How to run on Linux (WINE)

Important!
As for the time of writting, there is no native client for Linux, don't download anything offered to you as that for it will be a scam.

Do not download WINE from anywhere else than the repositories of your distribution or the official page, be careful of what you're installing from user repositories and install Steam only from the official page.

And if you're reading another methods to install WINE than the official instructions, read what the command you're inserting does before issuing it to the command line! Don't just copy and paste!

1.- Important notes.

Read carefully the first note if you are all in for the FSF opinion.

1.- If you want a completely "free" as in "freedom" system I don't even know what are you doing here. Regardless, this process will make you enable non-free repositories (Debian), possibly install propietary drivers and/or blobs for your Graphic Cards and install DRM software.

If your stand on these things is not having them and follow the FSF philosophy, abort now, leave and wait until the day someone makes a free clone of this. Most likely never.

2.- Never EVER run WINE as root or sudo. NEVER.

3.- On what environment was this tested?

Debian GNU/Linux Codename Jessie Version 8.7.1 Stable AMD64
Desktop: XFCE4 and later IceWM.

Wine Version: Wine 2.0 Staging (pulled directly from WineHQ)

Video Driver: Nvidia Propietary
Video Driver Version: 367.44 (pulled from jessie-backports)

Linux Kernel: 3.16 Long Term Support (LTS) (Installed by default with Debian)

2.- Sources of information and credits.

WINE HQ Main Page[wiki.winehq.org]
WINE Binary Packages for different distributions[www.winehq.org]

1.- Must read:
WINE Users Guide (if you want to know more about it)[wiki.winehq.org]
WINE Official Read on installing it.[wiki.winehq.org]
WINE Install Guide for Debian.[wiki.winehq.org]

Valve Developer - Steam under Linux

Arch Linux - Steam/WINE (a page dedicated to Steam under WINE)[wiki.archlinux.org]

Credits to Omar!

WINE Application Database entry on RWBY: GRIMM ECLIPSE[appdb.winehq.org]

2.- Possible distribution-independent reads:
Arch Wiki page on WINE[wiki.archlinux.org]
Ignore the part about installing it, as the process is meant for Arch Linux only. The important part are the tips and troubleshooting sections.

3.- Possible improvement of perfomance (use at your own discretion)
Tales from responsivenessland: why Linux feels slow, and how to fix that[rudd-o.com]

4.- RWBY for Ants reference:

Credits to gvk!

How To Reset Resolution / Game Settings Outside of Game?

Credits to Q3DM6!

Borderlands64 - the maximum framerate guide

List of common resolutions (even more ridiculously small resolutions here)[en.wikipedia.org]

3.- Tools and software needed.

1.- Any text editor.

2.- The package manager of your distribution.

3.- A terminal (all GNU/Linux systems install one by default depending on the system and the Desktop Environment). Debian by default installs XTerm and another terminal depending of your DE. Use the one you want or have.

4.- Your web browser.

5.- Either be sudo or have temporal access to the root account.

4.- Steps that don't require a guide.

These steps don't require a guide... because there are lot's of them; in your Distribution Wiki, in your Distribution Forums, on many webpages indexed by Google. Making more distribution-specific guides would do not good.

1.- Make sure you are sudo or that you can switch from your non-root account to the root account temporaly.

2.- Install the Propietary Drivers for your graphics card; for AMD I read the Propietary and Open Source drivers are even in performance but just to be sure go with Propietary.

Use the most recents drivers from your distribution repositories ONLY. Installing from the official websites of Nvidia or AMD may leave you with up-to-date drivers but if a new version is released you will have to install it manually. Also, in case you execute a system or kernel upgrade, you will need to re-install manually the drivers even if they are the latest version.

If you are not sure that the driver supports your graphic card, check again your Distribution Wiki before installing anything.

3.- Install WINE. There are three advisable methods:

• Compile it by yourself. (You will have to compile it again if there's a new version though).
  
• Install it from your Distribution Repositories (only if it's rolling release and they offer the latest version).
  
• If you're on Debian, WINE HQ (official page of WINE), offers a guide to install the WINE Repositories and the latest version of WINE.

4.- Install Steam on WINE. Pretty self explanatory. Double click or Right Click "Open with WINE".

5.- Install RWBY Grimm Eclipse. LIbrary -> Games -> RWBY Grimm Eclipse -> Install Game.

There's not much to do now. Drink some coffee while it downloads perhaps?

6.- (Optional for systems with much RAM): Reduce swappiness to a ten percent.

5.- Preparing RWBY to play.

You may have heard that the game has OpenGL and that there's OpenGL in Linux.
While this is true, what you don't know is that OpenGL in the game using WINE is broken, so if you launch the game with that, you will end up in an enormous "missing texture" screen.

To avoid this, right click on RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, go to Properties and click "Set Launch Options". In the box, write "-force-d3d9".

1.- Open a terminal and type:

winecfg

This window will appear:




2.- Go to the "Libraries" section. In there, on the empty bar, type "d3d9" and then hit ENTER. The "d3d9" library will appear like this:




Now click "Apply" and head to the "Graphics" section.

