Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Desktop Hellfarmer
• Steam AppID: 3658030
• Proton versions tested:
  • Proton 11.0
  • Proton Experimental
  • GE-Proton11-3

System Information

• OS: CachyOS x86_64
• Desktop: KDE Plasma
• GPU: AMD Radeon Vega 10 (Ryzen 7 3700U)
• Tested sessions: Plasma Wayland and Plasma X11
• Kernel: 7.1.x CachyOS

Symptoms

Desktop Hellfarmer is a desktop companion game which uses a transparent/layered window so that only the game scene and UI should be visible over the desktop.

With regular Proton 11 / Proton Experimental, transparency does not work correctly. The area which should be transparent is rendered as an opaque purple/dark background.

GE-Proton11-3 improves the situation and transparency works without additional launch options, but performance becomes very poor while the transparent scene is being rendered.

I also tested the GE layered-window options:

WINE_LAYERED_OVERLAY_SHAPE=1

Transparency works partially, but performance is extremely poor and there are major visual issues.

WINE_LAYERED_OVERLAY_ALPHA=1

Performance is somewhat better than SHAPE, but there are significant alpha/compositing artifacts. Parts of the desktop become visible through geometry that should be opaque.

On Plasma X11 the rendering problems remain.

On Plasma X11 with GE-Proton11-3 and no explicit ALPHA option, the game UI periodically turns almost completely black for a moment every few seconds.

Native Wine Wayland

With:

PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 %command%

the transparency does not work at all.

Expected behavior

The transparent parts of the game window should show the desktop while game geometry/UI remains fully opaque, without a major performance penalty.

Actual behavior

• Proton 11 / Experimental: transparent area is opaque/purple
• GE-Proton11-3 Wayland/XWayland: transparency works, but performance is very poor
• GE-Proton11-3 X11: better performance, but rendering/compositing artifacts
• WINE_LAYERED_OVERLAY_ALPHA=1: incorrect alpha on parts of rendered geometry
• WINE_LAYERED_OVERLAY_SHAPE=1: severe performance and visual problems
• PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1: transparency does not work

Reproduction

1. Install Desktop Hellfarmer (Steam AppID 3658030)
2. Launch it with Proton Experimental
3. Enter/start a game scene
4. The region around/below the game which should expose the desktop is rendered as an opaque background
5. Repeat with GE-Proton11-3 to see working transparency but severe performance issues