Ascension on Steam Deck

[drkalle]

Hello everyone,

in the Discord I have found several ppl asking if Ascension is running on the steam deck.
Since the Steam Deck is very similar to a basic Arch Linux installation I can tell you: Yes it will work on your device.
Warning: You will need some rudimentary knowledge on the linux command line!

Some words in advance: I do not own a Steam Deck, but I verified it works on it with a Steam Deck owner. There might be small things I might need to adjust in the guide(like running AppImages).
Whenever I should get my hands on such a device I will provide you some automated installation scripts as well as controller mappings and an UI tweaked for controllers, but as of now I am unable to test this.

THIS IS UNOFFICAL: Please do not report any bugs or open tickets about this for the developers. It is fancy enough that they provide a Linux client and let me tell you: This is clearly not worth the effort for them. They made it because they have seen some commuity members providing own scripts and they helped us out with this stuff. I guess Linux currently only makes ~2-4% of their userbase.

The installation consists out of two Parts:

1. The launcher - It is required to update the game and install Addons/Mods, etc. It is a
   native Linux (Electron) Application and does not require proton to run.
2. The Game itself: - The game is downloaded by the launcher. You only use it to update the game and install addons --> Do not use the "Play Game" - button.

Part 1 - Launcher Installation:

Step 1: Install the AppImage Launcher which integrates into SteamOS

• If you prefer manual download: AppImage Launcher - Link
• For automatic installation from Command Line:

wget https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher/releases/download/v2.2.0/appimagelauncher-lite-2.2.0-travis995-0f91801-x86_64.AppImage
chmod +x appimagelauncher*
./appimagelauncher-lite-2.2.0-travis995-0f91801-x86_64.AppImage install

• This will create a folder in the home directory of your user --> $HOME/Applications

Step 2: Download Ascension AppImage for Linux

• Move the Ascension AppImage into the newly created folder --> $HOME/Applications

Step 3: Now you should be able to run the Launcher from within SteamOS/Big Picture mode.

• Run the Ascension Launcher and install the game
• Once you have the game fully downloaded you can close the launcher again.

Part 2: Making the game run:

Step 1. Install protontricks:

• Taken from here: Protontricks installation guide

sudo flatpak install com.github.Matoking.protontricks
flatpak override --user --filesystem=/run/media/mmcblk0p1 --filesystem=/home/deck com.github.Matoking.protontricks
echo "alias protontricks='flatpak run com.github.Matoking.protontricks'" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Step 2: Add the Ascension.exe as an external Steam application.

• I think this has to be done in desktop mode.
  At least I could not find any way to do it in Big Picture.
  Go to your libary and select: "Add a Non-Steam Game..."
  

Step 3: Force the use of Proton on this application
Step 4: Run the application once and close it as soon as it starts up
Step 5: Run following commands on the command line:

gameID=$(protontricks -s Ascension |grep -i ascension.exe |grep -Eo "\(.*\)" |sed 's/[^0-9]//g')
protontricks --no-background-wineserver  $gameID dotnet472

Step6: Play the game. It should now be fully functional
Hint: Only start the game via the Ascension.exe you added as external Steam Application. It most likely will not work through the Launcher itself.

Updating the Launcher:
Unfortunatelly on Linux the Launcher Update functionality does not work. Once the Launcher requires an update you will get an error message and you can only "Reload Application".
In this case: Redownload the newest AppImage of the Ascension Launcher and put it into $HOME/Applications. You can delete the old one.

For all the other Linux user:
Doing this provides me double the performance to the basic Installation.
I have had lot of lags on low settings w/o the HD Textures after running the game for more than 15 minutes. Raiding was nearly impossible with 2 FPS.
With this I have everything maxed out and the HD Textures installed and raiding works like a charm.

[Lovelyland]

Steam Deck owner here, I'm actually gonna take the time to go through this and see if this works because I need a MMO.

EDIT: The first step isn't working, I download the appimage and I ran the command but it says no such file or directory.

[drkalle]

@Lovelyland Hey. Probably you did not change your working directory. This is the part about the rudimentary console knowledge I try to get rid of in the guide.
I have changed the commands so they download the AppImage Launcher and now it should work when just pasting it into the terminal.