Can we have a comments section (EDIT: I mean compatibility reports :) ) for each game? Similar to protondb

I think it would be much easier to troubleshoot problems if everyone’s comments were consolidated by game. Just a suggestion :slight_smile:

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Well, seeing as you have posting privileges here, why don’t you start threads like

“Game Name Compatibility Reports”

… and then post your experiences with your games and anything you did to get them working in Lutris, or tweak it. Others may then reply. Since humans are apes, others may follow and start such threads for other games :slight_smile:

I don’t think anyone on staff is going to want to curate such a section in the forum, so that’s probably your best bet.

P.S. I think I get what you are really wanting. You are suggesting that each game should have a forum created for it, more like the Steam forums. (Not so much like protondb compatibility reports). That works for them, because they sell the games, thus each game they sell gets a forum created for it, but that would be impractical for Lutris with all the games from everywhere, including other emulators, especially seeing as it’s a relative few people in the community that actually use the forum.

I mean, let’s say there’s a forum for “League of Legends”. I don’t play that game, so I’m not going to go find that forum in with the hundreds of other game forums and thus my eyeballs won’t be seeing questions more related to system configuration etc. that I might actually be able to help with. I don’t think the user base is large enough for that kind of compartmentalization in this forum.

Yes, I see how that would be impractical and I think I worded that wrong. I was thinking of having a lutris equivalent to the steam compatibility reports for each game.

I’ve run into a few scripts that require minor tweaks but are otherwise fine even though they are marked as not working. When you run into an issue using steam proton it’s super easy to find a workaround because you can just scroll down the compatibility reports for a specific game and I think a lutris equivalent would be amazing.

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We used to have this, and then they were removed. No idea why. It was the most helpful part of the site, IMO.

I would love this. I have more than 600 games on both my GOG account and my Steam account and the main benefit of Steam Play over GOG + Lutris is ProtonDB.

It is still extremely common that you need a specific Wine/Proton version or launch parameter or config setting etc and the best place to find those are in ProtonDB compatibility reports.

I also look at ProtonDB compatibility reports before I buy games on GOG, but the Steam version of a game is not always the same as the GOG version, so it would be great to be able to make comments under the Lutris entries and even better if you can choose which launcher script you are running.

And yes, mechanically this would most easily be accomplished by automatically creating a thread in the forum for the game, when it is added to the database, but whether that part of the forum should also be visible in the actual forum or just under each game is debatable.

IMHO the best way of doing such a thing would be by using a git workflow.

I tried contributing a few years ago and found that the workflow was very non-transparent. And by that I mean: what happens after submitting an installer or comments? Who reviews that stuff and on what grounds?

Lutris has the database, a discord server and this forum. But the thing that makes or breaks the user experience are the YAML installers.

Take a look here: VRChat (438100) · Issue #1199 · ValveSoftware/Proton · GitHub

An entry has a GH issue and there are discussions.

In case of Lutris I’d see something like this and the vetted version of the YAML file would be linked from GH to the Lutris DB. Because a discord server (any not just Lutris’) is a never ending stream of consciousness. A forum is great short term, but how many of the solutions and discoveries are codified as YAML installers and shared with the community?

The only way to break the never ending cycle of reinventing the wheel and constant support questions is to make the process of publishing and fixing the installers as easy as 1-2-3.

Examples

My Majesty installer that never got approved. I never got any feedback: I'm working on an installer Majesty Gold HD GOG

My investigation of the DIablo II installer stalling. I didn’t submit a fix, because why bother if it’s gonna vanish somewhere? Diablo II no install from script lutris

I haven’t been with this community for a long while, so I need to ask: do I have a point or am I wrong?

The compatibility reports are effective because they are so plentiful, which is due to how easy it is to submit them.

I don’t disagree that GitHub issues can be effective, but asking regular users to go sign up for an account on a developer-focused site just to give feedback on how their game is running wont work.

Just directing users to the forums probably loses at least 99% of them, so adding a third site to the mix is a non-starter.

Using a git workflow specifically for the development of scripts isn’t a bad idea in principle, but it does still split the community and the staff’s attention in a way that a comment section for each game/script wouldn’t do, if it uses the forum software as the backend.

Exposing all users to a specific thread that is relevant to their game, would also work to direct new users to the forums for more discussions.

Regarding the approval/feedback process, that thing is a mystery to me.

This could be solved by a simple message after you submit your installer, explaining the process.

There could even be a sub-section of the forums where each submission is created as a thread that auto-closes when the submission is accepted/rejected and you could get a link to go there when you submit your script.
This way it would be possible to give feedback on what is required before the script is approved and the creator is kept in the loop.

It would also be very interesting to browse the “Newly submitted installers” section of the forums and possibly try them out and give feedback even before they are published.

In general I just think it would be very effective to make use of the forums for all communication and most importantly, move the communication to where the user will actually encounter it.

I absolutely agree that installers should be developed and reviewed on GItHub. We may need a separate feedback channel for non-techie users who don’t want to subscribe to GitHub, but whoever writes or edits an installer is already a developer, sort of.

The current review process is intransparent (and AFAICS, dead — I have a submitted a couple of installers with zero reaction for months).