For those who don’t know, Proton is the tool that the deck uses to run windows games on Linux. GE-proton is an alternative build of proton that includes extra fixes for games, media codecs to fix video playback, and more. You can easily install GE-Proton by going to the discover store in desktop mode, installing ProtonUp-qt, and then selecting GE-proton from there.

The way that GE-proton is improving mod support here is by recognizing common mod launcher .exe files such as skse_loader.exe. If it sees a mod launcher executable in the game folder it will use that instead of the original game launcher.

  • MyNameIsAtticus
    link
    68 hours ago

    Damn. Right after my Fallout New Vegas play through. This is still exciting though. It will be nice for when I decide to go back to Skyrim eventually

  • SavvyWolf
    link
    fedilink
    English
    15 hours ago

    How would this work? As I understand it, GE is used in things like Heroic or Lutris where you typically just point it to the exe directly (unless you own Skyrim on gog, I guess?). In that case, wouldn’t it be easy enough to point to the modloader exe rather than the main game exe?

    Even if it could happen through steam (can GE be added to Steam?), wouldn’t Steam’s mandatory automatic update thing cause issues meaning you’d just launch it through your mod loader anyway.

    • FubarberryOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      25 hours ago

      If you have GE-proton installed, you can easily select it for any steam game by opening the game properties, checking “force compatibility tool”, and selecting the GE-proton version you want.

      The tool ProtonUp-qt will also let change the setting per game as long as steam is closed. Just open “game list” and set the proton version per game.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      15 hours ago

      If you install ge proton, on steam when you open compatibly options you can choose any version of ge you have installed. I use it all the time. I use proton up qt from the discovery store to manage ge proton versions.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    910 hours ago

    This sounds like a great way for me to have fun!

    … by fiddling for hours to get crazy mods running to then never play the game 😂

  • jaxiiruff
    link
    fedilink
    511 hours ago

    Oh wow this is interesting. However im not sure if proton should be doing anything like this by default, could be useful if it was a command you could include in the launch arguments. I still rather a mod manager take control over this stuff like mod organizer or the new nexus mod app.

    • FubarberryOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1411 hours ago

      To be fair, this isn’t normal proton doing it. In general GE-proton exists to do things that go against the design philosophy of regular proton or to include licenses libraries that can’t be normally included.

      I don’t see any mention of it in the changelog, but I would expect there to be a launch option to disable this functionality as well.

    • Björn Tantau
      link
      fedilink
      410 hours ago

      Yeah, I could really see this be super annoying. Especially when troubleshooting or if you just want to launch the vanilla game.