Piracy on Linux can be even easier than windows with the correct tools, and there is a consistent repacking scene in jc141 so most games are easy to find!

To begin with visit https://github.com/jc141x/jc141-bash/blob/master/setup/readme.md and select the correct language for you then have a quick read.

In summary:

  • Install dwarFS (a read only compression system used on jc141 torrents for quick and efficient unpacking)
  • Install a torrent client (any will do)
  • Find the magnet link, personally i just Control + F then search the json file at https://github.com/jc141x/releases-feed/releases/download/feeds/releases.json however using one of the 1337 sites listed also works (make sure its got the right domain ending)
  • Download the file with your client using the magnet url
  • chmod +x /Path/to/Game/start.{n/e-w/n-w}.sh
  • Run bash /Path/to/Game/start.{n/e-w/n-w}.sh none of the scripts are sketchy but I always check them with nvim before running then the game runs! no proton required if you want to run from steam you can add the .sh as non steam app and run from there

I hope you guys like this as much as I do!

common fixes:

  • “error initializing file system: newer minor version” update your dwarFS installation (sometimes a problem on fedora and nix as the dwarFS packages are outdated)
  • “cannot execute binary file: Exec format error” recheck the file in your torrent client
  • pipes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    I like their work a lot but I wish they didn’t use dwarFS, simply because it’s not easily installable on most distros.

    They suggest Arch or other very up-to-date distros to play their games (and it’s true that you get the best experience with the latest AAA games) but in reality 90% of their releases are tiny indie games (that they insist on compressing with dwarFS) or older games that’d run very well even on a Debian oldstable, it’s a pity they’re kinda cutting out a lot of potential users

    Lately I’ve been playing only small games on my laptop, I’ve been getting the windows gog releases (freegogpcgames.com) and installing them into Lutris, it’s super convenient

    • forgotmyaccthxbye@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      jc141 group member here.

      We use dwarfs in order to provide more features to the users instead of maintaining the status-quo. Even if most of the games are small, at a high scale of quantity the mounting system will be useful to people that want to seed them. There are other various advantages such as overriding game files instead of overwriting them for example when mods are used that way.

      The reliance on up to date systems is mainly because outdated ones can yield different results than what was tested. We also use the new wine vulkan mechanic from wine and plan to replace dxvk with it as much as possible. This makes the scripts more reliable instead of requiring to reach github for the latest dxvk version.

      We dont want to pack any of this open source software with the game files given that they receive updates and it would take away the convenience for the user to use its own compilations and so on.

      Latest wine is of course available on stable distros as well.

      • pipes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        Appreciate the response, I guess my point of view is of a patientgamer, that would not add extra pacman repos just to check out a game…

        But I see how you guys have/want to keep up with the cutting edge to offer serious competition, and so from there the need of standardization and not doubling of the efforts makes perfect sense

        I’m probably in the minority of gamers, but in the majority of linux users, and most of those that I know even forget they can play casually on their machine and instead rely on consoles or secondary pcs for fear of breaking their main system

        In any case your collection is incredible, so if it makes people interested in installing a rolling distro and avoid that windows partition or closed up console, that’s a huge win in my book. Thumbs up 👍🏻👍🏻

        • forgotmyaccthxbye@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          I guess my point of view is of a patientgamer

          We’re very patient gamers as well, when it comes to the games themselves. For example the empress cracks are made by a very sketchy person and we decided to not have any of it’s releases uploaded. This means that we’re instead waiting for someone else to crack denuvo (unlikely) or for it to get removed. The games are also very popular and we’re missing out on some pretty big names.

          Also we look at the rating of games before uploading them and only take into consideration ones held in very high regard (above 85% with some exceptions). It doesn’t really make everyone happy but it makes for more healthy gaming instead of swimming through new games every day. So I’d say we’re patient in many ways.

          you guys have/want to keep up with the cutting edge to offer serious competition

          Back in the day there were people regularly coming to our chat just to ask us why are we bothering with it when windows repackers exist. They compress better and the amount of native games is not significant. Well even if we had the native files for every single game on our list it would barely get past a 20% ratio anyway. We started investing regularly to get native files to help with that.

          • pipes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Thanks for these infos, it’s very interesting to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the “scene”. Makes what you do even more impressive, keep it up 🙂

            And I’m sure if dwarfs gets more popular and well maintained, it’ll get distributed more, so it’s not an issue. Also after commenting here yesterday I tried a quick tiny game (Jetstream) on a debian install and saw that dwarfs release on github comes with a dwarfsextract package that’s usable standalone, no installation required, in a few minutes I was playing the game’s exe bypassing the script.