AoE2:HD on Debian Linux via Steam Play (Tutorial)

Hey all, I've spent many, many hours trying to get Age of Empires II: HD Edition working nicely on Linux. I'm pretty much there now, so I figured I'd put together a tutorial for anyone trying to do the same. If you don't use Linux and aren't interested in playing AoE2 on it, you can safely ignore this post. If you, like me, are using Linux, and are struggling to get this game working on it, read on.

I'm going to assume that you have a Steam account, have purchased the game on Steam (possibly on Windows), and are familiar with how to open and navigate with a Linux terminal. I'm also going to assume that you don't have extensive experience with Linux and Steam Play, so I'll spell out things as clearly, simply, and obviously as possible. This guide is a bit longer than others you may have come across because of that.

1. Install Steam on Linux, if you haven't done so already.
   1. Download the .deb from Steam's website (https://store.steampowered.com/about/).
   2. Install Steam, you can do so via the command line by running:Install debian package: sudo dpkg -i steam_*.debFix unmet dependencies: sudo apt install -f
2. Enable Steam Play
   1. In Steam, go to Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play, and check the 'Enable Steam Play for supported titles' box. Restart Steam if requested to do so.
   2. Again in Steam, go to Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play, and check the 'Enable Steam Play for all titles' box. Again, restart Steam if requested.
3. Install Age of Empires II: HD Edition. The 'Install' button should now be available. Make sure that you install it to an ext4 partition, not an ntfs partition!
4. Add -nostartup to the AoE2 launch options. To do so, right-click on the game and select 'Properties', then under 'General' click on 'set launch options'. In the box that pops up, enter -nostartup. This stops the video from playing when starting the game, which causes a crash on startup. If you still want to watch the video from time to time, you can find it in your Age2HD folder under Age2HD/resources/_common/movies. You'll probably need VLC Media Player to watch it, for me on Ubuntu 18.04 the native video player makes the whole movie pink.
5. Try running AoE2 at this point. There are a few people around on forums for which it worked here, but it never did for me. If it doesn't work, keep following along. If it does, quit it again and skip to step 8.
6. Configure the AoE2 wine prefix. This is where the commands get a bit harder. There are two folders you need to take note of: the first is the location of the AoE2 wine prefix, and the second is the location of the Proton (Steam Play) installation. For me, the wine prefix was at ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/221380/pfx/, and with Proton 3.16 Beta, the installation was at ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 3.16\ Beta/. Unfortunately, you need absolute paths for these commands.
   1. Install winetricks if you don't already have it: sudo apt install winetricks
   2. Set the wine prefix and wine path. You'll need the paths I mentioned above for this:WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/221380/pfxWINEPATH=$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 3.16\ Beta/dist/bin/wine
   3. Install corefonts: winetricks corefonts
   4. Install DirectX 9: winetricks d3dx9
   5. Install the Visual Studio C++ 2015 Runtime: winetricks vcrun2015
7. Restart Steam and run AoE2 again. Let it install anything it wants to. Then quit it again and follow this guide to the end to clean up the installation.
8. In the Age2HD folder (steam/steamapps/common/Age2HD), do the following:
   1. Rename Launcher.exe (mv Launcher.exe Launcher.exe.bak)
   2. Copy or link AoK HD.exe and rename the copy/link to Launcher.exe (ln -s AoK\ HD.exe Launcher.exe). These two steps (1&2) are critical to fixing the empty multiplayer lobby bug, and also speed up launching times a lot.
   3. Rename the install script 221380_install.vdf so the game doesn't try to reconfigure its installation every time you launch it (mv 221380_install.vdf 221380_install.vdf.bak)
   4. Rename the _CommonRedist folder, again to speed up launching the game (tar -cvf _CommonRedist.tar.bak _CommonRedist && rm -r _CommonRedist)
9. Have fun playing Age of Empires II: HD Edition on Linux, with a working friends list, steam overlay, multiplayer, achievements, and all the other game features you've missed since you played the game on Windows!

Remaining issues:

1. When typing in a text box, text is only visible for a fraction of a second after pressing a key. Otherwise, the whole box appears blank.
2. Text on buttons and in menus appears to lack font smoothing.

If anyone has a solution to the remaining issues, I'd love to add them to this tutorial. I suspect they're related to DirectDraw compatibility.

Extra notes:

1. You can switch between fullscreen and windowed by pressing Alt+Enter. You may need to do this after alt-tabbing out and back in.
2. Steam user Sparks had to disable cpu downclocking when using straight wine (no Proton). They found the command sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance did the trick, while Steam user mahnunchik had to run sudo cpufreq-set -r -g performance instead. Their post is here, and some of my guide is taken from replies to that thread. I imagine this issue would be mostly relevant to laptops, and running these commands could increase power consumption.
3. While I was still using PlayOnLinux+wine, the map would sometimes get stuck scrolling to one side. This was fixed by pressing every arrow key once, but I haven't experienced this since using Steam Play instead.

I hope somebody finds this useful!