Help running cracked (or not) windows games on linux

Context:

I'm currently running Debian 12.7 on VirtualBox, trying out linux before I become experienced enough to fully switch my drive to linux. I have an i5 cpu and an amd radeon gpu on my laptop. I run kde-plasma with wayland.

I have sorted out some basic stuff, but my current problem is how to play the few games I have on linux ("Counter-strike 1.6", "Hades I", "MGR: Revengeance", "Minecraft" (t-launcher) and "Outer-Wilds"). I want ro move their game data too, but I think that's a simple copy paste on the appropriate paths. I also want to run a few other programs, possibly Notepad++ and mp3tag, but I think I can figure those if I fugre the games.

I know about the existance of Wine, Winetricks (though not very good at using it), Proton, Lutris, Bottles and Heroic (and PlayOnLinux which I haven't installed).

I have installed Lutris (flatpak), Bottles (flatpak) and Heroic (Appimage).

I have successfully manually installed Notepad++ in Bottles using soda-9.0.1 and semi-successfully manually installed Counter-strike 1.6 on Lutris using wine-ge-8-26-x86_64. The issues with that (among others?) is that I cant look around with the mouse and there is no audio. Apparently some dependencies are missing.

So, this comes to my question:

How do I figure what dependencies to use on my wineprefixes?

Lutris, bottles and heroic theoritically allow you to edit the dependencies, in case something goes wrong. Lutris also is supposed to have some installation scripts on their database.

Is there any way I can find any configuration in text form? How can I then use this text to pick the dependencies myself?

I'm thinking of a list with the recommended changes:

Counter-strike 1.6 installation script:

Install Windows fonts

Install cmd

Install vcrun2013

Do X changes on registry

etc.

Is there such a thing? Is there any other way to figure this out (other than painfully and randomly trying setup combinations)?

25 comments

CS1.6 and Prism launcher for minecraft (you can bypass the account requirement with this) have a linux build iirc, I would go with that.
There is also !linuxcracksupport@lemmy.world, their wiki has some guides, not sure how in depth they are.
- you're overcomplicating it. get a separate $20 SSD and install the OS to it, dicking around with wine and tools within virtualbox is a headache you don't need. set it up as desired (I recommend using flatpak versions of lutris and friends because of freshness) and then install the games one by one, followed by transferring the game data/settings/etc. you can experiment to your heart's desire because you always have the fallback solution of your original drive.
  then, when you know what's what and where's what you can make the transition. good luck!
  
  I think this is supposed to be a reply to me, so I'll respond🙃
  Yep, I think you're right, I'm currently flashibg the debian installer on a usb card which I'll use to install debian on an external ssd I found. Vbox is too slow for my needs now.
- Cs1.6: is this about the paid steam version or is there a linux cracked non steam version that can use multiplayer too? I'm not asking for a link, I just want to know what results should I expect from my searches.😅
  Prism: I have heard about prism and tnx for the bypass, might use it. (I've also heard that tlauncher is shady, I might try to move my files to prism.) (I dont event play mc, I think minetest is better, but I dont play that either, lol. I just dont want to erase ancient worlds.)
  Thanks for the community, I had forgotten its name! :)
  
  I assumed that CS was a paid version, Steam and protondb say it has a native build. Steam should download that version automaticlly unless you change it do download the windows version iirc

I recommend using PollyMC, if you want to play Minecraft for free. It's based on the awesome Prism Launcher, is completely open source, and has more features than the official launcher or TLauncher.
If you want something that's basically the exact same thing as Notepad++, check out Notepad Next. If you want something similar, try Notepadqq, and if you want something better, use Kate. It's developed by the KDE Project btw, and fits in well with the rest of your Plasma desktop experience.
I have installed Lutris (flatpak), Bottles (flatpak) and Heroic (Appimage).
Why did you install Heroic as an AppImage? Just go with the Flatpak, which is more convenient, because you can easily update it from Discover.
https://flathub.org/apps/com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl
I also recommend installing ProtonUp-Qt btw, it's an easy to use graphical tool that lets you manage multiple versions of Proton. Once you have it installed, use it to download the latest version of Proton-GE-custom. It has better performance and compatibility with many games.
When actually installing Linux onto your machine, I would reconsider your choice of distribution though. Debian isn't bad, but there are better, easier, more user-friendly distros for gaming. One example of this is Bazzite. It's pretty similar to Steam OS, and you can't really break it.

Debian is not great for gaming. At least not if you have somewhat current hardware. Other distributions have much more up to date drivers and software.
And in my experience getting a game to run in a virtual machine is much harder than on bare metal.
That said, to answer your questions, you can find Lutris' install scripts on lutris.net. ie https://lutris.net/games/outer-wilds/. You can select to view the scripts. For dependencies you're looking for the task with the name winetricks.
undefined

- task: app: arial vcrun2019 d3dcompiler_43 d3dcompiler_47 d3dx9 win7 arch: win64 description: Installing dependencies name: winetricks prefix: $GAMEDIR
There after app you find all the dependencies it installs.
You can also search for the games on https://protondb.com it will show you reports by users on how a game runs and what configuration changes they had to make to get a game running. It's Steam-centric so you will only get games that are on Steam and on Steam most stuff is automated so you won't always see the dependencies needed as Steam has already installed them. https://www.protondb.com/app/753640?device=any
- You're right about debian, but I'm barely playing games and as you can see my games are kinda old anyways, so I might stay on debian.
  Thank you for actually explaining the scripts section :))
  I just download all the stuff on the app section and do any other changes other tasks require (like registry edits), right?
  
