How to force Proton windowed mode?

[Crissa Kentavr]

I have a game that seems to run flawlessly under Proton 7 but...

...only in windowed mode, But proton keeps forcing full-screen. (It doesn't display window tools like scrollbars or close buttons for some reason.)

I followed a couple guides to figure out what to do, but I'm stuck as to how to find the winecfg that's being used for that game. I have found its directories, tho I had to do it by sorting by date ^-^

-Crissa

[tfk]

Winecfg is the tool to configure wine.

See this thread. The last post is the most consise answer.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/8/1734336452585949120/

[Crissa Kentavr]

I did read that, and it does not include enough information to follow it. It's where I started my wild ride wandering through the linux side with it's weirdly familiar but strange version of unix commands. (Like, Find doesn't recurse?)

I found the place for the file, but not the right term to address the proton utility. And many of these are so old they're using arch or apt which are no longer with steamos.

-Crissa

[Crissa Kentavr]

I really just want to flip whichever bit, I don't need a fancy tool to do it, do I?

[@R+5]

if the game doesnt have a windowed mode, you cant force it directly. but theres something you can try.

what i do when i want to play a game (linux pc; i think should work with the deck too) inside a window to look at something else (in a browser for example), is to launch lutris, then run with it the steam client for windows, and then after installing the game that lacks windowed mode, i configure it in lutris to use a virtual window with a fixed size, so the game will still launch full screen, but since its a virtual window i can have more stuff in screen.

[@R+5]

something useful in this approach is that is easier to test more graphical settings with lutris, and different versions of proton yo have installed.

downside of that approach is that you will need to make a different library for that client, since the games will be using different settings that those in the client for linux (even windows games installed with the linux client, running with proton). this also means the new client also has its own folder, but it wont take a lot of space

[Crissa Kentavr]

I'm using a Steam Deck, not a PC running some other variant of Windows.

The game plays fine in a window. On a PC, all the window popups work in fullscreen mode, It's just Proton that hides them. On a Steam Deck, the default desktop controller is sortof overridden by the desktop mouse adaption, which means I can't use a specific controller for the game.

Proton is forcing the game to play in fullscreen. If I try to change the resolution in the game, Proton forces it back.

Isn't there a way to force proton to stop messing with the window? And let it run in windowed mode?

-Crissa

[Crissa Kentavr]

So...
I never got anything to being up the scroll bars or window buttons but:
Using a button for Alt+F4 does close the window.
...but it takes a moment of pressing the key down before the window-handler responds. And the key repeat is very fast...
So Alt+Space to bring up the window-handle menu is slower, but easier to handle. Then I can select close or whatever from the menu,

-Crissa

[Beer Virus]

I read that Lutris for its virtual desktop is using Wine.

https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=37529

winecfg
↳ Graphics → Emulate a virtual desktop

or

wine explorer /desktop=VirtualDesktop,1024x786
# with taskbar and Start menu:
wine explorer /desktop=shell,1024x786

[Hiro]

This is not a Proton issue, neither it is an issue :)

If you are talking about the game running in "Gaming Mode" the Deck uses a microcompositor called "gamescope".

Gamescope is designed to do that, it is the expected behaviour.
In game mode it will hide everything that is not rendered in the "client area" of a window and make the client area "full screen".

In desktop mode you should be able to see the rest of the window as you expect.