Just tried it myself. I just had a crash to the desktop. No Launcher or Game.
Proton 3.7.4 Beta

my steam info:
https://gist.github.com/Zero86Sk/d629f657c1ae861c36657cdf238a7765

The game launcher crashes indeed.

Using the latest Beta.

System info attached.
Report attached.

steam_system_info.txt
steam-377840.log

I get the same behavior as well. However running it directly with wine-staging using a 32-bit prefix works perfectly.

Referencing #18

I can confirm that as stated at some point in issue #18, installing .NET and wine-mono does indeed let the game run.

If you have all the necessary packages (wine-staging, wine-mono, etc.)
You can follow this guide on how to enable it in a generic wine prefix.

The Wine prefix for FFIX is under "steamapps/compatdata/377840/pfx".
After installing .NET Framework 4 and 4.7 I had to run the .NET Framework 4.5.2 installer under "steamapps/common/FINAL\ FANTASY\ IX/_CommonRedist/DotNet/4.5.2/" in order for the game to load.
I can now launch the game from Steam just fine and everything seems to work...

Follow up.

two machines =

machine A
e3-1231v3 // rx550 // arch //gnome // = game is perfect, sound is perfect, steam controller stuck pointing up [only this game]

machine B
ryzen 1700 // rx480 // arch // kde = game is perfect, controller is perfect, no sound.

will keep digging for now.

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: FINAL FANTASY IX
• Steam AppID of the game: https://steamdb.info/app/377840/

System Information

• GPU: GTX 760
• Driver/LLVM version: NVIDIA 440.64
• Kernel version: 5.5.8-zen
• https://github.com/shoober420/linux-scripts/blob/main/home/shoober420/sysinfonvidia
• Proton version: 5.0-3

LOG:
steam-377840.log

Symptoms

Crashes at launch

Final Fantasy IX - No Sound

Issue transferred from #2349.
@Pantar2205 posted on 2019-02-19T16:32:30:

Compatibility Report

* Name of the game with compatibility issues: Final Fantasy IX

* Steam AppID of the game: 377840

System Information

* GPU: RX480

* Driver/LLVM version: Mesa18.3.3

* Kernel version: 4.20.10-arch1-1-ARCH

* Proton version: 3.16-4

I confirm:

* [x]  that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.

* [x]  that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Symptoms

No Sound

Tried installing directsound via winetricks [This fixed sound in FF8] but no luck. Can't find anything else on protondb or in this github. Steam Controller and graphics are flawless, even on 4k monitor.

@kisak-valve On KDE there are two entries for Final Fantasy IX on the Sound -> Applications menu. It seems like KDE is confused and believes there are actually two different Final Fantasy IX processes generating sound.

Should be worth noting that protonfixes with this game works pretty well other than the sound issue on KDE, which might just be a quirk of the DE. What is valve's policy regarding including protonfixes as a community driven patching tool with the default proton distribution?

The game starts normally with 5.13. The game appears to be playable now.

Just came here to say that Proton 6.3-1 fixes all the launcher issues - one of the long remaining issues with FF9. Well done Valve :+1: now the game runs well without modification

Only started playing this on 20th July 2021, with Proton 6.3-5, so everything's been flawless for me so far - no launcher issues or anything like that. Am about a third of the way through the story.

Oh, I can confirm @Eoin-ONeill-Yokai's observation regarding the double entries for the FFIX application in KDE audio, but only the second one is effective. Not sure if that's specific to Proton or the game itself - I've seen some games, even native ones, have duplicate entries or list a second entry for a platform like FMOD, etc. The sounds itself works fine, though, at least on Proton 6.3.

Having started the game again recently on a fresh install, I've noticed a regression on Proton 6.3-5 where the game isn't saving correctly.

I've played again up to the first save point (Chapel in Alexandria) and tried to save the game and quit. Next time I opened the game up, all the save slots are empty. I was able to reproduce it again to confirm it.

Hi @kisak-valve ,

I've done more experimenting and saved a log file. (Tangential note, is there a way to specify a desired Log folder for proton?)

I tried a few more things this time just to see if I could tell what's going on. It seems to me like the save functionality is off-loaded to another part of the game as saving the game and returning to the main menu will allow you to load the game as usual. However, after closing the game (and subsequently relaunching), the game will lose all save data.

Here's a summary of the proton log (gzipped):
1st-run-steam-377840.log.gz

And, since I'm not sure entirely if the issue occurs on launch or on close, I've also included a second run. This second run is when loading the game, seeing the menu, and witnessing no save files available.
2nd-run-steam-377840.log.gz

Another important note for testing is that the game's built in "checkpointing" system (represented as "Continue" on the main menu) also resets. This means that you could probably test this quickly by simply playing far enough to trigger the first checkpoint and then closing and reopening the game. I can't recall where this happens, but I think getting to Vivi after the Zidane controlled introduction might be a safe place to start. This is useful, since the first save moogle requires going through a few events that can take a few minutes.

