Fill the wiki and show an easy step-by-step tutorial on how to use the program

[Trollwut]

Hi folks!

Don't want to push you. Just guess this would add many new users to your project. :)

I'm not sure if I can find some time this weekend, but maybe I'll test out the software some more and try to get an easy "how to use" together. But don't count on me.

[xomachine]

I would write such a tutorial, but now it's pretty pointless. The wrapper is on early development stage and there are some things that can be changed much. For example latest tests have shown the big diversity of steam ABI between games. So it means that the wrapper will be incompatible with many and many games if it will be set up by usual way. Now I'm making some code generation for test suite that will help to find out how user may launch his game in easy way. As soon as I will manage to create stable version of SteamForwarder I'll start working on the tutorial.

[Trollwut]

Sure mate! It's more like a todo-point I wanted to tell, not giving it any priority. :)

Keen on seeing what this cool tool turns into!

[Fincer]

Well, partially agree. SteamForwarder has several things I'm not sure how they work. That's why I don't use it right now. The questions I have in mind are

1. I assume SteamForwarder requires a system-wide wine installation, right? (I'm not talking about prefixes here)

2. It actually doesn't matter where to put compiled steam_api.dll.so file if just the libary pathes (LD_LIBRARY_PATH & WINEDLLPATH) have been defined in the system, right?

3. Has WINEDLLPATH a fixed location (at least I get nothing with 'export -p' command) which I could utilize instead of manually defining the library pathes?

4. At the meantime, does compilation of steam_api.dll.so work only with a 32-bit version of Linux steam_api.so file? I couldn't compile the file using a 64-bit version.

5. Does native Linux version of Steam client allow me to install Windows games after I've correctly set SteamForwarder up on my system? Or do I still need Wine + Windows Steam Client and then manually move the Windows games into $HOME/.local/share/Steam folder?

6. Any additional command parameters in Steam required to launch Windows game? (such as 'wine...blah blah'?)

[xomachine]

Well, the instruction in README.md is not clear enough, unfortunately.

1. Actually SteamForwarder requires winecompiler on build stage and any wine installation for usage. Only condition: wine should know about steam_api.dll.so.
2. That's right. But libsteam_api.so is also required to be seen by the system, because it is linked against steam_api.dll.so.
3. Normally wine searches *.dll.so in the /usr/lib/wine/.
4. Yes, it's 32-bit only at the moment. I put some build rules for 64-bit target to the Makefile just for testing purpose, but tests were not succeed due to different calling conventions in 64-bit code.
5. No. The Linux Steam client is not able to install any other games but linux. Only thing you can do with linux steam - download depot manually by using steam console. To download windows games, please, use the app_install.py script or steamcmd.
6. You are not able to run the windows game from linux steam. SteamForwarder only allows the windows game to detect running linux steam and interact with it. You should run the game via the run script generated by app_install.py, or manually via wine, but in the last case you also need to set all necessary environment variables such as SteamAppId, LD_PRELOAD and so on...

[Fincer]

Thank you for the quick & comprehensive reply, I really respect that! Your answers clarify things a little bit more and it all makes more sense now.

I'll keep watching this project. I hope it'll improve over time.