Hi guys,
SWTOR 5+ runs perfectly fine on a Linux machine. Let me show you how you get SWTOR running on Linux in only a few minutes (not counting download times).
Requirements:
1. An up-to-date Linux (64bit) on your machine
2. A graphic card capable of running SWTOR (I'm on a NVIDIA 1050 GTI OC, but I've testet this with a NVIDIA 610 and it worked with minimal settings) and 8+ GB of RAM
3. The following packages installed: "wine-staging", "winetricks", 32bit libraries (e.g. multilib, depending on your Linux distribution) and a proprietary graphic driver, works best with NVIDIA
4. some basic Linux knowledge
Okay, so let's get going:
1. Download the installer from http://www.swtor.com/
2. Copy it to a folder of your choice, e.g. "swtor"
mkdir ~/swtor
cp launcher.exe ~/swtor
cd ~/swtor
3. create your .wine enviroment (assuming you haven't one setup yet) with "winecfg" command. This will create a 64 bit Linux bottle in your home folder (.wine).
winecfg
if you already have a default wine setup in your home folder, use a wine prefix for swtor. Don't forget to set the prefix everytime you run SWTOR and unset it afterwards. I'll show you how you can do this with a simple script later.
export WINEPREFIX="$( pwd )/wineprefix"
winecfg
Now make sure to check the following boxes under the staging tab: "Enable CSMT for better graphic performance" and "Enable Environmental Audio Extensions"
Check "Emulate a Virtual Desktop" in the graphics tab and set it to your screen resolution for better performance. If you want to play windowed, do it anyway, just use the desired window size instead of the desktop size.
Now close the Wine Configuration window.
4. We need a few native Windows DLLs to run SWTOR so use winetricks to load them into our wine environment
winetricks msvcp90=native d3dx9 vcrun2008 msls31 winhttp
5. We're almost done. Start the launcher
wine launcher.exe
and close it.
6. Now you should have a file called "launcher.settings" in your swtor folder. Open it with an editor of your choice (gedit) and edit the following 2 attributes like this:
, "PatchingMode": "{ \"swtor\": \"SSN\" }"
, "bitraider_disable": true
7. Start the launcher again
wine launcher.exe
and the game should download.
8. The game should install, but it won't run just yet. One more thing, We need a fix for an known issue with some games running in wine. Luckily someone wrote a tool we can use:
https://github.com/aljen/swtor_fix
Download and start the executable swtor_fix.exe with wine every time before you start the game. And yes, we can automate that process, too:
https://github.com/aljen/swtor_fix/blob/master/launcher.sh
It's outdated, but you can use that script and modify it as needed.
Have fun.
If you run in any trouble, please google for answers and check your Linux distros forums first.
BONUS:
StarParse runs on Linux, too!
- install it with wine, you will get an error, ignore it.
wine StarParse-1.0.exe
- make sure you have Java JRE working on your machine
java -version
- assuming you are using the default wine folder: copy the following folder to a location of your choice, e.g. "starparse" - don't forget to change "your username" to your actual username before running the command.
cp ~/.wine/drive_c/users/"your username"/Local\ Settings/Application\ Data/StarParse ~/starparse
- StarParse is actually a Java app bundled for Windows. Who does that, btw? Okay, first, we need to update the client app. You have to edit "~/starparse/app/StarParse.cfg" and change "app.runtime" in line 8 to the path of your Java binary. You can find your Java binary using
whereis java
- now start the the updater with
java -jar ~/starparse/app/starparse-launcher.jar
it will download and update, but fail to start the client. Don't worry. We're on Linux, we start the client manually with:
java -jar ~/starparse/app/client/app/starparse-client.jar
And we are done.