My intuition would be that the game is trying to move a set of files form $compatuser/Temp/SquareEnix/Final Fantasy IX/ to $compatuser/AppData/LocalLow/SquareEnix/FINAL FANTASY IX/ when it terminates, but it's failing silently and losing all progress as a result. I've noticed that an AppData folder doesn't exist, and instead is represented by Application Data -- perhaps this could be the source of the problem? I could always try making the desired save directories to see if that helps straighten out the issue.

Anyway, hope that wasn't too long and thanks for taking the time to read this. I know it's busy over there at Valve right now. Cheers!

I believe auto-save or 'check-pointing' occurs with every screen load, ie moving to a new area in town, or entering/exiting the field in the main map.

But I've been playing entirely on Proton 6.3-5 and don't observe (at least not yet) any issue with saving or loading, so I'm a bit confused as to what's going on here...

@Wedge009 Interesting. I guess it should be worth noting I'm using a BTRFS system, though I really doubt that would affect it. It is something that has changed since the last time I played this game though...

Let me start by saying I fixed this issue by symlinking AppData to Application Data and making a LocalLow folder inside. Therefore, if anybody has that issue in the future, just ensure you have a directory .../pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow present and the save files will work as expected.

@Eoin-ONeill-Yokai Were you using a BTRFS system when you first played and the saves were working? Do you have anywhere to test with a more standard file system on the same hardware?

@alasky17 No I wasn't. I took some time to test it on another machine in my house running Fedora (on ext4) and can confirm that this isn't occurring on that machine. So the problem seems to stem from the use of BTRFS on my Manjaro machine.

I guess I'm mostly confused by why the process would be different -- perhaps it could be that something about the CoW process is messing with Proton's ability to setup the directories in steamuser folder properly -- either that or I should run more diagnostics on my new NVME drive to ensure that there's nothing faulty going on. ;)

Anyway, that probably means that this being a regression is a false alarm. Sorry about that, I think the BTRFS element of this new install was working so well that I kind of forgot to mention it. Let me just say that the process of launching this game is much better than in prior proton versions, and even installing mods is relatively easy compared to prior attempts (though moguri's installer is still broken, for those who are curious.)

I've done more experimenting and saved a log file. (Tangential note, is there a way to specify a desired Log folder for proton?)

Yes. [#4265 (comment)](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/4265#issuecomment-722626842)

@madewokherd Nice! I'll probably set that globally to my temp folder then since I often don't need them to persist, but I like the option of checking after launch. :)

Didn't notice any issues after a quick test with Proton 7.0-1.

Didn't notice any issues after a quick test with Proton 7.0-1.

Not to bump an old thread (apologizes) but the issue isn't resolved with 7.0-3 (available via Steam Proton choices). It crashes/doesn't launch the launcher or game. Even the newest proton versions (9, 10, 11) are similar "out of box" and it's a known thing to where "ProtonDB" recommends using a Mod to get around this.

Unfortunately, unless Valve or the Proton/DXVK devs talk to Square(-Enix) and/or do the work of making the initial "install" script/launcher past initial boot/install work "out of box" before having to worry about modding the game for "improvement" purposes, the game is unplayable on Linux as is right now. :( (Unless you mod, but I'm going by OOB experience)

I'm attaching the log for Proton-11 (removing my user information) in case someone at Valve is able to resolve this.

steam-377840.log

I also would not like to bump this old thread however I am encountering a weird bug. I have no clue if this issue is because of how wayland interacts with specific compositors such as Niri (Which I use) through xwayland-satellite, but any proton higher than 7.0-6, whenever you try to move with a key on a keyboard the game drops in frames down to 1fps when held. Every other input for the game works flawlessly, IE controller and the mouse. I have spent days trying to solve this issue, only to then find many people suggesting to use proton 7.0-6, however it would be great if it can work on newer protons as well.

It may not just be FF9, it could be broken on other older unity games as well, this is just the only game I have that has encountered an issue like this

I want to add what @Reflex13371 mentioned about as I was troubleshooting with them. Them switching between KDE/Niri or EndeavourOS or Bazzite does not matter, it always has the same issue, but its even more odd as it happens on multiple devices of theirs, yet others do not have this issue so its definitely narrowed down to something within later protons and maybe the hardware? Had them reimage to Windows and it works fine there, but back to a Linux distro is occurs all over again.