Installing ML... on the Steam Deck!

Hi.

I recently obtained a Steam Deck. What better game then to test how far I can break this nifty little device? MapleLegends, of course! This will be a tutorial on installing the game, so that others may follow my findings in the future. Huge thanks especially to halfwaysleet for the original Debian-based instructions.



Just a quick note. There's absolutely better ways out there to do what I did. As someone who's job involves Red Hat day in, day out, I'm not at all familiar with Arch Linux or KDE, which SteamOS both make use of. If anyone has any suggestions or potential workarounds for existing issues, or improvements I can make, please let me know!

Step 0: Deck Preparation
Let's just save you the headache right now and get this out of the way: Forget using the Wine flatpak. I'm sure a clever mind could get this to work, but this is just an extra set of steps and errors to troubleshoot, and it's a lot of effort to install a custom version of Wine. We also want to install an updated set of Wine Dependencies, so I wanted to access Pacman as quickly as I could.

Let's also clear up another obstacle. Steam uses an immutable Operating System. This means that all of the steps in this preparation step will be LOST with each update.
First of all, open Konsole. If you have not already done so, create password for the deck user with:

Code:

passwd

(Note: Triple click code box text to select the entire line!)

Next Disable Read-only mode:

Code:

sudo steamos-readonly disable

Your NAND Partition is now unprotected! I suggest exercising extreme caution, and only continue if you know what you're getting yourself into. Here is Valve's response on disabling readonly:

Initialize the pacman keyring:

Code:

sudo pacman-key --init

Populate the pacman keyring with the default Arch Linux keys:

Code:

sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux

Now we want to make sure we have access to multilib.
When I did this, access was already enabled, but it is still worth checking:
Open /etc/pacman.conf in any editor (Forgive me, I like nano)
and uncomment the following line(s):

Code:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Now let's update!

Code:

sudo pacman -Syyu

Next, I want to install a few things.
Some of these were for testing, and may or may not be used for improved workarounds in the future, but the most important item you should install is protonup-qt and wine-staging:

Code:

sudo pacman -S wine-staging winetricks wine-nine wine-mono lutris python-magic 

Protonup-Qt is not available in the multilib, and must be installed as a flatpak from the KDE Discover store, or from the AUR.
My mistake! See the Proton Github for more info.

and finally, Wine dependencies:

Code:

sudo pacman -S giflib lib32-giflib libpng lib32-libpng libldap lib32-libldap gnutls lib32-gnutls mpg123 lib32-mpg123 openal lib32-openal v4l-utils lib32-v4l-utils libpulse lib32-libpulse alsa-plugins lib32-alsa-plugins alsa-lib libjpeg-turbo lib32-libjpeg-turbo libxcomposite lib32-libxcomposite libxinerama lib32-libxinerama ncurses lib32-ncurses opencl-icd-loader lib32-opencl-icd-loader libxslt lib32-libxslt libva lib32-libva gtk3 lib32-gtk3 gst-plugins-base-libs lib32-gst-plugins-base-libs vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader cups samba dosbox 

Now, to make this setup easier for the next SteamOS update, let's make a shell script:

Code:

tee -a ~/ml-unlock.sh << END
#!/bin/bash
# -*- ENCODING: UTF-8 -*-
sudo steamos-readonly disable
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux
sudo pacman -Syyu
sudo pacman -S wine-staging winetricks wine-nine wine-mono lutris python-magic protonup-qt
sudo pacman -S giflib lib32-giflib libpng lib32-libpng libldap lib32-libldap gnutls lib32-gnutls mpg123 lib32-mpg123 openal lib32-openal v4l-utils lib32-v4l-utils libpulse lib32-libpulse alsa-plugins lib32-alsa-plugins alsa-lib libjpeg-turbo lib32-libjpeg-turbo libxcomposite lib32-libxcomposite libxinerama lib32-libxinerama ncurses lib32-ncurses opencl-icd-loader lib32-opencl-icd-loader libxslt lib32-libxslt libva lib32-libva gtk3 lib32-gtk3 gst-plugins-base-libs lib32-gst-plugins-base-libs vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader cups samba dosbox
END

and finally, set the executable bit:

Code:

chmod +x ~/ml-unlock.sh

The next time you update SteamOS, just run this script.

Step 1: Download files, add MapleLegends shortcut to Steam.
Download the LATEST version of the WINESKIN client.
By Default, Downloads will download to ~/Downloads.

After this has finished downloading, extract the contents using Ark, or by right clicking the download in Dolphin, and going to Extract > Autodetect subfolders.

In the newly created folder,Extract the payload file the same way, and then renamed the decrypted payload file to Payload.xar, and extract this file one more time.

You should now have a ./Payload/Applications/MapleLegends.app folder. I copied this directly to my Home folder (~/), but put this somewhere of your preference/ convenience.

Navigate through this folder into ./drive_c/MapleLegendsHD, and right click MapleLegends.exe. Click Add to Steam.

