i run games almost exclusively on linux (nearly 1000 so far). for renpy, this is easy, as most games will already include linux binaries or are trivially runnable under vanilla wine. most windows unity games work ok as well. some engines like RPG Maker MV are not very good.. but sometimes work.
the thing i ran into the most problems with was japanese VNs, so i will provide some tips.
for extracting archives that aren't utf-8 (say, shift-jis for older archives), you can tell unzip to translate:
before:
Code:
$ unzip -t RJ01088802.zip | sed 2q
Archive: RJ01088802.zip
testing: û│ìCé╚Å¡Åùé╠ë─ïxé▌ver1.06/audio/ OK
with translation from shift-jis:
Code:
$ unzip -O shift-jis -t RJ01088802.zip | sed 2q
Archive: RJ01088802.zip
testing: 無垢な少女の夏休みver1.06/audio/ OK
for running japanese VNs, you usually want to run in a japanese locale. on windows this is done with either a system level setting or with the well known locale emulator.
in linux and wine, you can just change the locale with an environment variable
to do this you need to make sure you have japanese locales generated on your system.. see
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or refer to your distro's documentation.
for EUC-JP or SHIFT-JIS, it's a little more uncommon but possible with more work. see
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you will also likely want to install the right font support for a japanese locale as well. additionally, i usually make a separate wine prefix (by hand, without steam or lutris):
Code:
$ mkdir game; cd game
$ export WINEPREFIX="$(pwd)/game"
$ export WINEARCH=win32 # change if 64-bit game
$ wineboot
$ winetricks fakejapanese
$ winetricks fakejapanese_vlgothic
$ env LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8 wine /path/to/game_or_installer.exe
if needed you could also setup DXVK for better graphics performance (lutris can do this), but for most games the performance of the graphics is acceptable.
if you combine this with
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(
which you must run in the same WINEPREFIX) you can get a decent setup for playing even untranslated windows-only japanese VNs only on linux.
