Installing NIKKE under Linux

nikke-linux.md

NIKKE on Linux - Complete Installation Guide

First of all, happy new year (maybe?)

Important Warning

Just letting you know ahead of time, your account can be banned! I’ve been playing since the initial post without any issues, but do this at your own risk!

My Configuration

• OS: Arch Linux (Wayland)
• Compositor: Hyprland
• CPU: i7 9700KF
• GPU: RX 7800 XT
• RAM: 32GB

IG Performance: Similar to Windows.

Note: You might have to do some tweaking if you’re using a different distro.

Requirements

• Steam
• Windows (or you can try using an old launcher for the game, it might not work though)
  • Note: It’s just to install the game files; once you have them in your pendrive, you won’t need to use Windows to reinstall the game.
• DWPROTON or Proton GE (I’m using 10-27, but 10-25 and CachyOS Proton also work)

Installation Steps

Optional: Creating the NIKKE Folder Structure

1. Download the windows version on their official website
2. Run the installer with w/e program you’re familiar with. For example, Lutris, Heroic, Faugus, and so on. In my case, I used Heroic to install the game.
3. Just run the initial installer; it won’t download anything, because it’s missing some dependencies from Windows, but it will create a NIKKE folder under your prefix (if you already know where the folder is supposed to be placed in your prefix, you can skip this part)

Required: Main Installation

Initial setup (Only for the first time)

1. Open Windows, and install the launcher. For reference, I installed the whole game (~22 GB), but you can try with just the initial client files…
2. Copy the whole NIKKE directory to a USB or upload it somewhere, idk.

• The folder is inside the c_drive.

Set Up Steam and Create the Wineprefix

1. Back to your Linux, add a game to Steam using one of the launcher executable files, specifically “NIKKE/Launcher/nikke_launcher.exe”
2. Go to properties on the game (in Steam) and set compatibility layer to Proton GE.
3. Launch it once to create the wineprefix.

*Note: you might need to start/cancel a few times, you can see the comments to understand why.*

Copy Game Files to the Wineprefix

1. Find your prefix:

   • If you’re using Steam directly, navigate to the wineprefix that Steam created:

     • It can be found in ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/
     • Non-steam games have a random 10-digit folder name. I recommend sorting by the latest modified to try and find the right folder.

   • If you aren’t using Steam, you will have to find it manually to update the files.

2. Inside of that folder, you will find the wineprefix. Drop the NIKKE folder (from Windows install) into the drive_c folder directly.

Configure Steam Launch Settings

1. Go back to the properties of the game you added in Steam and adjust where it will look for the executable:

• Set the path to the wineprefix steam created, where we just put the NIKKE folder in
• You can also update the “start in” folder, but this might not be necessary.
• Disable Steam overlay just in case

Launch the Game

1. Launch the game through Steam. It will open the launcher, log in like normal, and launch the game.

*Note: you might need to start/cancel a few times, you can see the comments to understand why.*

Congratz, you have NIKKE running under wine!

Known Issues & Troubleshooting

It’s not really plug-and-play, but it’s working for now.

Startup Issues

It’s quite annoying to start the launcher through Steam sometimes:

• Having to start/cancel 3-10 times before the game opens (timeout issue)
• Anti-Cheat complains on first launch, but restarting fixes it.

Minor Bugs

• The launcher will never remember your password. You have to re-enter it every time you launch the game.
• The game also sometimes forgets your server location. You have to select your region at launch when it forgets.
• Sometimes, an anti-cheat error pops up, and it can be mitigated by relaunching the game.
• When quitting the game, you will have to click on “STOP” on Steam.

Possible fixes

• install without windows
• fix restart issue

Note: I can't confirm if any of these fixes will work, but you can give it a try

Long-term Usage Update

For any1 wondering, I have been playing every single day, and it’s still working! No bans so far, and the anti-cheat isn’t complaining at all.

@nyxloom nice! I've been using my main account since new year, no problems so far

@HawaiianPizza, honestly I got that launch option from AI because I was just desperate to get things working when i saw that anti-cheat box lol. Looking more into that now it seems that winemenubuilder.exe is a program that will create desktop shortcuts and other files that a program might request to be created, (I'm not really sure here but I imagine there is maybe some way to do this in windows and this is a program to support that feature or something like that). Regardless it doesn't seem like it really has an effect on the anti-cheat. Also I do appreciate the observation that re-launching the game over and over can eventually result in a run where the anti-cheat doesn't throw an error. It is rather annoying though. It took me around 4 times.