3.- There unmark "Allow the window manager to decorate the windows" and "Emulate a virtual desktop". Leave marked or mark "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows" and "Allow the window manager to control the windows".




4.- (Only if you have installed WINE Staging Branch) There are some reports that going to the section "Staging" and clicking "Enable CSMT for better graphic performance" can actually help. While you can say "well, no s*** Sherlock", I haven't noticed a real boost on the performance (mind that I'm using non-recommended hardware) but who knows? Maybe you'll get a distinguishable performance. I'll leave it on, I don't mind it and it certainly hasn't impacted me negatively.



5.- Once more, before exiting, hit "Apply" or if it's greyed out, just hit "Ok".

From this point, you should be able to play the game. If your hardware meets the Store Page recommendations, have fun and remember to read through the references I'm leaving.

If your hardware is near recommended or not recommended at all, keep reading as the next section may help you a bit more.

6.- (Optional) RWBY for ants.

This is a section that may help you. However, I cannot guarantee that it will indeed increase performance.

(Obligatory)

1.- Launch the game and configure all you want in the "Settings" menu. That is, Sound, Graphics, Subtitles... all you want set up to your liking. Once we proceed, you will not be able to edit this settings ever again without undoing most of the next steps.

Now, while the game forces you to play only on 1280x720 and above, you can bypass this and set your own resolution.

One of the things I noticed on my first trial-and-error attempts was that the Nouveau driver can set a smaller resolution; 720 x 400 (or something like that). With this in mind, I took another guide for another game and said; "well, why not?"

We don't need the Nouveau driver for this, mind you.

1.- With Steam closed, open a terminal and type:

regedit

This window will appear:




There, navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> SOFTWARE -> Rooster Teeth Productions LLC -> RWBY: Grimm Eclipse

Editing values:

Double click the value you want to edit, this window will appear:



Now we need to change the radio button from "Hexadecimal" to "Decimal".
On the values of Resolution Width and Height you will notice that the number converted to the resolution set in game once you switched to Decimal.

There are four values that we are interested in:

Screenmanager Is Fullscreen mode_h3981298716

Determines if the game goes fullscreen or not.
Values: 0 and 1

Always set to 0 with custom resolutions! Setting it to 1 will reset the registry entries for the resolutions back to 1280x720!

Screenmanager Resolution Height_h2627697771

Determines the game Height (both windowed and fullscreen).

Screenmanager Resolution Width_h182942802

Determines the game Width (both windowed and fullscreen).

Tested resolutions

1024x768 896x560 896x504 768x432 762x428 704x480 640x400 640x360

More resolutions, I tested them and they work. True RWBY from ants

512x384 480x272 400x300 384x288 320x240 256x192 200x160

UnityGraphicsQuality_h1669003810

Determines the graphic quality of the game (limited to the options in game).

0 - Potato Quality | 1 - Normal Quality | 2 - High Quality | 3 - Ultra Quality

Once you edited the values, close "regedit" and launch the game.

7.- Running Mods.

Mods work, indeed. As they don't need stand-alone executables and rather seem to "inject" (don't know the exact jargon for this) themselves into the game, they can be run.

However, here are the bad news; the main installer is broken. If you download the executable and try to run it by any mean (that is double-clicking it, opening a terminal and append it to the wine command) it will send you a message. I don't know much about this but seems like .NET Framework is missing.

Right now I don't know if I can install said component from Winetricks (there's Mono, the free implementation of .NET but it was installed when I tested it and it didn't worked). Also the Wine HQ page recommends not to install things like DirectX or NET directly from the installers provided by Microsoft.

However, there's a workaround.

Make sure you have in your system already installed the OpenJDK Runtime Environment. Download then gvk's jar installer from his post and place the jar file into the next direction:

/home/YOURUSERNAMEHERE/.wine/drive_c/

Now, open a terminal and execute the following command:

java -jar NAMEOFTHEFILEHERE.jar %F

The next window will appear:




Click "Install Mod" and search for the directory:

/STEAMDIRECTORYHERE/Steam/steamapps/common/RWBY_GE

Select the folder "RWBY_GE", hit OK and the mods will be installed.
Your console should display this:




The installer will close automatically.
Next time you start the game, the "Mods" entry on the menu will appear.

8.- Last words.

I hope this guide was useful to you.

Any grammar mistakes will be corrected on future revisions.

Have fun.

[Leeo97one]

This is useless because DirectX is already implemented in Wine. I can confirm that the game works perfectly without adding "d3d9" in "Libraries" ;-)

[AlexeY]

Leeo97one:

Just to be sure. When you install WINE, it gives you the program, yes, but it doesn't give you the necessary dll files to run applications. This is so you just install what is required by your application.

I haven't inspected too much the folder of the game so I don't know if it bundles with it a copy of "d3d9.dll", thus, I added it in WINE.

[Leeo97one]

Why add "d3d9" in "Libraries"?