Currently going from PlayOnLinux to Lutris and so far I like it.
For now I went to the website, looked for an installer for a game, used it and it’s done.
But now I want to install a game where there is no installer yet. (Spoiler: It is Fortnite from Epic Games)
So in PlayOnLinux that was easy: I created a new WINE bottle, opened a shell there to execute winetricks stuff, then ran the EXE installer and PoL suggests some EXEs as links to be started then.
How would I approach this in Lutris? Sure I could write an installer script, but that would be very stressful if I want to experiment and fiddle around with WINE settings to finally get a good bottle for a non-listed game.
My current workaround is to use playonlinux to generate the Bottle and then add the playonlinux startup script (from shortcut folder: ~/.PlayOnLinux/shortcuts) as Linux App.
An import of playonlinux bottles or integration with playonlinux would be such a great feature for the future.
So I don’t know what that PoL thing is all about but you can either add Wine games manually with the add game dialog or help improving Lutris by submitting the game to our database.
Ok, so I missed the start of the thread because I was replying an email notification.
There is no need to use PoL to create wine prefixes, there is a field to specify the prefix in Lutris, if the path isn’t already a prefix, it will be created.
That’s very nice to know! So the best would be taking a new path, which then will be a WINE prefix, play around with it and when I’m done I should look into Lutris documentation to eventually create an install script?
Yes, it’s basically what I do. Prefixes don’t need to be created, just point to a folder and it’s good. From there, you have access to all the wine functionality: executing exes, running winecfg or winetricks…
Once you got your game working, translate the step you previously took to the Lutris scripting format then you’re done!
I’m a bit frustrated … attempted to write a few scripts, but was unable to figure out how to get Lutris to do what I needed. Even when I had manual steps that worked, I could not figure out how to get Lutris to automate them.
I don’t expect Wine to be Windows, and I’d like to help others transparently use apps with just a click. That’s not happening with the tools available.
I’m hoping that some future version of POL or Lutris will be able to handle common issues like disk changes and registry updates if they are scripted, but right now the best I can do is write a script and then tell the person to do a bunch of additional steps manually. At that point, why not just use Wine directly and do all the steps manually? Copy/paste to a terminal, or running a script seems less maddening.
FWIW, I’ve tested and written various custom installation scripts in my professional career. I’m an expert in that I was paid to do it and I know something about how to get it done. If I had the time, I’d join in updating the code on either POL or Lutris but I have my hands full and I can’t make anything to actually help with what’s available now.
If you can be more specific about what you tried to do, we can try to fix that and make Lutris more usable. What do you mean by disk changes and registry updates? We already do plenty of registry editing in our installers, either with winetricks or with regedit itself.
I’d like to spend the next cycle (0.5.x) focusing on making Lutris more user friendly but I need user feedback for that.
