Tutorial Adult Gaming on Linux - State of Engines

[dspeed]

Thought it would be nice to share some experience I've picked on playing adult games on Linux. This will primarily focus on Ubuntu but if you're not using an Ubuntu derivative then you can probably still work out the steps yourself.

Prerequisites

The first thing that you should be doing already is to install wine-staging, Vulkan, and proprietary drivers for you graphics card.

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Driver installs for:

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Always take the latest versions you can.

Install DirectX9, Visual Studio Executable and Windows fonts using winetricks.

winetricks d3dx10 vcrun2010 corefonts

That's enough to get started.

HTML Games

Twine and Sugarcube games carry the HTML engine tag on F95. This doesn't mean all HTML games are based on Twine but most are. As HTML games are browser based, they should generally work out of the box.

HTML games are edited using the JavaScript browser console and it works fine. Generally enter SugarCube.State.active.variables into the developer console to view the arrays.

QSP Games

Although there is a Linux version of the QSP Player, it tends to be a pain in the arse to get sorted out. It's much easier instead to just run the Windows version through wine. This goes for both games packaged into an executable (such as Son of a Bitch) and those that require you to download a separate QSP Player (such as Family Life). Again as QSP games are dressed up HTML games, they should all work fairly easily.

For editing, QSPGen works through WINE perfectly well.

RPGM Games

If there's a Linux version then obviously grab that and it will just launch. However most of the time there isn't.

If the game is packaged into a single large executable then it generally will not run (such as My New Life. This is due to the way the game is packaged into an executable too large to handle, and when it does run, the speeds are so slow that it's pointless.

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and run this through wine. It usually installs fine. Then run the game through Wine.

You'll have a couple of problems with some of the games - mainly the performance is terrible or the mouse cursor goes all over the place. You should switch to fullscreen mode to combat both of these, even if the game runs tiny in the centre of the screen. Windowed RPGM games tend to crash out at weird instances for me.

There's no way to edit RPGM games on Linux that I've found.

Unity games (older version)

Many Unity games work out of the box. However if you're getting rendering issues then start the game on the command line (using wine Game.exe where Game is the executable) and feed it the -force-d3d9 argument.

wine Game.exe -force-d3d9

This will fix 90% of the problems as the older version of Unity allows the DirectX9 fallback which is better supported. DirectX11 is problematic.

Unity game editing requires some knowledge of the C# language. I've found the

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can be ran pretty well through Wine, in comparison to other .NET disassemblers which are all over the place. It should go without saying that you need to install .NET with winetricks

Unity games (new version)

You're screwed on this for now. You can try to -force-vulkan if you're lucky but forcing d3d9 doesn't seem to work due to the Unity engine version and WINE/DXVK doesn't yet support the

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of rendering, meaning that you get a bunch of floating heads and rendering errors for many 3D games. Although

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now Valve and everybody else has jumped into the Linux gaming scene with Proton.

Come back in 3 months and try again.

Ren'Py Games

Ren'Py games often come with a Linux executable but again, it tends to be temperamental. Start the Windows version instead. You'll have rendering issues if you try to maximize the screen in windowed mode (it sort of flickers/jumps about) so your choices are to either keep it windowed or move it to fullscreen.

As an aside, UnRen.bat will not work on Linux. If you wish to extract RPA archives then you need to use

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and run it from the command line. Move it into the same directory as the RPA then go to command line and run

python rpatool -x myfile.rpa

If you want to turn RPYC into editable RPY files, then you'll need to put

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in the directory and then start the game once.

Unreal Engine

It can't be emulated. Or at least, I've never found a way for the newer versions. The building pipeline for Unreal is so focused on the operating system that you have to ask for a Linux version from the developer most of the time. You can give it a go but I wouldn't hope for much.

RAGS Games

This requires jumping through some hoops.

Firstly, go to Microsoft's website and download

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You need to install BOTH runtimes. Install the x86 using Wine, then the x64 one. It MUST be done in that install order and not the other way around.

Then use winetricks to install some additional dependencies.

winetricks richtx32 msxml6 wmp9 vcrun2015

Go and download RAGS Classic 2.4.16 and install.

Presuming you've done this correctly, you should be able to start the RAGS engine. If you get an unhandled exception error then you've used the wrong version or you're missing an install.

You won't be able to use CheatEngine on Linux successfully to change RAGS values. You'll need to access the debug mode which can be shown in this thread.

Java Games

Java games should work natively. However some programs now require you to run a .bat file in order to start them and they are an issue on Linux. To get the batch files working:

Download the Offline version of Java8 for Windows x86

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. Then install it through WINE using the /s silent install tag as per:

wine jre-8u161-windows-i586.exe /s

This installs Java into the WINE directory but doesn't actually tell you that it has installed it.

Then open RegEdit through "wine regedit.exe".

Look in CURRENT_USER/Environment for a REG_EXPAND_SZ called PATH and if not create one. Enter the value as the path to the Java bin:

c:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_161\bin\

Then you SHOULD be able to launch the batch file directly. wine cmd then launcher.bat.

Flash Games

Generally you'll need to download Adobe's Flash Player Projector and open the SWF file directly.

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. I've had better success emulating the Windows version through WINE than setting up the Linux version but your mileage may vary.

ADRIFT Games

Honestly, I know there's ADRIFT for Linux but I've never been able to get this or the Windows version running in a reliable state. Others may have better luck.

Others

Things tagged as "Others" tend to be custom engines and need to be taken on a game by game basis. Most of the popular ones on this site work perfectly well by running it through Wine.

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If there's anyone struggling to get a specific game going then write a post with operating system/game name and we could share some info on it.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Strange ive played my game on Linux no problems. Yet to try another VN on Linux.
Saying that, it was a while ago.

 

[gamersglory]

Better yet use Proton. Valves new custom WINE distro converts on the fly DX 11 and 12 calls to Vulkan. Can install it through Steam or alone.

 

[dspeed]

Better yet use Proton. Valves new custom WINE distro converts on the fly DX 11 and 12 calls to Vulkan. Can install it through Steam or alone.

As it stands now, Proton has the same issue with some Unity games as the issue is within Vulkan itself. They're working on it.

 

[Capacitor]

Looks like we had the

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. If I had seen this topic before, I would have written here instead of starting a new thread.

I have a question on RAGS. I wasn't able to run it through Wine on my own, but luckily your instructions helped me a lot. I still have some problems with sound, but it may be a game's problem instead of Wine's. Just to be sure, could you share the content of your "winetricks.log" file, that can be found inside your Wine directory? Maybe there are some other components installed for other reasons that are missing on my computer.
Thanks in advance!

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

Then use winetricks to install some additional dependencies.
winetricks richtx32 msxml6 wmp9 vcrun2015

This goes 404 not found.

 

[uberzubron]

Is it possible to run Renpy games without Wine-staging ? I'm using Mint Cinammon 19.2

 

[scrumbles]

Is it possible to run Renpy games without Wine-staging ? I'm using Mint Cinammon 19.2

Yes, of course. Run the .sh if the Linux libraries are included, or get the missing files from the official Renpy SDK. More info in the first post.

 

[uberzubron]

Yes, of course. Run the .sh if the Linux libraries are included, or get the missing files from the official Renpy SDK. More info in the first post.

In the renpy section it says to look in Appendix A/B etc....where can I find these Appendix's ?

 

[scrumbles]

In the renpy section it says to look in Appendix A/B etc....where can I find these Appendix's ?

Same post, just scroll until the end. Or CTRL+F: "Appendix A:".