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newer minor version” update your dwarFS installation (sometimes a problem on fedora and nix as the dwarFS packages are outdated)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
  • forgotmyaccthxbye@lemm.eeEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    jc141 member here.

    Glad you like what we do. Some observations: there generally is no unpacking, we use an archiving system which enables users to play without populating their drives with the extracted files.

    Also glad that you find them safe. We started including a scanning result from ClamAV (open source cross platfrom malware scanner) to each new torrent as well as instructions to scan it yourself. And a blake3 checksum for authenticity.

    • FOSSFloss@feddit.chOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I obviously can’t verify if you are a jc141 member but I’ll believe it, I think it’s sicc that you’re adding an antivirus scan to the gamefiles and that the games don’t require extraction.

    • iturnedintoanewt@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Wouldn’t using an additional virtual layer for storage affect performance during load/save and normal asset streaming? I guess this might work for older games, but for newer games I don’t see how performance won’t be hit.

      • forgotmyaccthxbye@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        99% of the games tested are perfectly playable. In cases where its not we can relax the compression settings. And we use zstd which is super fast. Try for yourself and see.

  • 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
        3·
        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
          6·
          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.

  • TrustingZebra@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    I love Linux, use it regularly and even work with it professionally, but gaming is still a nightmare.

    I tried one of these torrents for some small game, and couldn’t figure out how to install it. Then I gave up and bought Spider-Man on Steam, tried to run Spider-Man through Proton but the performance was crap (supposedly it works great on Steam Deck, but not on my NVIDIA laptop despite having all drivers). Finally I gave up and installed a dual-boot of Windows.

    • wolfshadowheart@kbin.social
      4·
      1 year ago

      That’s unfortunate, it really does run well on Steam Deck. I’m dealing with my own NVIDIA issues trying to get hardware acceleration and it’s not been fun at all.

      I cannot say that I love Linux, in fact it annoys me daily lol. I want things to just work and itends up wasting tons of my time to get only part of the functionality I was hoping for. The Steam Deck has been great, though my media server at times has made me wish I never wanted to self-host in the first place lol. (been kicking around various attempts at varying levels of success since 2017). From here, tl;Dr I am very stupid, I’m well aware, but also why is Linux so complicated? It seems counterproductive to need to be so heavily invested in something when it’s goal is to keep you more hands off so you can focus on other tasks?

      I feel like a broken record but I really want some medium between having full control over my OS and things just working. It doesn’t help that there’s OS specific syntax making anything outside of official documentation a hail mary. I’ve no love for Windows either but I’ve only been limited by it a couple times and I just wish I could say the same for Linux.

      Of course, the limitations I’ve reached through Linux are entirely my own incapabilities, but that’s kind of my issue? It seems redundant to have to know the entire ins and outs of it when the point of getting these tools to exist was to mitigate our tasks? I make music, art, I wrote and have a bunch of tech hobbies. I’ve spent time learning, but goddamn I just don’t have the time and as time from the server hobby passes and I’m basically starting fresh. I just want some inbetween from needing to know the entirety of my OS and being locked out of it. It just seems that this hobby more than others, at least for me, needs to have the most consistency while having the least consistent sources of information due to immense level of knowledge that there is as well as the fragmented nature of each distribution.

      On another note, I find it amazing how much easier Docker and its tools are in Linux than it is for Windows. Now that’s funny! And it seems poignant to your issue as well… Some software is made for certain things, and translating that can throw a wrench in things. Docker on Windows, like NVIDIA on Linux, just weren’t made with each other fully in mind and as a result have been made to retroactively “work”.

      Which is really too bad. It’s pretty unlikely that something like Rocksmith2014 will ever work smoothly out of the box in Linux - it can be made to work with lots of work but… You can also just dual boot windows. Unless you’re extremely familiar with the OS, chances seem high that the entire process of downloading and installing Windows then downloading and installing RS2014 will take less than 1/3rd of the time.