Hello everyone,
I am crossposting this from /c/linux_gaming
I wanted to write a guide on how to play Anomaly on Linux which works as of 19th November 2023.
I use Arch with KDE plasma (and I also tested it with Xfce4) and it works perfectly fine, it even seems to work on Wayland session but I haven’t done extensive testing. It should work for any distro as long as it has what you need. So here it goes.
Step 0: Requirements
You’ll need to have Steam, Protontricks, and obviously the game files downloaded from the official sources
Step 1: Extract the game files
You can put them wherever you want, I personally chose ~/Games/Anomaly/. Essentially put the “.7z” files wherever and extract them, I do this with this terminal command:
7z x Anomaly-1.5.1.7z
and then
7z x Anomaly-1.5.1-to-1.5.2-Update.7z
Make sure to overwrite anything when extracting the 1.5.2 patch
Step 2: Add the game to steam
Open up steam, on the top right go to games > Add a non-Steam game > Browse and then navigate to and select the .exe file, then Add program.
Step 3: Set up Steam compatibility layer
On your Steam library Right click the Anomaly game and go to Properties > Compatibility and click Force the use of a specific compatibility layer and select whichever proton version you prefer. I went with Proton experimental and it works fine. After all of this is done, run it once and wait for it to crash.
Step 4: Protontricks compatibility
Now open up protontricks, I’ll use the GUI via running:
protontricks --gui
Then, select the Anomaly game > Default profile > Install DLL and you’ll want to select these:
- d3dcompiler_43
- d3dcompiler_47
- d3dx10
- d3dx11_43
- d3dx9
- d3dx9_43
Let it install everything then close it and launch the game via steam. You’re set to go.
Me over here using plain Wine like some kinda nerd ;P Nice, clean guide though.
Personally, I install Mod Organizer 2 and launch it from Lutris and it has worked perfectly on Gnome, xfce and plasma on Fedora, Arch and openSuse respectively. I have used as many as 40 mods at a time and it is a pleasant experience. Both 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 work fine for me.
It also works with Lutris, simple archive extraction in your preferred directory, overwrite with 1.5.2, add AnomalyLauncher to Lutris and pick wine-ge-8-24, working directory and wine prefixes in the parent directory of AnomalyLauncher, and the game launches without issues (sometimes I get the prompt that it’s not responding asking if I want to kill it or wait, I simply wait and a few seconds later game starts).
Now, GAMMA is a bit of a pain, and I’m still trying to make it work lol
edit: managed to! Though I had to cheat and run the GAMMA installer in Win (the Python, reverse-engineered one made to work in Linux would always get stuck when downloading one mod because of a CRC mismatch or something similar) and then move everything to my Linux drive. Only slight issue is that, for some reason, ModOrganizer doesn’t actually start the game (or AnomalyLauncher) when I click on Play; I have to click Play, wait a couple seconds and then close MO with the cross, at THIS point I get a window saying “compilin vfc” or something like that, and then the game slowly (very slowly, talking a couple of minutes) launches. No issues in-game though. Also when I quit Anomaly for some reason Lutris doesn’t stop counting playtime, I have to also press on Stop in Lutris for it to actually stop
