Running Petz on Linux

[Rads]

A user in the PL discord asked about playing Petz on linux, so I got called in to point to a tutorial, since that's how I play the game. Unfortunately all of the tutorials I've seen out there didn't take the same steps I took. So I figured I'd write something up myself.

Introduction
Most Linux tutorials use something called WINE, which is a compatibility layer that allows most* Windows programs to be ran on Linux. This tutorial is no different, but instead of installing WINE plainly on your system, I use something called Bottles.
*most, not all! Adobe programs notably don't work. Most games do nowadays thanks to Valve's active efforts, other than those with kernel level anticheat.

Bottles simplifies the installation process of WINE a ton, and allows you to run separate WINE prefixes (think of prefixes as little containment boxes for your games), so you can run different versions of WINE per game, if you plan on playing multiple.

I recommend reading the tutorial in full BEFORE proceeding with following all the steps yourself.


Setting Up

Installing Bottles
bottles is distributed as a flatpak. If you're on linux Mint, flatpaks are enabled and set up by default, so no additional steps are needed here.
Some other distros, like Ubuntu or Arch, require additional setup. Here are instructions for Ubuntu. If you're running Arch... I'll assume you know how to look it up on the wiki.

Once flatpak (and flathub!) are installed and enabled, open up your terminal and paste in this command.

Code: Select all

flatpak install flathub com.usebottles.bottles

This will install bottles using flatpak.

Note: flatpak applications are sandboxed meaning they don't have full system access by default. Flatpaks also are installed in a specific location. On my system this is ~/.var/app, but this could be different on yours.


Installing Petz
This is the easy part! Go grab yourself a copy of petz at petzmainstreet. Unzip the folder to any location of your choosing. I have my copy on a separate internal drive, ~/Documents/Petz/Petz 4 or just plain ~/Petz/Petz 4 works just as well. I recommend putting the actual game in a subfolder of where all your petz files will live, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.

Note: In case you're not familiar with this yet: the tilde (~) stands for your own home folder. My home folder is /home/pals, so when I write ~/Documents/Petz I really mean /home/pals/Documents/Petz. Please mentally replace ~ with your own home folder!


Creating The Bottle

Create the Bottle
Open bottles. You'll be greeted by some menus (I think), just read them and make sure you understand. Click the + symbol in the top left to create your bottle. Just go with the application preset, Petz is more like an application than a modern 3D game, anyhow! I personally set the windows version to windows 10, but in theory any should work.

Wait for the bottle to finish being created, then open it. Click "browse" somewhere at the top. This will bring you to the C:\ drive of that bottle.

This C:\ drive pretty much functions like a normal windows drive, and it is separate from your linux home folder. You'll notice this folder is nested pretty deeply. It's kind of a pain to reach every time.


Symlinking your Petz folder
To remedy that, we're going to symlink the petz game folder you created into the Documents folder of your C:\ drive. This will make the petz folder available in your C:\ drive, while the actual files are in a more accessible place. Think of the symlink as a redirect, they point at the actual files elsewhere.

In the windows drive, go to C:\users\[your name]\Documents, then open up the terminal from there (usually your file manager will just let you right click and open the terminal from that file location, while in that folder).

Type the following

Code: Select all

ln -s ~/Documents/Petz Documents/Petz

Replace ~/Documents/Petz (first argument, WITH the tilde) with the location where you put your game folder. To make your life easier, please use the PARENT folder of the game folder. This allows you to make more petzy files outside of your game easily accessible to the bottle. Keep Documents/Petz (second argument, without the tilde) the same.

The symlink should appear in the C:\users\[your name]\Documents folder of your windows drive. If you open it, your petz game folder should be right inside!

Note: if you used the wrong path (i.e. you needed to use ~/Petz instead) and the linked folder doesn't exist, don't panic. Just delete the symlink in your file manager and run the command with the correct path.


Actually playing petz
Go back to the bottle menu, under "Programs", click "Add Shortcuts". Navigate to C:\users\[your name]\Documents\Petz again, open the game folder, locate the Petz 4.exe, and add that.

Hit the play button. Petz 4 should start now! 🎉


Additional Programs

If you got this far, congrats! You can at the very least play the actual game now. Your files are easily accessible in your home folder... But there's a bunch of other programs that the community has created, a lot of which also are windows only.

Thankfully, most of these run fine with bottles too!
I've not tested all of them. If any of these do not run fine like I expect them to, please leave a comment here and I'll try to keep the list updated. If any of them require additional setup, I might be able to write a guide for them.

PROGRAMS THAT WORK FINE (tested)

• PetzEZLoader
• LnzPro
• Genepoolz
• petzchecker (not an .exe, uses java)

PROGRAMS THAT PROBABLY WORK FINE (untested)

• Pet Workshop
• PetzFlux
• petzbyte (not an .exe, uses python)

PROGRAMS THAT DO NOT WORK

• LnzLive (the downloaded version! the web version is fine)

For LnzLive, I am looking into potentially compiling the app for linux (and helping tabbz with doing the same for future builds) so not all hope is lost there. In the meantime, the web version is excellent still.


Troubleshooting

If at any point you run into issues, please leave a comment here and I'll try to get to it! I am not always active in the petz community, but I am practically on discord non-stop. You can give me a ping in any petz discord we might share (I am at least present in PL, PSC, PAAC and Petzcord).

I may add any common troubleshooting steps here in the future. I also want to add screenshots at some point, if this post being text-only proves to be too confusing!