With the Bethesda Launcher shutting down, they've begun the migration to Steam and now some of their classics have become available to download easily.
The titles that have newly arrived on Steam are:
- The Elder Scrolls Arena (free)
- The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (free)
- The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
- An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
- Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (free)
You can play them all pretty easily on Linux and the Steam Deck too. Probably the best way is with the likes of Luxtorpeda, a Steam Play tool that helpfully downloads Native Linux game engines. So you would grab Luxtorpeda (using something like ProtonUp-Qt, see my guide) and set Luxtorpeda on them in Steam and it would do the magic for you.
Luxtorpeda will set Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on Steam to use the far superior ET: Legacy (although there is a Flatpak for this), The Elder Scrolls Arena will use the in-progress OpenTESArena project, and then both Redguard and Battlespire will use a Native Linux version of DOSBox.
As always, just a suggestion, set them up however you want.
Last edited by ridge on 27 April 2022 at 10:38 am UTC
We still need Pirates of the Caribbean from Bethesda lol.Would not work properly with Proton anyway. The engine used in all Akella games is bugged by a very old D3D8 bug.
Daggerfall Unity will probably get added to Luxtorpeda soon as well, there's already a pull request up: https://github.com/luxtorpeda-dev/packages/pull/651This is a great way to play Daggerfall on a modern computer.
Last edited by hardpenguin on 27 April 2022 at 1:13 pm UTC
While it's not via proton this game absolutely does work through (at least custom versions of) Wine including using the "New Horizons" build mod. I've yet to test the maelstrom engine on Linux but that boasts a 64bit directx9 overhaul of the engine.
Last edited by drlamb on 27 April 2022 at 1:33 pm UTC
Huh, is it the native version of Enemy Territory? I still have my physical copy of Quake Wars sitting on my shelf. ET was kind of a game that started a genre and doesn't get the credit it deserves!
Not by default but it's easy to enable in Steam using ProtonUp-Qt and Luxtorpeda as described in the article. It took me just a few minutes.
Huh, is it the native version of Enemy Territory? I still have my physical copy of Quake Wars sitting on my shelf. ET was kind of a game that started a genre and doesn't get the credit it deserves!
Its Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory not Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Wish they would release ETQW on steam, I also have a physical copy, it ran great on Linux (ported by Timothee Besset IIRC) and is still one of my favorite multiplayer FPS games (along with Tribes 2).
While it's not via proton this game absolutely does work through (at least custom versions of) Wine including using the "New Horizons" build mod. I've yet to test the maelstrom engine on Linux but that boasts a 64bit directx9 overhaul of the engine.
Oh wow! Thank you for telling me about this! I will definitely give it a try!
Yeah, I know. It was more of a 'oh yeah, I still have ET:Quake Wars on my shelf, this reminded me." I think I have the physical copy of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory somewhere as well...Huh, is it the native version of Enemy Territory? I still have my physical copy of Quake Wars sitting on my shelf. ET was kind of a game that started a genre and doesn't get the credit it deserves!
Its Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory not Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Wish they would release ETQW on steam, I also have a physical copy, it ran great on Linux (ported by Timothee Besset IIRC) and is still one of my favorite multiplayer FPS games (along with Tribes 2).
Still find it weird that Zenimax bought id, then MS bought Zenimax... and Facebook owns Carmack :P
https://www.etlegacy.com/
Check out D.R.E.A.M mod and its recommended stuff (beware some mods need updating to newer DFU versions)
Wonder why there is no Linux native version available, when we have this?Even wothout that, there were linux binaries released for it. id had a great track record for a long time before Zenimax bought them for having Linux builds. Rage seemed to be the first of many.
https://www.etlegacy.com/
Edit: if you run a Debian based distribution, there is a deb package that will make it easy to take the original assets and builds up a -data.deb package for you to install so that you can play the native version.
https://wiki.debian.org/Games/GameDataPackager
Last edited by slaapliedje on 28 April 2022 at 12:13 pm UTC
I can confirm that the 64bit DirectX9 version of the maelstrom engine does work in my initial testing with the new horizons mod. Shown windowed for screenshot purposes.
!maelstrom engine on linux
I should also note there is an open source engine re-implementation project underway.
storm-engine github
Last edited by drlamb on 29 April 2022 at 12:26 pm UTC
I should also note there is an open source engine re-implementation project underway.I love you friend 😍
store-engine github
Last edited by hardpenguin on 29 April 2022 at 6:56 am UTC
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