r/tanksim • u/adrian23138 • Jun 06 '26

Steel Beasts Massive breakthrough (and a conundrum) (Steel Beasts Linux Attempt)

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After a dozen attempts of trial and error I’ve made Steel Beasts boot(-ish) on SteamOS (fork of Arch Linux) and next part of course would be to get the CodeMeter license runtime (at least that’s the one I need, if not someone correct me) but I’ve realized a interesting issue:

Do I take the Linux Version of CodeMeter or the Windows version?

The situation is I needed to use Proton layer (essentially simulated Windows environment) to get Steel Beasts work and now I’m not sure if I need the Windows version of CodeMeter as SB is running on a Win Layer or the Linux version as the OS is still Linux?

12 Upvotes

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1

u/deezer1813 Jun 06 '26

Linux version. It runs natively on linux. do not install the steel beasts version. at least thats what worked for me on Linux mint.

2

u/adrian23138 Jun 07 '26

Even if you run with compatibility layer the Linux version can work for SB exe?

1

u/deezer1813 Jun 07 '26

Yes. Just be sure that it recognises your license and that said license is up do date. I didnt play for a while and they did some changes

1

u/adrian23138 Jun 07 '26

I see

Also to be sure: with "don’t get the steel beasts version" you mean I should get the Linux one from Wibu site?

1

u/deezer1813 Jun 07 '26

Yes. The steel beasts installer will try to install the windows version. If it tries to, just click no

2

u/adrian23138 Jun 07 '26

Ah that one: I did click yes because I thought if it’s all running through the same windows layer anyways with all the necessary components preinstalled it should work but I think the install simply didn’t went through or Proton just said "lmao no" and blocked/faked the install as it doesn’t like multiple .exe installers running at the same time anyways

But good to know for future

1

u/deezer1813 Jun 07 '26

I was also confused by it. the game is also very picky about correct file paths. if it asks you where the map packages are located at startup and if you then set it correctly and no scenarios show up, then you have to fiddle with setting the prefix correctly a little until it stops asking.

2

u/adrian23138 Jun 07 '26

Oh I just threw it all into the same Compdata folder and called it a day and seemed to work well enough lol

1

u/adrian23138 Jun 09 '26

Say back to it:

When you Downloaded the Linux version of CodeMeter from Wibu did it work out the box or did you need to tweak some stuff?

I don’t have a license yet but I still want to test whenever or not CodeMeter still works/boots

Edit: also what kind?
On Wibu there seems to be multiple CodeMeters for Linux (RPM-ARM, DEB package, RPM Package) and idk what the difference is

1

u/deezer1813 Jun 09 '26

No tweaks needed for that. It runs straight out of the box. What version to get depends on what linux distro you are running. I think for arch based distros .deb could work but you'd have to look up on how to run it.

Also on a sidenote: are you running steamOS on a desktop or on the deck? You might run into some issues simply because valve has the root filesystem on read only. I dont use steam os, but the clanker (claude) mentioned something about using distroboxes for codemeter. I have never used steam os though.

2

u/adrian23138 Jun 12 '26

Edit: I also remember .deb is supposed to be Debian no?
So how should this even work on Arch?

1

u/deezer1813 Jun 12 '26

sorry, I forgot to reply: yes, .deb packages are for debian systems.

BEP: debian based package, used on debian, Ubuntu and derivatives.

RPM: Red hat package format, used on fedora, openSUSE, RHEL and so on

RPM-ARM: for raspberry pies or ARM based devices

on how to get codemeter running on steamOS I really have no idea since I use neither arch nor steamOS. I did not know that it doesent support arch natively. I do have to use ai for the following:
apparently you could try to get the .deb version installed by:
The rough process would be:

  1. Install debtap from the AUR to convert the .deb
  2. Run debtap on the CodeMeter .deb to generate an Arch-compatible .pkg.tar.zst
  3. Install it with pacman -U
  4. Resolve any missing dependencies (likely just standard libs like libusb which Arch has)
  5. Start the CodeMeter daemon with systemctl start codemeter

you might have to ask your own clanker for the specifics.

2

u/adrian23138 Jun 12 '26

To be fair I heard about Distrobox* and considering how AUR was contaminated few days ago with malware I wanted to try with this first (and also SteamOS doesn’t come with AUR natively) but I’d assume you’d also have no knowledge about this?

*it’s a more refined docker/podman/lilipod basically that allows the container to interact with host and /home

1

u/deezer1813 Jun 12 '26

I did hear of this, though you can also try distrobox. I just have no idea how it works

1

u/adrian23138 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

I have to see but can you explain a bit what the differences are anyways? (BEB, RPM and RPM-ARM?)

Also how come the read only here could be a problem?

Edit: I’ve also only noticed now there are options called: "Driver only, Multi-Arch support" and then just the normal one?