Experiences with Septerra Core on Linux

Septerra Core, a 1999 European JRPG for Windows, is declared as working “natively” on Linux both from GOG and Steam. But the “native” version in both cases is in fact just an outdated Wine wrapper that doesn’t work with modern Linux distros any more, and is just useless now.
I’ve been able to play the game perfectly through different Debian-based distros over Steam and Proton on the old Intel-based ThinkPad I’ve been using as my primary driver until recently. But since recently, I’ve taken an AMD-based laptop as my main driver for the time being, and Septerra Core keeps failing on me on this machine.
Over Steam, the “native” version is as useless as expected, but the Proton version now fails, too – whatever I do, it keeps telling me that the game was not installed properly, and fails to start. I wrote in more detail about it at ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/app/253940
Over GOG, the “native” version does literally nothing. There is also a custom Lutris script for it, but the result is the same old nothing – it doesn’t run anything. There is no Lutris script for installing with the GOG’s Windows installer, so I tried to do it manually, and the game starts, but the videos are not working, and in this game they happen to be rather important to follow the story line, but it’s the best I could get so far.
And it’s not only Linux, around user forums I see even Windows gamers are having similar problems with this particular game.
I totally lack the knowledge and skill needed to figure out what’s going on here, and how to solve it.

Does anyone else here like this game, and what are your experiences with it running on Linux?

I’m starting this thread so we can exchange experiences and advices about this particularly mischievous piece of software. IMO it’s a great game once you’re able to play it, but sometimes the biggest challenge about it is actually enabling your machine to run in properly… I hope we can have a good conversation and collect useful information.
Thanks!

I managed to run the game from the AMD machine too, finally!

The Steam version with Proton is what runs, and it seems like it has something to do with the InstallScript.vdf file in the game folder, as suggested by a SteamDeck user at ProtonDB. I was feedling around it after I wrote my OP here, trying to start the game without it immediately after installation, and then again with it, and again without… and eventually the game started and it works mostly fine now – I have only noticed a minor audio issue (some weird audio artefacts) with Proton 9.0-2. I also tried to use Proton 8.0-5, the same I use on the other laptop without any audio issues, and I had to go through some more InstallScript.vdf fiddling for it, but on this machine it was actually worse than with Proton 9, so I went back to v. 9. I haven’t tried (yet) using Proton Experimental or GE… For now I’m happy I can keep playing this game on either machine. :slight_smile:

I strongly recommend SR-Septerra. I’ve played all game without issues. Has two versions: windows and native linux. The windows one runs on wine if you like. In my GOG Galaxy on wine I’ve used the replacer and worked. Plus, SR-Septerra can be configured to your liking: cheats enabled or not, native resolution, windowed fullscreen…

Interesting… I didn’t know about this project. I might give it a try at some point. It would be nice if someone could write a Lutris script for installing the game this way.