jrgd / Proton Custom Executable Shim · GitLab
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/38676431

A while back I ended up getting tired of making hacks to get custom binaries to launch in Steam for Windows titles. Primarily for modding, I would find a way to simply launch custom EXE files through Steam to ensure the modding tools and the game were contained neatly in the same prefix. My first ventures with this were Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas. With these titles, I overrode the gamebryo/creation engine launcher EXE with Mod Organizer 2 (renamed to be the launcher). While this worked, the solution doesn’t work for other games without a secondary launcher that is targeted through Steam.

I eventually came to the conclusion that one can override launch targets entirely in Steam, and that tools like SteamTinkerLaunch could take advantage of this. However, STL certainly does a lot and honestly, that is way more than I really desired just to launch games with a custom EXE. Thus I made a shell script that essentially allows for the user to write in their own custom target and have it launch right through Steam.

The usage for this is simple. Just copy the ‘shim’ file into the game directory, override the Steam launch arguments to include “./shim %command%”, and all is good. Furthermore, environment variables (such as DRI_PRIME=1), additional launch wrappers (gamemoderun), and game launch arguments (-novid for Source Engine titles) all work. If one needed a combination of all of this, it would look something like “DRI_PRIME=1 gamemoderun ./shim %command% -novid”.

The way target editing currently works is on first launch the shim file grabs the default game target and writes it as the contents of ‘target’, another file in the game directory. From there, one can simply edit the target location in the file and shim will launch the custom executable.

So far, I have used this to get things like RaftModLoader and BeamMP working (mod loader for Raft and multiplayer for BeamNG.Drive respectively). I see no issue with this being able to also work for Bethesda titles and others that need custom executables. As I understand as well, the actual game install directories on a Steam Deck with SteamOS are mutable, and with a bit of tinkering through desktop mode should help get a seamless experience for launching modded Steam games for Deck users as well.

I hope someone finds as much use and utility that I have for getting a lot of modding tools for Windows games working without needing to mangle the prefix using protontricks in some cases or install the absolute multi-tool that is SteamTinkerLaunch.

  • MentalEdge
    22·
    5 months ago

    Kinda.

    If you want the applications to work on the memory interaction level, they have to be children of the same process. If you start a game launcher in wine, and then start a game from it, it can “see” that game process, close it, join friends, whatever.

    But if you start the game exe directly, then separately start the launcher while the game is already running, then it won’t be able to see that there’s already a running game process.

    It’s not always enough for the processes to just be part of the same file system (same prefix). If all you need is some input interactions like with voiceattack or trackIR, that doesn’t matter. But for memory hacks it does.

    Wine has an internal task manager and if you just start processes without making sure they are running together, they’ll all end up in their own separate wine instances, even though they are on same prefix.

      • MentalEdge
        32·
        5 months ago

        Then what were "you sure?"ing me about?

        If you already understood this much, that just makes you the one assuming I didn’t know.

          • MentalEdge
            21·
            5 months ago

            Uuh… Ok?

            How is my activity elsewhere, and your assumptions about what it means in terms of what I’m into, relevant here?

            But since your brought it up, just for you, I just made ten more posts.

              • MentalEdge
                1·
                5 months ago

                It’s not a flex.

                I’m showing you that your options are to block me… aaand that’s it.

                I’m going nowhere. Every downvote and complaint means I commit to posting more.

                I get to be here, same as you, and no matter how firmly you believe weebs=pedos, it wont make it true.

                Your opinion of me, when based on nothing but the fact that I like japanese media and do some work in furthering the relevant fandoms on the fediverse, means less than nothing to me.

                You’ve edited your comment thrice now, as if there’s a way to say what you mean without coming off as an absolute douche-bag.

                Nothing you can say to me will stop me. The opposite, your annoyance at my existence merely fuels my activity further.

                So I’ll borrow your words: go away

      • MentalEdge
        32·
        5 months ago

        The comment above is simply asking about executing two executables in the same prefix.

        No it isn’t.

        Like say, running the game and a widescreen memory patcher

        It’s pretty fucking specifically asking about that exact thing.