Bottles compatibility list

A brief overview on what works for a visual novel. Tested with Bottles following its guide.

• ✅: Verified to work
• ⚠️: with some issues
• ❓: Unknown
• ❌: Broken
• N/A: Not applicable

Tweaks

1. Install Japanese Fonts
2. Enable “Take Focus” in the bottle display settings if needed
3. Disable “Allow the window manager to decorate the windows” and “Allow the window manager to control the windows” in “winecfg” (“Legacy Wine Tools > Configuration”)
4. Change renderer to “GDI” in your bottle settings (under “Display” and “Advanced Display Settings”) to avoid black screen when switching to fullscreen mode
5. Enable “Virtual Desktop” (under “Display” and “Advanced Display Settings”) and configure it
6. Change the prefix Windows version to “Windows XP”, run wmfdist11.exe and change it back to “Windows 10” or install wmp11 with this special codec script
7. Enable DXVK in the executable shortcut settings
8. Install quartz2 with the special codec script
9. Add taskset -c 0 %command% as a launch command to only use the first core of your CPU
10. Add LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 and/or __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=mesa (Nvidia GPUs only) as environment variable(s)
11. Check “DirectSound enabled” in the game top menu and select “DirectSoundWave” in the “Music Setup Menu”
12. For MIDI support, install “Timidity++”, a sound font and add timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os -EFreverb=0 & %command%; pkill -f timidity or timidity -iA -B2,8 -EFreverb=0 & %command%; pkill -f timidity as a launch command in your executable shortcut settings. Then select “Music from MIDI source” option in the game menu bar
13. Change in-game graphics settings
14. Install wmp10
15. Change initial start-up settings
16. Install quartz_dx with the special codec script
17. Configure Japanese locale system wide or for Flatpak then add LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8 and TZ=Asia/Tokyo as environment variables
18. Add PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 as an environment variable to fix audio crackling
19. Install Mangohud and add these commands/environment variables as a launch command in your executable shortcut settings if a game runs at a really high framerate: MANGOHUD=1 MANGOHUD_CONFIG=no_display,fps_limit=60 DXVK_HUD=1 or MANGOHUD_CONFIG=no_display,fps_limit=30,vsync=3,gl_vsync=1 mangohud --dlsym %command%
20. Import this registry file using the registry editor (under “Tools”, in your bottle settings) to change the Windows theme to a more modern one (runners usually come with a similar theme by default)
21. Change runner/DXVK version
22. Install GPU-related dependencies for your operating system to fix some crashes or performance issues. Example for Arch Linux: pacman -S --needed nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils nvidia-settings vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader cuda (Nvidia) / pacman -S --needed mesa lib32-mesa vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader (AMD)
23. Add WINEDEBUG=+wgl %command% &> wine.log as a launch command in your executable shortcut settings (it will create a log file at the executable location)
24. Install quartz with the special codec script, through Bottles or Winetricks
25. Install mciqtz32 and quartz2 with the special codec script

Workarounds

1. Press Alt+F4 during the movie playblack and keep the focus on the small confirmation window to avoid flickering
2. Back up the content of the SAVEDATA directory, delete its content, run the game and restore the files once the main menu appear to avoid a black screen when starting the game
3. When the screen turns black after accessing the game top menu, refresh the screen by hovering in-game menu items
4. If you want to use DXVK, create a bottle using the “Gaming” preset (Wine 5.5), immediately change the Wine version to 8.21 after its creation and install lavfilters741 and quartz dependencies
5. Run the game by changing the desktop resolution during gameplay only: nvidia-settings --assign=CurrentMetaMode="800x600" && bottles-cli run -p game -b 'BOTTLE' && nvidia-settings --assign=CurrentMetaMode="1920x1080" (Nvidia GPUs on Xorg only)
6. On GNOME, toggle fullscreen mode with a keyboard shortcut (you have to configure it in the GNOME setting) if the game doesn’t start in fullscreen
7. Extract audio files from the audio CD, rename and move them into the game directory
8. Use a 32 bit prefix
9. If you get a “Some files didn’t install properly” error message when running a game executable, don’t put special characters in its installation path
10. After updating Bottles, Bottles “Virtual desktop” settings can conflict with program launch options so you’ll have to edit your bottle.yml to fix that
11. Revert to the sdl package from sdl12-compat using your package manager
12. Use an old version of Lutris (like 0.5.9.1) instead
13. Run touch DPLogViewer.ade and touch DPSACT2.ade from a terminal inside the game directory to avoid slow menu transition while in-game (seems common for AliceSoft games)
14. Use lavfilters/lavfilters-j then switch to lavfilters-new/lavfilters-j-new if you encounter any issues

Notes

1. Movies don’t play
2. Game starts in windowed mode

Game-specific information

• “Saya no Uta” remaster requires xact
• There’s a mod for “Cosmos no Sora ni”. Even though it has a GNU/Linux native version, the instructions (tweaks and workarounds) are made for the Windows version of the patch under Wine
• “Imouto Paradise 3” doesn’t have sound during opening playback
• “Kana -Little Sister-” remake uses the same configuration

Suggested Wine versions

If you don’t know which Wine/Proton version might be the best for a particular game, try these ones:

• Caffe 7.7
• GE-Proton 8-6
• GE-Proton 7-55
• GE-Proton 9-5
• GE-Proton 9-7
• GE-Proton 9-9
• GE-Proton 9-10
• GE-Proton 9-13
• Kron4ek Wine 8.21
• Kron4ek Wine 8.15
• Lutris Wine 6.14-4
• Lutris Wine 7.2
• Proton 5.13-6
• UMU-Proton 9.0-2
• Wine 5.5
• Wine 5.10
• Wine 6.3
• Wine 6.0.1
• Wine 6.21
• Wine 7.1-1
• Wine 7.2-1
• Wine 5.0
• Wine 6.0.1
• Wine 9.14
• Wine 9.18
• Wine-GE-Proton 8-5

Suggested dependencies

If you don’t know which dependencies might be needed for a particular game, try these ones:

• d3dx9
• dirac
• dotnet35
• dotnet40
• ffdshow
• lavfilters741
• vcredist2005
• vcredist2008