https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgUylxhlNTg

Note that I didn't stress test it really at all, but it did run seemingly normally and did spin a thing of text I tried. I didn't even try rendering, and I know this method uses wine. But I only vouch for it as much as that test showed me.

Also I tried proton-ge but it didn't fix the black models. -no_texture_stream did though and I use that normally anyways. I don't know why it would fix it, because I think the game still uses mipmaps. But it did

I'm sorry to kind of shill my unlisted video here, this is just really exciting to me:

https://youtu.be/_59eg3DhVu8

To help you understand why this is so interesting and more importantly useful, this is memory injection, working across programs, on a system that knows neither DLL nor EXE, on antagonistic hardware, nvidia. If that's not the most unlikely scenario to work I don't know what to say. Even for me it's not flawless, like some models are black sometimes [I think it's mipmap related], but it seems to be mostly there!

Here is a video of the campaths working: https://rapidgrab.net/u/95ouuMB3.mp4

I pulled this off on Proton experimental, with HLAE added as a non-steam game in steam on Debian 12, with the newest proprietary NVIDIA drivers [575.57.08], installed by following their website's instructions.
HLAE's gui loader launched TF2, which was installed with Proton Experimental compatibility mode selected, with the following launch options and NO environment variables:

-insecure +sv_lan 1 -windowed -force32bit -console -novid

I think -insecure might be the key to making it work, I couldn't launch even local maps without it when I was testing without HLAE.

Obligatory neofetch:

       _,met$$$$$gg.          kmd@lhD 
    ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       ------- 
  ,g$$P"     """Y$$.".        OS: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) x86_64 
 ,$$P'              `$$$.     Host: MS-7C56 2.0 
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:   Kernel: 6.1.0-37-amd64 
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$    Uptime: 1 hour, 49 mins 
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P    Packages: 2702 (dpkg), 22 (flatpak) 
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'    Shell: bash 5.2.15 
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'      Resolution: 1080x1920, 1920x1080 
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'         DE: Plasma 5.27.5 
 `$$b      "-.__              WM: KWin 
  `Y$$                        WM Theme: plastik 
   `Y$$.                      Theme: [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3]
`$$b.                    Icons: [Plasma], breeze-dark [GTK2/3]
`Y$$b.                 Terminal: konsole 
          `"Y$b._             CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (16) @ 3.800GHz 
              `"""            GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 
                              Memory: 10193MiB / 32015MiB 

Like this, I think we can play games, record demos, and make movies, without ever leaving linux. I even managed to get after effects working after following a somewhat dubious looking tutorial, but that's way beyond this post.

A bugreport is here too: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/7032

Edit: -force32bit, it was added without notice with the new update and this strange bit-'upgrading'

Launching tf.exe or tf.exe -game tf alone now is not enough. They get force-switched to x64.
As far as I know, this is the only way, targeting -game with something besides tf but with the same intent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH4scK3uB_s

If anyone knows a different way please comment.

https://ar.mevl2.duckdns.org/tf/maps/
Submit it!!

This recently broke if you already had set it up before the halloween update, but can be fixed. Just re-copy the entire scripts folder of your main install to your custom install.

This is happening to me and my friend in Turkey too. We normally have him go on a VPN so we don't get Frankfurt servers, but now we can't play together at all. Its sad and its clear we aren't the only ones with this issue, it seems like something valve did.

Sure. just rename the team fortress 2 folder to "TF2 beta 07 25" or something and use the same bat file. Steam won't do anything like try to target them for updates since it only seeks the "Team Fortress 2" folder.

Also, this video isnt really for betas but I became interested in seperate install's abilities to have their own configs and found a way to make a install which reads off the original game files instead of having its own, except for configs and mods, thus saving a shit ton of space and giving me a seperate configuration instance of tf2 to play with. And, it's just a single text file edit to make it. You may find it useful too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH4scK3uB_s

You have to make a bat file to launch it

start hl2 -game tf 

Also it's gonna crash unless you go offline mode (not friendslist-offline) on steam
if you need the steam services still running (objectors wont work without it), instead of going offline mode install this addon in tf/addons, and add -insecure to the batch file.
https://github.com/ficool2/custom_items_games

I didnt know you could add custom site links in huds, can you link some huds or a tutorial that does this?

https://rapidgrab.net/u/9zQt1RkN.png

https://rapidgrab.net/u/9zQhy7Ae.png

https://github.com/ficool2/custom_items_games#beta-branches
This is the best way because it will keep custom decal items still intact.

You can also go offline mode on steam (true offline mode in the main client window, not friends list offline) to get it to not crash.

Since everyone is sad lawena is gone I'll post this as I think it will help some.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH4scK3uB_s

HLAE still doesn't work right now though.

I hope some PREC functions like map names in demo names can be added to demosupport

go heavy go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH4scK3uB_s

Made this guide because lawena won't stop crashing for me no matter what and I pretty much only used it as an HLAE launcher anyway.