Can luxtorpeda be used for non-Steam games?

[koalagang]

If I had a DRM-free copy of a game - for example, if I had a copy of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind from GOG and I pressed 'Add a Non-Steam Game' in my library, would luxtorpeda be able to realise that it is in fact Morrowind and thus install OpenMW?

I'm not entirely sure how luxtorpeda actually works so I don't know if it handles things by looking at the Steam app ID or something else so was just wondering.

[d10sfan]

@koalagang Thanks for the question.

Luxtorpeda solely looks at the app id to determine what game it is.

I believe you could set the SteamAppId env variable manually (in launch options) or create a user-packages file (https://github.com/luxtorpeda-dev/luxtorpeda#user-packages-override) with the app id of the non-steam game and setup whatever engine you want to use, like copying the contents of the morrowind config (https://github.com/luxtorpeda-dev/packages/blob/c7b4fd8d4967ddc03365644632878d50703badaf/metadata/packagesruntime.json#L2592).

[koalagang]

Alright. Thanks a bunch.

[koalagang]

Only did some brief testing but here is how it went.

I chose to test Sanitarium which I installed via Lutris' GOG integration.

To test it with Luxtorpeda, I viewed its Lutris configuration to find the executable location. I then added this as a non-Steam game to my Steam library. Then I set Luxtorpeda as the Steam play compatibility tool and set the launch options SteamAppId=284050 %command% and then clicked play.

So I managed to run it with scummvm-latest. The result - it seems to run fine except when you open the Steam overlay it stops the audio from working. When trying to leave the Steam overlay, it freezes for a few seconds and then starts working again except the audio does not work for gameplay anymore (though it's seems to work okay for cinematic scenes) - the only solution for this problem is to restart the game. This is where the second problem comes in to play. Launching it a second time crashes Steam. Another thing to note is that sometimes when attempting to launch it, it does not crash Steam but the game fails to launch.

My testing was rather brief and I have actually never played Sanitarium before (just chose to use that for testing as it is a game I have on GOG but not on Steam and Luxtorpeda supports it). I also tested it with proton (Steam), Roberta (Steam) and wine (Lutris) just for the sake of it. Worked fine with proton and wine but did not work with Roberta (I was just permanently "in-game" but the game never actually opened).

I don't know if the issues I experienced here were game-specific and if the issues are on ScummVM's part of Luxtorpeda's part but I'm posting this here anyway just in case it does apply to running other non-Steam games with Luxtorpeda. For Sanitarium at least, it is best to avoid using Luxtorpeda and use proton or wine instead.

I don't currently have Morrowind but I do plan on getting it at some point (maybe in the next month or so?) and I'll probably buy it from GOG. If/when I get it, I'll post here about how that works out with Luxtorpeda.

[tarasis]

An alternative that could be useful would be able to scroll the full list of engines available to pick what we need (Maybe under an All Engines tab or something).

I have a bunch of games on GOG that I want to use with Luxtorpeda, and it kind of works with Heroic as the installer. With Hexen, I couldn't put the 'SteamAppId' before the default run command to launch via Steam (to launch game from heroic). However if I did the ' SteamAppId=284050 %command%' and set the folder I could run GZDoom (Cripsy Doom was looking for wad file in a different place).

[d10sfan]

Alot of the engines expect the game assets to be in a certain location, which may be different on GOG, like you saw with Doom.

There may be some things that could be done to make that easier, such as a mapping between steam app ids and heroic, but probably outside the scope of this. PRs for anything that could make that easier are welcome though

[d10sfan]

Something where you could enable just listing every engine may work, although it wouldn't be perfect since the folders wouldn't be in the right spot at times.

That may be worth testing to see if things happen the right way. You can actually do this today by using the user packages feature, it lets you create your own overrides for the engines. Note that this only applies to your computer, but that could be useful for testing to see if there's some common things that could be added to luxtorpeda, to make GOG gaming easier. I don't personally use GOG or own many games there, so I wouldn't really be able to help test.