Improve compatibility with Steam Play and Proton (Linux & Mac)

Radeth T (Radeth) shared this feedback 5 years ago
Submitted

Hello!

A few days ago Steam released its latest version Steam Play which integrates work from WINE into a system called Proton.

As I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), Proton translates Windows games' calls to DirectX libraries into calls for Vulkan libraries, thus making games that were not compatible with Linux or Mac now completely or partially compatible.

The compatibility, I suppose, depends on how these calls are coded.

So my idea is: could you guys assess what are the modifications needed to improve the compatibility with this Proton system and maybe, if they're not that many, make the game compatible with Steam Play and Proton (and thus Linux and Mac)? I know it's not a priority, but it could also be a shortcut for something the community has been asking for a while (Linux Server compatibility).

Please feel free to add your thoughts and opinions :D

There is a compatibility chart (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DcZZQ4HL_Ol969UbXJmFG8TzOHNnHoj8Q1f8DIFe8-8/edit#gid=1003113831) and Space Engineers lists as not starting or crashing.

Replies (12)

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Someone is digging into this on the proton GitHub. Its a bit over my head but if the devs could take a peak and see if that means anything to them. I know they don't have plans to officially support linux but if there is anyway they can suggest to the Proton peeps/tweak in the game to get it working that would be awesome.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1792

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Would love to see at least this much effort for the linux-peeps!

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With most engines supporting all major platforms, INCLUDING Linux, it would be about time, yes.

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While i would surely be happy about it, i don't think a engine-rewrite just for multi-plattform is sensible at this point. But eliminating the blockers for proper wine/proton-functionality should be a reasonable amount of work.

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It would be the least, of course.

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Yeah I think they use there own engine so imagine porting it would be a pain. SteamPlay/Proton seems to work really well in some cases though, got a lot more games then I was expecting running well in it.

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it would be nice for many other to play SE on linux, but Macs are not for gaming :D

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Well, the nice thing about making it work with wine/proton is that it would then also be playable on Mac (if the performance suffices). So the needed effort is miniscule compared to a "proper" port

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(Snip) wrong place, I thought I was leaving a comment but I was leaving a reply :D

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It would be nice to be able to run this game again, as I've switched most of my computers over to Linux full-time and most of my games are actually working, there's just a few games, like BeamNG and Planet Coaster and this game, that I actually have to boot into Windows for to be able to play, which I don't do as much anymore as I used to, because with all reasons to use the platform gone it feels a bit like booting up a console.


Which has led me to completely not notice this thread existing, and also had a thought about Linux folks being in general a bit more mindful about just creating accounts for one-off things, such as voting on support for one of their potentially dozens, hundreds or even thousands of games.


I think people are not very inclined to vote on this, because nothing points them to it, and there's an actual barrier to do so.


IMHO you should consider it like this: Windows is a fine platform, Xbox is a fine platform, but they're both tied to Microsoft, which is a commercial entity that may fall over some day, or just change their ways radically, or do things you don't agree with, and you can't change away because you depend on this commercial entity to exist and be stable for the future of your game.


For somewhat the same reasons as supporting modding and source code access (which was fucking awesome thank you), I think you should consider at least supporting one opensource OS or at very least one other (commercial) entity other than Microsoft, for the sake of the future of your game and universal access to it.


N.B: I have nothing against Microsoft itself and I do not wish to imply they are a bad company, I just personally think, philosophically, it would make sense to not depend on a single entity for the future of this awesome game.


Thank you

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I fully support this...

I don't play too much now that I have switched too linux. Rebooting on Windows is too painfull, even to play SE.


Maybe you should check on what you can do and make a crowfunding to support the work to be done to make the game runing on Linux with Steam Play.

I will be happy to pay something if this allow us finally to play this beautifull game on Linux.

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I haven't played Space Engineers in years because I've switched permanently over to Linux. Last time i took i peak i think was when planets were coming out, and i think even then i did so in a Virtual Machine. I would love to see proton support for this game if possible.

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I have just switched over to Arch Linux and I am no longer able to play SE. Getting rid of Microsoft was the best thing I could have done and I will NEVER be going back to win10, that OS isn't even fit for a smart phone...

From the looks of things SE does work on Linux but there are some issues, mainly with .net 4 framework stuff. All in all I don't think it would be too difficult for Keen to fix this and make it work.

The added benefit would be that Keen would gain Linux Mac and STEAM Box users as customers.

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The difficult part is to install dotnet 472...

But once it's done (you have to use the good version of wintetricks, protontricks) you can play SE.

There are performance issue yes, but I have play multiple hours and it's possible.


I really would like to see KSH working to try to improve performance and do something to make the game easier to play on Linux. But we are a very small part of the community :(

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that does not work for every one unfortunately. I had tried about 4 different how to's and could never get it running properly. i had one time gotten it past the first menu but beyond that no love.

