I went back to sailing the high seas for games when The Sims 3 from Steam wouldn’t run on Linux no matter what I did, whilst a pirate version runs just fine.
Pirating in Linux is actually much more complicated than running the game from Steam, or from other stores via something like Lutris, because for official versions of a game there are usually scripts doing all the necessary Wine/Proton configuration, but not for the pirate versions of a game, so if it fails to run directly you have to enable logging, dig through the logs yourself and figure out which libraries need to be configured with Winetricks, which is how gaming in Linux used to work 5 years ago (and why very few people did it).
If I remember it correctly, the Dodi repack just needs some audio library configured in the Wine instance via Winetricks as a built-in library.
If using Lutris, you need to enable logging for that game, then try and run it.
After it fails to run, look at the log and near where it stops you’ll see it complain about failing to load a certain DLL (and after that lots of failing to load other DLLs as a consequence of failing to load that original DLL).
Google the name of that DLL and you’ll find which library it is part of.
From Lutris, run Winetricks for that game (it’s in a pull-down next to the “Start” button for the game) and under Winetricks “Libraries” add that library to that Wine instance as a built-in library (if that doesn’t work, download the DLL, put it in the game dir and add it as native).
If what you see in the logs is, instead of a “Couldn’t load DLL”, a “Couldn’t find function in DLL” what you have is not a missing library but instead a library version mismatch. Go to Winetricks and force the use of the native version of the library: sometimes the built-in version of a common DLL in Wine is the wrong version, and you need to force Wine to use the version of that DLL that comes with the game, i.e. the “native” version.
If all that fails, Google that game’s name together with “Linux” to see if somebody else has figured it out.
I’ve switched a few friends to Linux and whenever they have trouble running a game outside steam, I just send them this. Hasn’t failed yet. While I, like many other Linux users enjoy scrolling through logs: this is easier.
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I went back to sailing the high seas for games when The Sims 3 from Steam wouldn’t run on Linux no matter what I did, whilst a pirate version runs just fine.
Pirating in Linux is actually much more complicated than running the game from Steam, or from other stores via something like Lutris, because for official versions of a game there are usually scripts doing all the necessary Wine/Proton configuration, but not for the pirate versions of a game, so if it fails to run directly you have to enable logging, dig through the logs yourself and figure out which libraries need to be configured with Winetricks, which is how gaming in Linux used to work 5 years ago (and why very few people did it).
Can you tell me how you got it to work?
If I remember it correctly, the Dodi repack just needs some audio library configured in the Wine instance via Winetricks as a built-in library.
If what you see in the logs is, instead of a “Couldn’t load DLL”, a “Couldn’t find function in DLL” what you have is not a missing library but instead a library version mismatch. Go to Winetricks and force the use of the native version of the library: sometimes the built-in version of a common DLL in Wine is the wrong version, and you need to force Wine to use the version of that DLL that comes with the game, i.e. the “native” version.
If all that fails, Google that game’s name together with “Linux” to see if somebody else has figured it out.
Thank you for the thorough response! I’ll try that out later ☺️
This is my go-to for anything that doesn’t want to run:
https://github.com/FanderWasTaken/wine-dependency-hell-solver
I’ve switched a few friends to Linux and whenever they have trouble running a game outside steam, I just send them this. Hasn’t failed yet. While I, like many other Linux users enjoy scrolling through logs: this is easier.
You are the real MVP. This is going to save me a lot of headaches!