https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/ULWGL
From the github:
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR OTHER LAUNCHERS (lutris/bottles/heroic/legendary,etc):
- everyone can use + contribute to the same protonfixes, no more managing individual install scripts per launcher
- everyone can run their games through proton just like a native steam game
- no steam or steam binaries required
- a unified online database of game fixes (protonfixes)
Right now it's a PoC (proof of concept, a rough implementation of an idea), to emulate launching games from other stores as if they were launched from steam using proton.
What this could be used for is to create a new Linux launcher, where you setup proton once, and launch all games using this launcher.
This simplifies usage for you as the end user, since you would only need to install the launcher, and it sets up ProtonGE, and you're done. It also enables simple Proton usage for other games (Epic, Lutris, whatever).
Additionally it helps unifying development. Windows games under Linux have a lot of moving parts: there's Proton as a compatibility layer. There's integration between steam, proton and your system (sniper/vessel). There's protonfixes which is game specific changes in proton. Each of which itself consists of components and stuff I've missed. In short, it's complicated. Unifying all this components with one tool, with one battle tested installation and compatibility and with a single source of truth in development could be another big step in Linux gaming.
TLDR - potentially a new launcher for games under the Linux, enabling any game to be played using proton, when supported, not only steam games.
I'm guessing it would be a CLI launcher that Heroic, Lutris, etc would use internally. As in, it wouldn't replace those tools, it would just make running games more consistent across those tools.
So you'd still use Heroic, Lutris, or whatever you're happy with, the experience would just be more consistent across those services so you could file bug reports in one place.
I don't think that the current tools will be using it internally, since this would require the tools actually supporting the CLI launcher, and in the best case we would have something like the proton config in steam in every tool separately again.
I think that you will need to have your launcher installed, but you will have this new launcher as your entry point, from which you will start your games using proton from the linked project.
But - it's a PoC right now, maybe both ways will be possible.
From a wishful perspective, it would be super neat if this new launcher would hook into the installed regular tools, and automagically make those use the preconfigured proton runtime it brings. Shouldn't this be possible using LD_PRELOAD?
I'm mostly interested in hopefully not having multiple copies of Proton/WINE installed. I'd have maybe 3-4 for compat, instead of copies for each launcher I happen to use (e.g. Heroic vs Steam vs Lutris, etc).
Ok that sounds really interesting then, hoping it will be ready for wide adoption soon! Thanks for the explanation