S&box Wiki

Proton

Proton

All information regarding running and developing S&Box on Linux will described here.

Running

To run s&box you need to set Proton to recent version. To do so, right click s&box in Library and click Properties:

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Choose Compatibility > click Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool > Select Proton Experimental.

Currently Proton Experimental works best; depending on Proton and s&box updates newer versions of GE-Proton may also work.

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To load in any map you'll have to increase maximum number of memory map areas a process can access. To do so temporarily (until next reboot) run in terminal:

sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=16777216

You can also apply this setting permanently by running in terminal:

sudo bash -c 'echo "vm.max_map_count = 16777216" > /etc/sysctl.d/20-sbox-max_map_count.conf && sysctl --system'

In case of s&box not launching, you may also need to set Windows version reported to s&box by Proton to Windows 10. To do so install protontricks either by your distro package manager or by flatpak.

If you don't have flatpak installed you can learn how to setup here

Then run the following command in the terminal:

flatpak install flathub com.github.Matoking.protontricks

Run protontricks (shortcut or protontricks --gui from terminal) and choose s&box prefix:

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Then select Select the default wineprefix and subsequently Run winecfg. In the new window choose desired reported Windows version:

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You can also do so from the terminal. In case of system-installed protontricks run:

protontricks 590830 win10

Or, in case of flatpak installation:

flatpak run --branch=stable com.github.Matoking.protontricks 590830 win10

Activating Vulkan API

Apart from DirectX, s&box does also have experimental support for Vulkan API. Vulkan offers better performance with Proton, especially on weaker devices (such as PCs with iGPUs and Steam Deck), but there are currently problems with rendering of textures, water and UI elements. To turn on Vulkan API add the following to your s&box launch options.

-vulkan

When run first time with Vulkan, game may stutter quite considerably, or even not run at all (there will be only black screen). It happens when necessary shaders are built in the background and saved to disk. You may either wait until shader compilation is complete or turn off this functionality - this will result in smoother gameplay for the price of slightly higher GPU utilization. To do so add the following to your s&box launch options.

-vulkan_disable_graphics_pipeline_library

Developing

Creating your first addon

cd ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/sbox/addons git clone https://github.com/Facepunch/sbox-minimal.git my-addon cd my-addon rm -rf .git

sbox-dev

At the time of writing (Jan 2022) you can launch s&box development executable. Please note this is unstable and you will likely crash or have random issues.

Steam > Library > Right Click S&Box > Click Properties > General > Add -tools to Launch Options

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To run s&box developer mode, you will need to set-up Proton prefix:

System-wide protontricks (from package manager):

  1. Install DirectX dependency by running in terminal:
protontricks 590830 d3dcompiler_47
  1. Run sbox-dev.exe:
protontricks --no-runtime --no-bwrap -c "wine sbox-dev.exe" 590830

Flatpak protontricks:

  1. If you don't have flatpak installed you can learn how to setup here
flatpak install flathub com.github.Matoking.protontricks
  1. Install a DirectX dependency with
flatpak run --branch=stable com.github.Matoking.protontricks 590830 d3dcompiler_47
  1. Run sbox-dev.exe:
flatpak run --branch=stable com.github.Matoking.protontricks --no-runtime --no-bwrap -c "wine sbox-dev.exe" 590830

S&box dev mode should start and stay open until you close it (or it crashes). After closing, should Steam still display s&box as running, you have to exit out of steam completely to stop it.

Troubleshooting

How to use the proton logs

Proton logs sometimes could help solve issues with games not launching or working properly under proton. Proton logging can be enabled inside the launch options of s&box:

PROTON_LOG=1 %command%

If you want smaller log files but still keep useful information use this launch option:

WINEDEBUG=+error+threadname+debugstr+loaddll+mscoree PROTON_LOG=1 %command%

By default it should generate a file inside your home directory $HOME/steam-590830.log but it can be modified as well:

PROTON_LOG=1 PROTON_LOG_DIR='/path/to/log' %command%

Game is randomly crashing or locking up after playing for an amount of time

This is an unknown cause, but adding PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 to your launch options seems to fix the problem

Input (e.g. movement) does not work

This is probably caused by having multiple keyboard layouts, adding -input_button_code_is_scan_code to your launch options fixes the problem

Useful Resources:

  1. S&box proton github issues
  2. Proton parameters guide