontricks needed...
And that's why Proton Devs MUST focus first in the compatibility with the Big AAA games and BIG Franchises..
Call of Duty's... The Bioshock's (We have Infinite, now give Us the rest of the franchise).. The Batman games.. The Resident Evil franchise... Fallout 4... The Elder scrolls V: Skyrim... The Witcher's (We have the number 2, We want 1 and 3).. etc..

Unless Valve start to add more and more games to the white list, something tells me that Proton/Steamplay will never leave the Beta stage..

What makes you think that this is not what they aim for? Please have some patience :). Give it another year and lets see then where we are..
silly Sep 29, 2018
Crysis 2 - For some reason the dxvk hud isnt there anymore, unchanged user_settings.py file and I see nothing in the changelog that would explain it.. strange.

Did you try to set following in the launch options?

DXVK_HUD=1 %command%

Yeah, can ignore my faulty comment. User error of course. I did a simple script yesterday to setup Proton to use system installed dxvk instead.. but when I ported it to Proton Beta i swapped around 32/64 bit in paths and it messed up dxvk. Found it after 2min troubleshooting today.
tuxter Sep 29, 2018
batman arkham city, asylum and DMC Dvil May Cry still wont boot
Does anyone have a work Around for Net Frame Work Games

Batman City still crashs the laucher, not solution yet, but city runs googd, here's the solution,
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/309
pedrojmartm Sep 29, 2018
get better man!
Phlebiac Sep 29, 2018
Look here for Steamplay compatibility:
https://spcr.netlify.com/

Wow, nice. It's a bummer that Valve isn't providing the filtering itself. I mean, they already have the white listing feature, so why don't thy give an option to filter search result by whitelisting status?

They seemed to indicate things will be more visible as Steam Play matures; it's still considered a beta feature. Meanwhile, there's a nice GreaseMonkey script that shows the compatibility status on the Steam page using the mentioned website's data:
https://openuserjs.org/scripts/DanMan/Steam_Play_Community_Rating_Notice

There are also a couple Firefox addons that do something similar:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/spcr-for-steam/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/proton-city/
Phlebiac Sep 29, 2018
The biggest problem I think will be compatibility, sure they might introduce updates but those could essentially break things for some games... I want the games that already work with proton to CONTINUE to work.

If I understand correctly, the intention is to allow several stable versions of Proton to be used, where a game can be "pinned" to a known working version by default, while allowing the user to override it and run with the latest. So far they have just kept updating the 3.7 version (plus a newer beta), but eventually there should be 3.7, 3.xx, 3.yy, 4.zz, etc.
etonbears Sep 29, 2018
Haven't tried the latest version yet, but have played a new character in Fallout 4 up to level 70+ using the previous Proton beta. Many games, like F4, still need significant manual intervention to set up, mainly due to missing Windows API implementations, and long-standing issues with automatically integrating wine with the wide variety of Distro/UI combinations.

It doesn't help that the previous Proton beta linked against libgnutls.so.26 rather than libgnutls.so, meaning secure sockets networking fails completely unless your Distro contains this exact version of the library :(

Edit:

Another point to mention is that Proton/Steamplay doesn't seem to like NTFS formatted partitions. It is safest to download any windows game you want to try out to an ext4 formatted disk or partition. Each version of Proton is actually installed as a separate application under .../steamapps/common/, using the Steam Folder of your most recent download ( if you have more than one Steam Folder ). This can lead to different versions of Proton ending up in different Steam Folders which might cause unexpected problems.

In my case, all my Steam games are usually installed to an NTFS-formatted SSD, so EVERYTHING failed to run under Proton/Steamplay until I formatted an old HDD with ext4 and moved Proton and the Windows games into a Steam Folder there.

Edit 2:

Proton 3.7.7 overwrites the previous beta, and as it still has the problem with linking to the wrong secure sockets library, you need to set up the symbolic link again.


Last edited by etonbears on 29 September 2018 at 10:18 pm UTC
slaapliedje Sep 30, 2018
Apparently this did not fix the mouse polling speed for Neverwinter.
Comandante Ñoñardo Sep 30, 2018
Why the mouse cursor is invisible in the Steam overlay?
slaapliedje Sep 30, 2018
Apparently this did not fix the mouse polling speed for Neverwinter.
What bug is that? Can't find it on spcr... And I have 60 h in this game, never noticed it.

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33643

I added the report there yesterday. Basically if you have a mouse that has a crazy high polling rate (like most gaming mice), it'll freak out and you move the mouse a little bit and it moves a lot, then creates crazy lag in the interface.

Lowering it to 125hz fixes the issue (which is probably why you're not seeing it.)

I started playing it again because I want to play in Ravenloft! My favorite D&D setting by far.


Last edited by slaapliedje on 30 September 2018 at 5:59 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Sep 30, 2018
Haven't tried the latest version yet, but have played a new character in Fallout 4 up to level 70+ using the previous Proton beta. Many games, like F4, still need significant manual intervention to set up, mainly due to missing Windows API implementations, and long-standing issues with automatically integrating wine with the wide variety of Distro/UI combinations.

It doesn't help that the previous Proton beta linked against libgnutls.so.26 rather than libgnutls.so, meaning secure sockets networking fails completely unless your Distro contains this exact version of the library :(
I wonder if in the future Snaps and Flatpaks will help with some of that.
etonbears Oct 1, 2018
I deleted the 3.7beta folder to download the newest version to make sure I got the new version and found that I had to go into the folder and extract the tar.gz myself. So if you aren't able to get any games running look in that folder to make sure it's extracted.

Valve seem to be maintaining 2 Proton Folders, 3.7 Stable and 3.7 Beta, which get updated automatically with maintenance builds. You will note that if you choose a proton build, you can only select from the most recent stable and beta builds. This is probably a good thing, otherwise your disk would fill up with point releases.

There is currently no "proper" way through the Steam Client to move or delete a Proton build, but
i have found if you delete both the Proton directory and its "appmanifest" file, it will be re-created correctly when it is next required ( but note my previous comment concerning NTFS ). The appmanifests are simple text files in the steamapps directory, named according to the steam product ID, one for each installed product - you'll may have to open them all to find the correct one.

If you forgot to remove the appmanifest, Steam probably got confused trying to update a non-existent Proton directory. I can also confirm that it will update the beta with new releases automatically; you don't actually need to do anything :D
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