  Correct. But I find that often these scripts are over engineered and opinionated. So I'd start with just the dependencies and go from there.

T launcher working fine under linux since it java just find and download it as .jar file But i also recommend higly recommend
https://llaun.ch/en it was original tlauncher laucher, more details https://telegra.ph/The-True-Story-of-TL-05-21 Developer even publishing source code of his laucher. But u need to download from ukrainian,russja,belarusia or other countries cause for most europe couries it gonna show DCMA banner from mojang,in other case it will load all files
U don't need windows version of cs 1.6.Valve ported all cs to linux,so so find native 1.6 version https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5735662
Also recommens u to try project portproton for launching games,most of my games works with 2 clicks https://github.com/Castro-Fidel/PortWINE
If u get used to notepad++ very much u can use reimplementation of it which cross platform https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext
- Thank you for all of the detailed resources with appropriate links! Thank you thank you
  (And I really wanted to escape notepad++, because it's not native.)

Have been almost a year since I switched to Linux completely. I'm using CachyOS (an Arch derivative), so, you may have to adjust some things for your distro.
First of all, your driver setup varies heavily on what hardware you have, obviously. All AMD (both CPU and GPU) being the easiest for setup and laptops with Intel CPU + iGPU and Nvidia dGPU being notoriously hard to manage (it's also my case, which sucks). Look up what you need for your specific hardware.
Next comes your display server and audio server. The bleeding edge here being Wayland + Pipewire.
Wayland can be a bit removed on Nvidia GPUs, but it got a lot better over the last years. To use Wayland your desktop environment has to support it. Check with your specific DE. I'm using KDE Plasma, been quite happy since the switch.
Pipewire is pretty easy to setup, just uninstall your old audio server, replace it with Pipewire and an adapter package for what you had (like pipewire-pulse for PulseAudio) and you are good to go. It's very cool with tools like qpwgraph for audio management, easily the most mind-blowing thing I installed. Your friend came over and you want to send game audio both to your and their headphones? Easy. Been selling parts of my soul to get these sorts of setups on Windows for a long time.
Next, use native software where you can. You can replace Notepad++ with VSCodium or Helix (the learning curve for modal editors is steep, but it's very worth it).
For Minecraft, TLauncher is... controversial to say the least, even for usage on Windows. Try PrismLauncher. Works great, allows to download modpacks from popular distributors and is pretty easy to trick into playing in offline mode without a Microsoft account, just look it up.
Next, the translation layer. I'm using Proton-GE for everything via Lutris. While, as per GE, it is not a supported use-case, it's what I've got the best experience with so far.
As for dependecies, there is a good guide from GE for that.
Hopefully it helps in one way or the other. You can also experiment with distibution of your choice. There are some gaming-focused ones that come with driver installation tools to make it easier for you, don't hesitate to dump everything and start from scratch with a fresh install while you are not that commited to one specific distro.
- Oh, I forgot to mention, I have intel cpu and amd gpu, I will edit it above.
  I am using plasma kde with wayland. I will check pipewire later too probably.
  Thank you for the text editor suggestions :) I have found geany as an alternative, but it has some limitations (multi-window support isnt very good), but notepad++ on bottles opens slowly, so I want to avoid it too. (I also thought about emacs and nvim, but they are kinda scary and probably not for me.)
  As I said in another comment, I will probably try once more to convert to prism.
  Hmm, about proton-ge on lutris, for me lutris only shows wine-ge-proton and lutris versions of wine. Should I install it manually or something?
  Lastly, thanks for the guide! I hadnt found that one.
  
  I'm not exactly sure how it works with flatpak versions, but for native Steam+Lutris, you install it with this and Lutris picks it up automatically, as far as I remember. Probably need to allow the flatpack to see the installation directory or put it in Lutris runners altogether instead of Steam directory.
  Helix is very similar to Emacs and vim/nvim, but a lot easier to set up. Tried all of them but with Helix it just clicked for me.

maybe you can try to change the runner of the game, you could try with proton-ge instead of wine-ge, or some other thing
I do that on Lutris in case the game doesn't work, or it is slower than it should be, or it has problems with input or output
upto now every game I wanted to install worked with at least one of the options
edit: also other easy things you might try can be the windows version and the bit architecture
if some of these options don't work quickly, you can check on wine's website or proton's website, where you can find reccomended configurations for games and software
- I will try
  Edit: it seems like for cs1.6 at least there arent practiallt any configuration files :/
  I think they should at least advise me to use gecko, but they emit that.

AT Launcher for Minecraft has a native Linux package. I know that isn't the particular launcher you asked for, but it works great.
- OP asked about TLauncher, which is a cracked version. It's proprietary though, and there's a much better alternative called PollyMC. It's based on the amazing Prism Launcher, and has a bunch of useful features, such as the ability to download individual mods and entire modpacks straight from sources like Curseforge, Modrinth, ATLauncher or FTB.

Piggybacking on this, I tried Fitgirl repack releases and some of them hang up during install when executed through wine or proton. I resorted to installing them from a windows boot and then execute them from linux, but does anyone have a better solution?
- Have you checked this?
  https://slrpnk.net/post/12840760

25 comments