Before I knew that would work what I had been doing was creating a new wineprefix (via steam) every time I got the anti-cheat error. Interestingly enough when I would launch the game after doing this I usually wouldn't get the error. I suppose I could have just gotten lucky, or maybe there is some file or something that might me tipping off the Anti-cheat? It is evident that there is some sort of cache files because it saves our server location and email (but not password?), maybe there is something here that is causing issues?

If I get time I might look into what files are being created when the game launches / is running, to maybe get a better idea of what might be causing problems.

Either way the way I see it is the anti-cheat is seeing something that it doesn't like, but the odd part is that it doesn't seem to trigger consistently (at least based on what I've seen). It does seem to trigger more times than not. It also makes me wonder if the launcher not launching sometimes is also the anti-cheat triggering? (I don't think so because when it triggers in the game it only closes the game and not the launcher).

Thanks for the helpful guide!

I managed to get rid of the pesky ACE error dialog box. I've launched the game around ten times across multiple fresh boots and it is still working fine! The game runs like a charm on every first attempt. Curious to hear if this works for others as well!

For context, I am using the latest Proton-GE to run NIKKE via Steam. I installed NIKKE via Lutris and simply added the NIKKE launcher.exe as a Steam shortcut. No unique launch options are present and I have steam overlay disabled.

What I think might be going wrong

Since the ACE service sometimes works after multiple attempts of launching NIKKE, I assume there is some kind of race condition going on. This might happen because ACE is trying to initialize its "kernel-space" driver (which doesn't work on Linux) before the "user-space" bridge is ready (from Steam/Proton). If the service gets stuck in a "Start-Pending" state, the game fails. After deliberating with Gemini, it seems we can fix this by stopping ACE from trying to auto-start so the game can handle the timing itself.

The steps I took to fix it

1. Open a terminal.

2. Open the Registry Editor for the NIKKE prefix using protontricks: protontricks 2192128374 regedit (In this case, 2192128374 is the identifier for my NIKKE prefix. Replace this with your prefix identifier. If you don't have protontricks yet and you are on Arch Linux, run sudo pacman -S protontricks).

3. Navigate to the Services key by going to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\

4. Modify the ACE Services: Look for the keys ACE-Base, AntiCheatExpert, and/or SFA. Inside each one:

• Find the Start DWORD.

• Right-click and Modify.

• Change the value data to 4 (This disables the service by default until it gets started externally).

5. Close the registry editor and run this in your terminal to force the prefix to refresh: wineserver -k

6. Launch the game.

Side note: After changing the Start DWORD values to 4 and launching NIKKE I noticed that the Start DWORD gets set back to (in my case) 3. This doesn't seem to be a problem though, as the game boots up fine after I changed it to 4 initially. I think by setting the Start DWORD to 4 some kind of internal re-registration happens in the registry when starting the game, which fixes some things. However, this requires further investigation.. I'm just glad I can play without having to boot the game multiple times :)

Sadly, the comment above doesn't really help in my case. ACE always seems to kick me if Steam has been running for too long. Restarting Steam or my PC does work, though, so that's usually what I end up doing.

Just run the initial installer; it won’t download anything, because it’s missing some dependencies from Windows, but it will create a NIKKE folder under your prefix (if you already know where the folder is supposed to be placed in your prefix, you can skip this part)

I was able to get the installer to run under wine, there was a bug that caused it to stall:
https://github.com/Dorin130/li-launcher-wine-fix
Check it out if you'd rather do that over cloning files from Windows. Unsure why it doesn't work under proton, further debugging leads me to believe its proton bug, but I am very unsure... Fixed
Hopefully it will also work when the client needs updates🤞.

This has me thinking. Why is there an integrated Steam login for the NIKKE launcher? Are they planning a Steam release?

Most likely not. What you're seeing is probably a carryover from the publisher (Tencent/Level Infinite) reusing the same launcher across multiple games, some of which were released on Steam.

I managed to get it working with this proton Version:
https://dawn.wine/dawn-winery/dwproton/releases
No starting problems and no anti cheat problems.