Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am forcing a Windows game to run on Linux. Let’s get started!
WINE Is Not an Emulator
Gaming on Linux hasn’t always had the best reputation. Software written with one operating system in mind may require the presence of libraries only found in that system, and for the past few decades, that’s meant Microsoft Windows has become the standard for PC gaming.
WINE is a compatibility layer. Their mission is to replace the proprietary Windows libraries with their own open source ones that anyone can freely use. Using WINE, Windows exclusive titles run in “Wine bottles” (or Wine prefixes) that make the correct system calls to either Linux or Mac.
Due to copyright reasons, WINE isn’t allowed to copy-paste any code they look at. Imperfections in execution are an inevitability. Some programs work no questions asked, while others refuse to work all together rated from platinum to garbage.
Steam Proton
I remember seeing someone play Portal 1 on Linux about ten years ago. It one of the earliest titles Steam had running on Linux, but all the walls were blackened like some sort of dark mode. It’s been fixed by now, and Steam will now happily run thousands of titles through Proton, their custom version of WINE. For tech savvy users, they have an option to let any game try to run with no promises provided.
Space Engineers: A Pain to Run
The first time I successfully beat a game into running on Linux with no promises given was Among Us. That game only needed an environment variable or something Proton couldn’t find on its own. Space Engineers, though… it’s something else. ProtonDB lists the game as Silver meaning “[A program] works excellently for normal use, but has some problems for which there are no workarounds” according to WINE’s online database, WINEHQ.
I don’t fully understand what I did in my success. No, Space Engineers will not run easily. My journey started in this community thread on Steam, though the GitHub page they link to is referenced several times over. Just follow the instructions there, and you have a portable black box solution.
But it wasn’t so easy for me. I believe I kept having trouble in creating my WINE prefix. I tried the usual black box rites like rebooting, reinstalling the program, and trying multiple solutions. It wasn’t until I slowed down to find some process hanging in the log that Engineer Man user jeffz instructed me in how to kill the process. Prior to this, I was just using Ctrl+C to kill the process directly in the WINE setup terminal and it would appear to work without the actual game going. I think I managed to rack up a total of 8 to 10 minutes of “play time” in Steam while debugging because not every attempt closed itself.
Followup Work Potential
I pretty much called it good as soon as the game started. Linux discussions kept mentioning “flying grass,” so I was prepared when I saw that, though I have it from a fellow player that there are many bugs even when running it in its native Windows. The only bug I keep running into is an early audio cutoff, usually between the words “Inventory Full.”
My computer is barely fast enough to run Space Engineers smoothly. One of my usual optimizations is ditching the Steam client and running whatever game directly. For a WINE game, though, I’m guessing I’d need to go through the whole process again with another setup, avoiding Proton (I’m using a custom Proton fork by Glorious Eggroll, a recommendation from the ProtonDB page). Unless there’s a DRM requirement where I must use Steam, I’m fine not getting the achievements or other end-user visible hooks. I expect I’ll first try getting Among Us to run from Lutris before tackling Space Engineers.
Takeaway
It is my belief that nothing is impossible to get running on Linux given enough time, talent, and compatible hardware are involved. It is also not unheard of for some games to run better on Linux/WINE than on their native Windows due to the lower overhead from the operating system.
I’ve also noticed a discrepancy where WINEHQ has Space Engineers as low as Bronze or Garbage. Looking at both the age and source of available reports, one needs to not draw conclusions about the runability of a particular piece of software in WINE. ProtonDB had reports near both extremes; most reports are summed up as, “It doesn’t work!” but there are more than a few people who gave detailed specifications on how they got it running. I have a working assembly through a lot of hammering until I found the right spot.
Final Question
If you could run any game on a platform it has no buisness running on, what game would you get running on what system?