The free and open source game manager Lutris has a fresh Beta release out with version 0.5.13 adding in a whole bunch of new features and service integrations.
What's the point of Lutris? As a game manager it gives you a central place to configure and play all your games from different places. This includes emulators, different stores (Humble, Steam, GOG etc) along with many extra helpful features to get the most out of your games.
Here's a list of what's new in 0.5.13 Beta:
- Add support for Proton.
- Add drag and drop on the main window.
- Add support for ModDB links in installers (moddb python module required).
- Added "Missing" sidebar option for games whose directory is missing.
- Re-style the configuration, preferences, installer and add-games windows.
- Group configuration options into sections.
- Added checkbox to stop asking for the launch config for a game.
- Support for launch-configs in shortcuts and the command line.
- The add-games window can now create 32-bit WINE prefixes.
- Add filter field to runner list.
- Show game count in search bar.
- Workaround Humble Bundle authentication issues by allowing importing cookies from Firefox.
- Add Itch.io integration.
- Add Battle.net integration (protobuf dependency required).
- Improve detection of DOSBox games on GOG.
- Added "Unspecified" Vulkan ICD option.
- Removed ResidualVM (now merged into ScummVM).
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Quoting: hardpenguinSomeone is putting up a fight against Heroic 😁Every project has a different approach.
Being independent from upstream launchers is more powerful and more efficient but means lots of hours (unpaid^^) to work on creating documentation and testing it against a blackbox and if the platform owner decides to change things, you need to do it again.
Lutris a bit more robust against upstream changes and can implement new things faster.
I wouldn't say fight.
Last edited by tpau on 13 February 2023 at 4:01 pm UTC
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I tested the reworked Proton support last night. I usually roll up a new Lutris fron git about once a week or so, my last one didn't have this yet. So "0.5.13.beta1.r7.gebddf4b3"
First thing I noticed from my last checkout was that they cleaned up the "Advanced" settings UI to make it more parsable, by separating groups of settings. I can now scroll faster as I look at them :-)
In Runner Options, sure enough, in the Wine runner drop list showed a long list of proton versions... but it doesn't read compatibilitytools.d which is where my proton builds are kept. I keep one proton-tkg valve experimental bleeding edge, and one proton-tkg generated with latest wine sources (current 8.1). So it listed all those old Proton versions going back 5 years but not mine lol
You can't just symlink them from ~/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine. Lutris doesn't parse that anymore.
HOWEVER, symlinks in steam/steamapps/common pointing to my proton builds in compatibilitytools.d works and then my protons show up in the drop list. Steam seems to just ignore these symlinks, so that's good.
In my proton-tkg valve bleeding edge builds, the valve mediaconverter actually works correctly for Unreal Engine mediafoundation dll bollocks on my system. Nowhere else does that thing work for me. That's why I'm adamant to use mine.
I got this to work for a game that's very, very finicky on these mediafoundation dlls. "Martha Is Dead" which I previously had to run through Steam as a non-steam game (it's a standalone GoG game).
So yay, and stuff.
Last edited by Grogan on 13 February 2023 at 6:03 pm UTC
First thing I noticed from my last checkout was that they cleaned up the "Advanced" settings UI to make it more parsable, by separating groups of settings. I can now scroll faster as I look at them :-)
In Runner Options, sure enough, in the Wine runner drop list showed a long list of proton versions... but it doesn't read compatibilitytools.d which is where my proton builds are kept. I keep one proton-tkg valve experimental bleeding edge, and one proton-tkg generated with latest wine sources (current 8.1). So it listed all those old Proton versions going back 5 years but not mine lol
You can't just symlink them from ~/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine. Lutris doesn't parse that anymore.
HOWEVER, symlinks in steam/steamapps/common pointing to my proton builds in compatibilitytools.d works and then my protons show up in the drop list. Steam seems to just ignore these symlinks, so that's good.
In my proton-tkg valve bleeding edge builds, the valve mediaconverter actually works correctly for Unreal Engine mediafoundation dll bollocks on my system. Nowhere else does that thing work for me. That's why I'm adamant to use mine.
I got this to work for a game that's very, very finicky on these mediafoundation dlls. "Martha Is Dead" which I previously had to run through Steam as a non-steam game (it's a standalone GoG game).
So yay, and stuff.
Last edited by Grogan on 13 February 2023 at 6:03 pm UTC
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Quoting: slaapliedjePretty sure Proton can run just fine outside of Steam. I don't recall heroic launcer launching Steam to run Proton. It is after all just a fork of Wine.In GloriousEggrolls own words.
QuoteWine-GE-ProtonThis is the build Lutris downloads.
How is this different from just using proton?
IMPORTANT: As I've explained many times, Proton is built using a specific runtime within a container, and without those runtime libraries, it can easily break or malfunction. There are two key differences that separate Wine-GE from proton:
(1) I have de-protonified the wine build. This means all the steam client specific patches have been removed, and the user is not forced to 'steamuser' among other things. This allows Wine-GE to retain the functionality of proton, but to be used for non-steam games.
(2) It is built using Lutris's libraries and buildbot/environment. This is much easier in terms of portability across distros.
Again, the entire reason Wine-GE was created is because I kept getting people that tried to use Proton outside of steam -- which is a NONO.
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It actually used to work, to just use the wine build that came with Proton. Back before it was being built to run in containers with the Steam runtime. For a short time after that, it still continued to work that way if you had all the dependencies (+lib32) but it wasn't long before the disparity between the steam environment and the distro environment was greater than the aging libraries in the steam runtimes. Also some distros don't even provide all the 32 bit libraries needed anymore.
So Lutris stopped displaying the Proton versions in the wine runner list, but for a time you could still do it by making symlinks.
The difference now is that Lutris finds your Steam runtime, finds your Proton versions, tries both paths, new and old for different versions of Proton (dist/bin/wine and files/bin/wine) etc. to make it work. They even symlink your username to steamuser (in c:\users I mean) when using Proton now.
So Lutris stopped displaying the Proton versions in the wine runner list, but for a time you could still do it by making symlinks.
The difference now is that Lutris finds your Steam runtime, finds your Proton versions, tries both paths, new and old for different versions of Proton (dist/bin/wine and files/bin/wine) etc. to make it work. They even symlink your username to steamuser (in c:\users I mean) when using Proton now.
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Proton was always built against the Steam Runtime and Proton was never meant to be used outside it. Still, it could work with system versions of the required libraries, but it was unsupported and discouraged. Valve and even the Arch wiki were clearly stating don't do it.
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Quoting: NanobangTL;DR: I dislike Lutris.
The one design flaw I've found in all these launcher/wine manager projects is that all of Wine's fiddly bits---at best---can be challenging for Wine neophytes like me. I like that Lutris tries to deal with this via "runners," but I've never been able to sort out how to make it do what it's supposed to be doing, always found the overall design of Lutris's user interface too maddeningly inscrutable.
I really tried to get into Wine gaming and I ran into a lot of what you're talking about. The ONLY time I had a smooth wine experience was on the forums of GOG where someone was making wrappers for some games. While they were smooth and worked 100% it was for games I don't really enjoy.
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