LUA Addons on Steam Deck: current findings/research

[Cutty Mink]

I haven't been able to get the LUA addons working on Steam Deck yet (this thread is for investigative purposes), but have been aggressively looking into getting them functional. Based on discussions here, it seems that the exact setup that allows LUA addons to work on Lutis via desktops does not work on Steam Deck.

I located a discussion on Reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PSO/comments/wddoau

It appears that NO ONE has been able to get the addons working via Lutris on Steam Deck. Regardless of whether or not you have dinput8 configured properly and the right launch options for the Steam shortcut.

However, there is a single account of a user saying they got the LUA addons working for Steam Deck. u/sapphirefragment states:

I can confirm that it works perfectly fine under Proton specifically.

If you are using Xidi, move its dinput8.dll to addons/customdlls.

Using Steam Proton, you need to set your run options for the non-steam shortcut as so:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b" %command%

The game must be running in Virtual Fullscreen for the cursor to be visible.

I am not sure if the addon plugin is responsive to the keyboard overlay, but it responds correctly to mouse input.

Okay, so now we have more to work with. This user got the addons working using Proton (Proton Tricks on Steam Deck) rather than Lutris. So, I installed PSO:BB using the following instructions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PSO/comments/w983pm

I added that "WINEDLLOVERRIDES" line to the steam shortcut launch options as needed, set everything up exactly, etc.... Please note, I had to edit the Properties >> Compatibility from the steam shortcut and force PSOBB to use Proton 7.03 otherwise PSOBB will just crash for me when installed via Proton Tricks.

However, even with all of this, the addons refuse to work for me despite everything being configured properly.

I reached out to that Reddit user who said they got it working to see we could discuss and try to figure out why it won't work on my end, but I haven't heard back. The hope was that I could get it working and write a guide for everyone, but that unfortunately hasn't happened.

However, it looks like we may be close to getting this working. If anyone has any ideas or wants to give this a shot, please do so and share your findings/steps if you are able to get the addons working on Steam Deck. Thanks, y'all!

 

[Matt]

Hi there, I'm necro'ing this to drop some information. I'll probably make a more "official" thread for Steam Deck instructions later on, but want to leave this here for now.

So, the plugins may work if you install PSOBB directly through Steam (that is, adding the installer to Steam) and following some rather convoluted steps. However, this doesn't work 100% the time - from observation, it seems if people installed Ephinea before doing it through Steam, even restarting the process through Steam doesn't let the plugins work. It didn't work for me and at least one other person I knew, but it has worked for many others.

However, after messing around, I have found out why the plugins do not work on the Steam Deck in many instances (and you're not going to believe it):

The native extractor program to SteamOS (Ark) is bugged, and may mess up certain files when extracting them.

If you download the bbmod.zip file, and unzip it by running "unzip bbmod.zip", it will work 100% of the time.

---

So, here's the instructions for installing PSOBB on the Steam Deck and getting add-on support very quickly:

Pre-requisites: Install Wine (red wine glass) and Lutris from the Discover store in desktop mode.

1. Open Lutris, click the + in the top left, search for community installers and search for Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst
2. Install the EphineaPSO script, and let it finish.

Now, Ephinea itself is working, and you can play it without any major issues in desktop mode, but let's install the add-ons. The instructions below will only install the base add-on, it is up to you to install the addons you'd like yourself, which can be found in this thread.

3. Download bbmod.zip from Soly's page, but importantly, do not extract using Ark.
4. Go to your directory you downloaded the bbmod.zip file, right click anywhere, Open in Terminal, then type "unzip bbmod.zip" (without the quotation marks).
5. Move the 3 files (dinput8.dll, dinput8.pdb, addons folder) into $GAMEDIR/drive_c/EphineaPSO, where $GAMEDIR is the location you installed PSOBB (by default this is /home/deck/Games/phantasy-star-online-blue-burst).

The add-ons are now installed, so you need to pick where you want to play PSOBB: Desktop mode through Lutris, or gaming mode through Steam.

Lutris

1. In Lutris, right-click Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, and click Configure, then Runner options.
2. Scroll down to DLL overrides and click Add, then put dinput8 in the Key field, and n,b in the Value field.
3. Click Save and play!

Steam

(If you're curious, the "Add steam shortcut" option in Lutris just doesn't work, probably because of flatpak permissions, so we have to do the below)

1. Browse to $GAMEDIR/drive_c/EphineaPSO and right click online.exe, then click Add to Steam.
2. Open Steam (in desktop mode), find online.exe, right click it and choose Properties...
3. Change the name to whatever you want, then put the below string in the target box, before what is already there:

/usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable-21.08 --arch=x86_64 --command=wine --file-forwarding org.winehq.Wine start /unix

4. To enable add-ons, put the below string in the Launch options box at the bottom:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b" %command%

5. Exit the box and play!

Some things to keep in mind:

• When playing on the Steam Deck, making sure your Direct3D API is either Direct3D 8, 11 or Vulkan. The others will cause issues on Linux.
• You will also want your resolution set to 1280x800 straight away, or the game may crash. Play in either Windowed or Virtual Fullscreen.
• The game does not accept enter inputs from the on-screen keyboard, so you will need to bind enter to a button on the gamepad.

Let me know if you have any issues with the above, or want any information adding.