Before continuing to the next step, we will also download two additional files that are required for this to work:
http://www.mediafire.com/?bvt20olayvfbgw7 FOR ws2_32.dll
http://www.mediafire.com/?7c9tee7fhvebopc FOR ws2help.dll

We will deal with these files later. Do not lose them for now.

Step 2: Preparing Proton prefix.
TO continue, we need to unsuccessfully launch our new non-steam shortcut from within Steam. Navigate to your new MapleLegend.exe game shortcut. Click settings > Properties...

Fill in "PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%" in launch options, as shown below:

(I also have PROTON_LOG=1 turned on, so I can debug Proton crashes as needed. These are dumped in your home directory with the filename "Steam-<appID>.log")

Click Compatibility, and check the box for "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool". Close this box and try to launch the game.

It will fail.

That's okay!

Let's continue.

Open ProtonUp-Qt.
This is a great little tool that allows easy installation of custom proton versions. I specifically want to download a custom version to not mess with the default Proton used to boot steam games. For this, I downloaded GE-Proton7-30 (Because I actively use GE-Proton7-33, the latest version, for other games!)

Return to Dolphin or navigate to ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata
You should see many (or a few) folders with a series of numbers. If MapleLegends is the only non-steam game you have added, this will be easy! Steam games use a series of 7 digits, and non-steam games are automatically applied with longer digit sets. MapleLegends should be the last folder in this list. (Mine was 2446083177) You can confirm this by checking properties of the folder, and confirming that the folder was created within the last several minutes.

Open the correct wineprefix folder.

Copy the two dll files you downloaded earlier to the root of this folder.

Step 3: Destroying that Proton Prefix

First, let's get a bit destructive. We're going to rebuild the prefix as Win32.

If you are using Dolphin, open an in-line terminal by pressing F4, or work from within Konsole.

Make a backup of the steam files in the prefix:

Code:

cp -r pfx/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Steam/ . 

...and now delete the prefix:

Code:

rm -r pfx

and create a new one!

Code:

WINEPREFIX=$PWD/pfx WINEARCH=win32 wineboot winecfg

Proton will crash if syswow64 does not simply exist, so we will create this folder now:

Code:

mkdir pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64 

Copy Steam's libraries, as well as the dll's that I had you bring with you. (You DID bring those, riiiight?)

Code:

cp -rf Steam pfx/drive_c/Program\ Files/
cp -rf ws2_32.dll pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ws2_32.dll
cp -rf ws2help.dll pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ws2help.dll

Step 4: Re-fixing your destroyed prefix

Lets next export a few environmental variables:

Code:

export WINE=/home/deck/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/GE-Proton7-29/
export WINEARCH=win32
export WINEPREFIX=$PWD/pfx

Now launch winecfg. If Wine begins setting up in your pfx folder, then you did the above steps correctly. Great job!
within winecfg, we need to set Windows Version to Windows 98, then go to the Graphics tab, and enable "Emulate a Virtual Desktop". Set the Desktop size to 1280 x 800 (The steamdeck's native resolution). Over on Desktop Integration, I also select the Item drop down and change Desktop to a black color.

Click Apply, OK, then bring your focus back to the terminal prompt in Dolphin.

We want to back up our configuration files, so that we do not need to set Virtual Desktop again in the future:

Code:

cp pfx/system.reg .
cp pfx/user.reg .
cp pfx/userdef.reg .

In my experience, I needed to restore this prefix a few different times, so I went ahead and made another shell script to automate this process if it needs to be done:

Code:

tee -a ./refresh.sh << END
#!/bin/bash
# -*- ENCODING: UTF-8 -*-
rm -r pfx
WINEPREFIX=$PWD/pfx WINEARCH=win32 wineboot winecfg
mkdir pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64
cp -rf Steam pfx/drive_c/Program\ Files/
cp -f ws2_32.dll pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ws2_32.dll
cp -f ws2help.dll pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ws2help.dll
cp system.reg pfx/system.reg
cp user.reg pfx/user.reg
cp userdef.reg pfx/userdef.reg
END

So far, I only needed to do this once. Creating a script is still a good step to take to help with easy troubleshooting later.

Set the executable bit on this script:

Code:

chmod +x refresh.sh

Nearly there! We need to do one last thing.
Navigate to your proton folder:

Code:

cd /home/deck/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/GE-Proton7-30/

We need to substitute a string, because Proton defaults to Win64:

Code:

sed -i 's/wine64/wine/' proton

Prefix-fixing complete!

Step 5: Launching the game!

From this point on, MapleLegends will launch from within Steam. Nothing to it!

Step ???: Really? Nothing to it?

