With Steam Deck coming, figured I'd report a Proton bug I noticed

[IBJamon]

Otherwise it runs great - though I didn't test videos. I noticed that certain sound effects, like the swoosh sound of Adol's Crimson Line, or the kitty running paw sounds of running up the side of the building are missing. Otherwise it runs wonderfully!

[Neumie]

I would definitely recommend checking Proton DB for YS IX.
Disabling ESYNC is strongly recommended on AMD hardware at the time of writing (those, including myself, were getting crashes).

It seems mouths not moving at all expected times is fixed in Proton GE. I have noticed the issue but i thought that was jut the way the game was (It was the same with Ys VIII). I have yet to test this fix.

The good news though is its very easy to get the game up and running on proton. not quite click and play but close. So getting it to run on the Deck should be fine. Hopefully its more seamless by the time the Deck is actually released.

[IBJamon]

I checked protondb after posting this originally. I tested the game on Intel iGPU (Ice Lake - GPD Win Max) and tried both default proton 6.3 and GE 6.12 (latest on AUR). I haven't seen any cut scenes yet, so not sure about the mouth moving, and I played for only around 10 minutes, so not sure about esync crashes (I am using the -zen kernel). I just noticed the audio issue immediately, since I played over 20 hours on Windows, and noticed the missing audio right away. I also didn't see any mentions of the issue on protondb, so I thought making this post might help get it visibility.

[Neumie]

If you have the time it might be a good idea to give it a longer run to properly test it then stick a report up on ProtonDB. It crashed around the 10 minute mark for me before applying the above fix.

It could be an AMD specific issue (the nvidia users on protonDB didnt seem affected by it). It could be Mesa or kernel driver problem. or a bug in proton. Hard to say at the moment. I have had hour+ long sessions though with no crashes after applying the fix though.

Always good to have some info on any issues that do crop up. :)

I can't think of anything that might help with the audio issue. It could be GPD Win Specific. I'm not 100% sure but i think the audio is fine on my machine (i tested the demo on windows and linux and didn't notice any difference). I havent played on windows in ages though. My PC Uses the Realtek ALC887 codec and i am on kernel 5.13 (it was also fine in 5.12). Maybe check older Ys games on ProtonDB...they may have a fix that is applicable to Ys IX also.

[IBJamon]

I tried both the onboard audio and my gaming headset's USB audio (Audeze Mobius), so I don't think it's that. I am using pipewire though.

[Neumie]

Ah right. I am using ALSA/Pulse. It could be the cause of the issue. I havent looked into pipewire at all. Is ti easy to switch over to Pulse?

[SpendingMarrow]

I just noticed this issue as well, the game may be verified for steam deck but this bug still exists. Its should also be noted that the steam deck uses pipewire.

[Mentalocrity]

Had an identical issue, spent all day trying to fix it and eventually did. To note: I’m playing this on a Steam Deck so I don’t know how applicable this will be for other systems, but hopefully it keeps someone else from spending hours scouring Google.

I’m not 100% on what did it but the audio from Gifts (specifically Crimson Line and Heaven’s Run) started playing after I uninstalled and reinstalled the game onto an SD Card. Previously I’d had it on my Steam Deck’s NVME and all the other audio was fine just for some reason Gift sound effects would not play.
(Also; I had it running in GE-Proton7-37 via the Compatibility tab in preferences, which didn’t fix the audio when the game was on my NVME but is probably worth mentioning regardless.)

This came after I tried reinstalling on the NVME, verifying multiple times, running it in various different configurations of Proton, ProtonGE and Wine, tried a bunch of different Launch Options, tweaked a billion different hardware level audio things and even copy-pasted the audio files from my Windows Install into the se directory in Linux.

Like I said I’m not completely sure that moving the game to an SD card or different hard drive is a surefire solution, maybe some leftover file has a setting that got reset when I reinstalled elsewhere, but this is a quick fix that worked for me. Maybe someone smarter than I am can puzzle out why this worked.