Linux Setup Guide

Help Needed

This documentation page could be improved, it only covers the barebones information.
Community contributions would be very welcome.

Wine

Open a Terminal window (Konsole, GNOME Terminal, Kitty etc.) and install wine & winetricks:

Distro	Command
Apt Based (Ubuntu, Debian etc.)	`sudo apt install wine winetricks`
Arch Based (Arch, SteamOS, Manjaro)	`sudo pacman -S wine winetricks`
Fedora	`sudo dnf -y install wine winetricks`

After installing wine, run winetricks from your terminal, we will install .NET Framework, which is used by the Reloaded installer.

Run the following command:

winetricks dotnet48

You can then download the Reloaded Installer (Setup.exe) from the downloads page, and run it via Wine (doubleclick).

Info

The installer automatically installs Reloaded and dependencies for you.
If the window does not render; don't worry the installer will still automatically complete.
This process usually downloads ~120MB of data and takes 30-60 seconds for most people.

Tip

If the installer has issues, you can try running it without GUI wine Setup.exe --nogui.

Note

If you have the native version of .NET installed on your machine, it is possible that in some
cases the native version might be executed by Wine as opposed to the installed Windows version.

Using DOTNET_ROOT= wine Reloaded-II.exe to run Reloaded might help.

If install is successful, Reloaded's launcher will boot and a shortcut will be created on your desktop. If you cannot see it there, check Wine's Desktop folder (usually located in <your_home_dir>/.wine/drive_c/users/<username>/Desktop/).

Reloaded on HoloISO

[Reloaded running on Modified SteamOS 3.0 (HoloISO), to simulate a Steam Deck]

Sonic Heroes on Reloaded on HoloISO

Finding (Steam) Games

Hint

Wine by default hides files and folders that start with a dot; which might make it difficult to navigate to Steam games. To fix this, run winecfg (Wine Configuration) and check Show dot files in the drives tab.

The easiest way to find your Steam games is simply right clicking the game, right click and clicking Manage -> Browse local files.

Then when adding the game in Reloaded, go to the folder opened by Steam inside the file picker.

Using ASI Loader

Info

You can launch Reloaded via the ASI Loader in the case that launching from Reloaded Launcher does not work.
This will make it so Reloaded gets loaded naturally as part of the game's boot process (i.e. it will be automatically loaded when you start the game from outside the launcher).

To do this, go to Edit Application -> Advanced Tools & Options -> Deploy ASI Loader.

Deploying ASI Loader on Linux

Note down the name of the non-Reloaded DLL that has been placed inside the installation directory. In this case the name is VERSION.dll.

Then you will need to make sure that Wine will load this DLL; there is more than 1 way to achieve this:

Recommended Approach (Per-Application)Alternative Approach (More Permanent)

WINEDLLOVERRIDES lets you temporarily specify DLL overrides for a specific wine process. You can use it in the terminal as such: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" wine BTD5-Win.exe.

If you are using Steam to launch your games you can, Right Click Game in Library, Properties and in Launch Options add WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%.

Steam Launch Options

Alternatively, for a more permanent solution, you can run winecfg (Wine Configuration), navigate to Libraries, select the DLL in the New override for library box and click Add.

Library Override Wine

Now Reloaded should automatically start with your game outside of the launcher.

Installing Reloaded Manually

Info

If the installer does not work, or you wish to manually install Reloaded for any other reason, you can follow the instructions below.

Download and extract Release.zip form Reloaded's Latest Release:
- Reloaded-II Release

Download and install the following in Wine:
- Visual C++ 2015+ Runtime x86 AND x64.
- .NET 5 Desktop Runtime x86 AND x64.

You can now start Reloaded with Reloaded-II.exe.

Proton

Hint

You should run the game via Proton (Steam) at least once before following this guide.

Info

The following instructions will allow you to setup Reloaded to run inside your game's Proton configuration.
This section assumes you have already setup Reloaded using Wine.

When you use Proton, Steam creates a 'clean slate' (WINEPREFIX) for each game; meaning that the dependencies for Reloaded wouldn't be installed when you run from Proton. We will use the Reloaded Installer (Setup.exe) to manually install the dependencies for Reloaded inside your game's WINEPREFIX and then setup Reloaded to run when you boot the game from Steam.

Start by finding the Steam App ID of the game [e.g. 306020]. The recommended way to do this is protontricks (protontricks -l). Alternatively, you can get this number by searching your game on SteamDB, or by checking the store page.

Listing games via Protontricks

Once you have the AppID, locate the WINEPREFIX for your game, it should be located in /home/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/306020/pfx.

Run the following series of commands in your terminal, substituting the parts in <brackets>:

## The path you located in the previous step.
export WINEPREFIX="/home/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/<APPID>/pfx"

## Run Reloaded Installer in 'Install Dependencies Only' mode.
wine Setup.exe --dependenciesOnly

## Create Symbolic Link for Mod Loader Settings.
ln -s "/home/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.wine/drive_c/users/<USERNAME>/AppData/Roaming/Reloaded-Mod-Loader-II/" "/home/<YOUR_USERNAME>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/<APPID>/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Roaming/Reloaded-Mod-Loader-II/"

Once you are done, launch the Reloaded launcher and Deploy ASI Loader.
If all goes well, you should be able to launch your game from Steam, running on Proton with Reloaded present.

BTD5 on Proton

Example: Bloons TD5 running on Proton via Steam.

Warning

Reloaded upgrades its .NET Runtime around once a year with, each release of the runtime.
When this happens, you will need to upgrade your runtime by running Setup.exe --dependenciesonly again.
Currently an upgrade to .NET 7 is expected on November 2022 Release.

Setting up a Virtual Machine Testing Environment

Info

Following section of the guide is for setting up a SteamOS 3.0 (HoloISO) virtual machine.
Distro chosen due to popularity of the Steam Deck, it's currently at the time of writing the closest thing you can get to emulating a Deck user experience.

This is intended for people who wish to contribute to Reloaded, since testing with a VM can be faster.

VMWare Player

Open the .vmx configuration file for your virtual machine and add the following line.

firmware="efi"

Install HoloISO.
Chroot into install (desktop icon).

## VMWare Stuff (optional)
pacman -S open-vm-tools nano 
systemctl enable vmtoolsd.service
systemctl enable vmware-vmblock-fuse.service

Once booted, to finish installation do the following:
- In Settings -> Background services -> Disable KScreen 2, to be able to change resolution.
- If you need copy/paste support, run vmware-user & in a terminal.

VirtualBox

Warning

VirtualBox is not recommended. Parts of Reloaded's launcher might not render.
This is a VBox specific issue; if you know a workaround, consider contributing to the wiki.

Enable EFI

Install HoloISO.
Chroot into install (desktop icon).

## VirtualBox Stuff (optional)
pacman -S virtualbox-guest-utils
systemctl enable vboxservice 

## Force desktop environment
steamos-session-select plasma-persistent