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Advertise it with Youtube Videos and etc to vote? We need Someone that does this and who gets the attention from their viewers to actually vote and support it!

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I know this was posted sometime ago but I bought a mac forgetting SE was only windows and instead of wasting more money tryna buy a windows or fixing this gosh darn dx11 error (Windows converted my Graphics card to a Dx12 so it should be working and I have played before) if they could use Vulkan and port to mac and linux I would literally play this game for hours

P.S as someone claimed macs arent for gaming

They do have ‘gaming-like’ computers like IMac’s which were built for apple games or apple supported gaming (which isnt very great) but there isnt much of a difference, windows, mac, linux are all computers right? So they can be used in any purpose we want it to fit (my specs meet the highest quality level for space engineers and it runs very smooth

But with this dx11 error I would love to simply just press play instead of switch hard drives with bootcamp and get lots of false error’s.


Dream come true if SE ports to mac and linux

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the gaming community on Mac is so small, its not worth the time for the small number of programmers that work on SE to port it, the xbox conversion was "easy" (compared to a mac conversion), because it, and the C# language is all Microsoft.

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I do know this

By the way the mac gaming community is not as small as you think it would be

So far I have seen and met at least over 1k players who game on a mac on steam

But with Vulkan the porting should be faster than actually trying to rewrite the whole game just for mac’s to run it

EDIT: just a small question

Can linux read C#?

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no, linux does not support C# natively

its the same time consuming problem with making it work 'on mac' or porting to vulkan, not enough to make it worth it, yes vulkan would then include mac and linux, but linux still doesnt support c# there is a very small number of programmers working on SE, less than 10, most of which are still working on the xbox one version. it is more important for them to actually finish the game, than spend a lot of time on something few people will make use of, SE itself is a niche game, its not like its as popular as minecraft, or ever will be. its that 80/20 thing, if you spend more than 80% of your time (to go towards a new update) making something that less than 20% of people will use, then its not worth it.

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I agree with your statement


I do believe they should at least finish the game then decide if they would port future platform’s

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It's not just a graphics issue. SE is built on .NET. Which is one of the reasons the Xbox version took so long to come out. Xbox had no .NET compatibility until recently.

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I know, I figured that out sometime ago. I dropped this convo because I decided to just use bootcamp for space engineers

Main reason for me wishing the game was mac was because windows couldnt get any sound output so I had to rely on speaker. But after a year of trying to fix it, I reinstalled windows because it was running low on space then decided to try installing it without my headphones plugged in, then it worked.

Edit: forgot the problem was based off DX

Woops, I already fixed the problem long ago

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I know this thread is ancient but I keep getting emails whenever someone writes things here so I just wanted to clarify a few things:

- Linux has native C#, as does Mac, it's called Mono, it's what Unity uses as well and it's basically identical to .NET and supports basically anything that's written for .NET, and on top of that there's also the Roslyn compiler if you want actual .NET instead of Mono, C# is developed on an open basis and many websites run on C# that are served from Linux machines. https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn More info on that here. Also note that Microsoft owns github, they're not as opensource-unfriendly anymore as you may think ;)


- One of the primary features of Xbox is .NET compatibility, the Xbox One runs a stripped down version of Windows. I think the main reason it took long to get working is because the Xbone/PS4 don't have a lot of horsepower compared to the average PC so they had to optimize the game a lot further.

- The game runs fine in Proton for me these days, you just have to run some small patcher that makes sure some files are in the right place and the intro movie doesn't get played, otherwise it crashes, but the game itself I've played for hours with many mods enabled without a single glitch or issue. Patches can be found here https://github.com/Linux74656/SpaceEngineersLinuxPatches If KeenSWH would implement these fixes in the game itself then all people would have to do is run the game through proton, no porting required :)

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Is the engine still open source?

has anyone tried porting it to .net core?

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it was never open source, but .net core stuff was added, for the xbox one support, linux SE is growing more and more as time goes by, there is a #linux channel on keen's discord to find out more info

keen's discord

https://discord.gg/gsHc2M

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It was actually, (for some definitions of open source anyway). went looking for it and it's still there, though hasn't been touched for two years.

https://github.com/KeenSoftwareHouse/SpaceEngineers

good to hear some of it got ported to .net core, that should be a bit more performant than relying on mono.

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thats not 'open source', it was published on github, but was never 'open source'. it was published for others to contribute if they feel they wanted to freely contribute, and had some idea that would be a great addition to SE.


open source https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-open-source-software-2071941

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Copy/paste is currently broken for Proton users. You can copy once and paste that original copy as many times as you want, but you cannot copy again without restarting the game.

The only other bugs that come to mind are the background of the launcher/main menu being completely scrambled (so, non-impactful to gameplay) and grass causing crashes (I've got it turned off from advice on protonDB, I've not experienced it myself, it may be AMD/ATI card-specific).

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