Well, okay, not everything is working too well, though. My current observations:

• The game will not launch from Game mode, and has to be launched after booting to Desktop mode
  
• Because of this, game mode overlay is also seemingly broken, but desktop overlay works just fine. (This requires more testing. I have a few ideas on why this might be happening, and is the sole reason for the delays in posting my promised guide. That is, if many people saw my Discord message.)
• You can set the steamdeck's controls outside of the game, but not while the game is running (This should be fixed once the issues with gamemode overlay are cleared up.)
• Yeah, so much for my above three points. Ya girl just didn't do it right the first time and it's working just fine: game mode, controls, and all. If you run into this issue, try using the refresh shell script I included and try again.
• 1366 x 768 does NOT work at all. I wouldn't mind having a bit of screen cut off, or scaled (a true crisp 1280x800 mode implemented would be the dream, though. ~COUGH~)
  
• While testing, I was unable to ever boot the game from the command prompt, or from a shell script, as instructed in halfwaysleet's guide. Lutris worked just fine, if that's your thing, but you lose convenient access to setting up gamepad controls. This won't matter if you're using a keyboard / mouse with your deck.
• Still can't drop virtual window mode. This alone is the reason why I needed to rebuild the entire proton prefix. If launching from a shell script were to work, we'd be able to point Steam at this script and launch the game this way, rather than use built in Proton.
• Random? Arch Linux is...fine. My personal desktop uses Nobara Linux, a Red Hat / Fedora distro built by the wonderful dev that contributes to Lutris, and the creator of Proton-ge. Getting MapleLegends to work on thi distro was a flawless endeavor, without the need for any virtual workarounds. I'd like to tinker with installing Nobara on deck and see how this would function, but I'll keep Arch / SteamOS just to better discover how to fix the flaws with running the game on native software.

Sometime in the future, I'll put a bit more effort into working out some of the deeper incompatibility bugs between the MLegends client and wine.

I'd also like to make a Flatpak version of the existing wineskin ML client, to REALLY simplify installation; Not only for Steam Deck users, but for all Linux distros with access to Flatpak. Upon further testing, the prefix that I created above worked just fine when dropped onto my Nobara desktop, so I think wrapping this solution up into a single flatpak repo would be a near-universal solution for many users. A flatpak would also be an easy automatic way to keep the game updated for many users. (and to think, I used to be so opposed to flatpaks..)

I simply have way too much on my plate right now to be of any use in that endeavor for now.
Oh, and...keybindings! these obviously don't translate over well, but the controls allow for quite a few additional options over what I put together. I just tried to take what i have, and cram as many buttons in as made sense to me:

You have the option of assigning touch (but not clicking in) as separate buttons for each pad/stick, gyro...but I felt that would have been overload. I have a little portable Thinkpad keyboard that I carry in my bag for whenever I need to do some serious key-ing.


Phew! I think that's it. I'm not the greatest at providing any support, so please consider this as a disclaimer (follow my instructions at your own risk, be prepared to recover your device from any mistakes, etc.) It's been an adventure with this tiny little system, but the journey is just getting started.

Good luck!

Updates:
2022/08/28: I really cleaned up formatting and spelling of this post, and added a few call-outs to Deck preparation. Corrected myself on GameMode compatibility. Also Piccys!
2022/08/30: Neded to reconfigure my prefix once again. This time, I started from scratch, using my guide to further catch any errors. All context and commands should be correct now!
09/19/2022: Cleaned up more inconsistencies.

 

I'm glad to have helped! Don't let this be your expectation of installing other non-steam games. as long as the game doesn't use some sort of anti-cheat or cryptic windows-only kernel function, compatibility has been super great and easy to set up! Proton (and Wine) has come a long way, and I'm willing to bet that well over 80% of all games ever are going to be playable.

 

Where exactly are you stuck at with this? I don't use Lutris at all, if that helps clear things up. I found that if you add a lutris shortcut to steam as a virtual window, steam can't properly hook into the running application, and you're unable to use the added overlays, the game HID, and steam tools.

The best way to run this through steam is to trick the proton prefix into configuring itself as a 32-bit. I've been having trouble with this configuration sticking, because I play other wine games that like to mess up the configuration.

Edit- There's at least one other server out there that managed to patch 64-bit prefix/WineD3D compatibility into their client. I'd love to look into how they did this, and see if this was possible for ML. This would not only clear up the issues with compatibility of playing through Steam Play, but playing on wine in general for all Linux distros.

 

A few typos on my part, but let me address them here, then update my top post.

Directly in your home directory. These files are often named "Steam-<appid>.log", and will only reflect the most recent launch of the game.

In my setup, I'm using GE, simply because it was a custom proton version that I could modify without making modifications to the default Proton. The actual version you use does not matter, as there are no major changes in between recent versions that make or break compatibility with ML.

Sorry about that! GloriousEggroll released an update before I completed my guide. Basically, I'm using "The most recent version of GE minus 1". I did not want to modify the *latest* version, as I use this for other game compatibility. To clarify what I mean: The exact version that you use is inconsequential, just at long as the same consistent version is used in all configuration.

 

Thank you for not requesting a snap
It definitely won't be anytime soon, but I'll keep you in mind!