[Suggestion] add an argument to allow setting the steam play compatibility tool

[GeekRhapsody]

As per title. It would be great if when adding a non steam game via nonsteam I could set which version of Proton i want the game to use. It's the only option i'm still setting manually at the moment.

Thanks for this great tool btw

[cameronhimself]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll take a look and see if I can figure out where this configuration is stored.

[cameronhimself]

Looks like the configuration lives in ~/steam/.steam/config/config.vdf under CompatToolMapping. This file is a custom Steam string data format, so I'll need to create a parser for it, or see if one already exists.

I found this tool that displays any Proton overrides that have been set, so I can potentially crib from it.

[cameronhimself]

Here's the issue. The Proton version config values are stored as strings like proton_9, proton_513, and so on, but I went digging around in the Steam files trying to find a list of allowed values to provide as options for the CLI and came up with nothing. My guess is that they're stored in the Steam binary itself and Valve just pushes an update when new runtimes becomes available, which means I can't access them.

So there a couple of options for what type of value could be accepted:

1. A fixed list that's manually generated based on the currently available Proton versions. This is a maintenance headache since I'd need to keep an eye on Proton and update nonsteam every time a new version is pushed.
2. Free-form text, with some common Proton version names in the usage docs. Less of a maintenance pain, but a worse user experience and more error-prone.

I'm leaning towards option two to save myself some trouble. Would this be a problem for your use case?

[GeekRhapsody]

Option 2 would be perfectly fine for me. I use nonsteam as part of a custom Dolphin service menu i've created so i'm able add non-steam games to steam simply by right-clicking on the executable and selecting the option from the context menu. Once I have it set and tested it'll just get used without risk of mistyping.

[cameronhimself]

I'm going to be on vacation for the next two weeks, but I'll start working on this when I get back.

[cameronhimself]

Sorry for the delay. I had other projects and the holidays and such.

This is ready in 0.6.0. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you. Take a look at the docs if it helps.

[GeekRhapsody]

Hi. Gave it a try, but this version signs me out of Steam: I close steam first, use nonsteam to add a game, and re-start steam and it makes sign in again, and the new game isn't there. Also, steam created a new folder in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/. After reverting to the old version it's back to working

[cameronhimself]

How bizarre. Taking a look. Sorry for the trouble.

[cameronhimself]

Can you copy/paste the exact commands you're running? And can you elaborate a bit on what folder it's creating in userdata? e.g. what's the folder name, what's inside, etc.

[cameronhimself]

Okay, I was able to reproduce. You can ignore the above questions.

I'm reverting the changes and deploying a new version until I can figure out what's happening.

[cameronhimself]

Very strange issue here. The tool I was using to parse text-based VDF files converts numeric strings to numbers right here. However, Steam's user ID is (or at least can be) larger than Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER. As a result, the numeric conversion was not reliable--you'd end up with a different user ID than the one you started with, which is what caused the new user dir to appear.

I'm working on finding a library for VDF parsing that doesn't have this bug (or writing one myself). Stay tuned.

[cameronhimself]

So, having mucked with this a whole lot, I have some disappointing news. I don't think this is possible. I'll explain.

Steam creates a unique ID for each non-Steam game you add. It's a big ten digit number, like 3236204606.

When I was looking for how to change the compat tool version, I found that Steam stores the compat tool mappings like this. Note the big ten digit number:

"1484496988"
{
  "name"          "proton_9"
  "config"                ""
  "priority"              "250"
}

That looks like a non-Steam game ID, right? Well, that was my assumption.

Long story short, it isn't, and I can't find that number anywhere in Steam's config files. Even worse, the number changes. So, for game ID 3236204606, the compat tool mapping number was 1484496988. But, then, while experimenting, I deleted all of my compat tool mappings, restarted Steam, and created a new compat tool mapping through the Steam UI for the exact same game. Now the number had changed to 2663256188.

What this looks like to me is that Steam is generating the compat tool mapping ID on the fly when you configure one. So, even if the mapping exists somewhere I can access, it won't exist until you've already configured it through the UI, which makes any kind of functionality I could even theoretically implement in nonsteam mostly useless.

So yeah, bummer. I'm going to keep poking around a bit and see if there are any other options, but I wouldn't hold out much hope. Sorry :(