Assetto Corsa: How to Play on Linux (Proton & Steam Deck)

Hint for Steam Deck users: This guide works for you, just make your filesystem temporarily writable and install protontricks.

Before starting, make sure you don’t already have existing compatdata for Assetto Corsa: Remove the pfx directory in your SteamLibrary at /path/to/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/244210 if you have it.

The guide currently works as of 06/2022, I’ll do my best to keep it up to date in the future.

Alright, let’s get startet with the game itself.

1. Right-click Assetto Corsa in Steam, go to Properties –> Compatibility, check the ‘Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool’ checkbox and choose Proton 5.0-10 from the dropdown list.
2. Start the game. It will crash, but that’s okay, we just need the folder structure it generates.
3. After making sure you have protontricks installed, open a terminal window and execute the following command, then pick ‘Wine Mono Windows Support’ from the list and remove it:

   protontricks -c "wine uninstaller" 244210

4. Run this to create a new directory and download .NET:

   mkdir ~/ac_temp && cd $_ && curl -L https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/5/A/95A9616B-7A37-4AF6-BC36-D6EA96C8DAAE/dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe --output dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe

5. Run the following commands one after the other. They might take a while to complete.

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 winxp

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 shell

cd -

wine dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe /q

exit

cd ~/ac_temp && curl -L https://web.archive.org/web/20210816191501if_/https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/E/6/9E63300C-0941-4B45-A0EC-0008F96DD480/NDP471-KB4033342-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe --output NDP471-KB4033342-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 win7

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 mscoree=native

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 shell

cd -

wine NDP471-KB4033342-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe /q

exit

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 -q vcrun2015

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 -q d3dcompiler_47

protontricks --no-background-wineserver 244210 win10

Great! If all went well, your game should be able to start now. If you don’t want to use Content Manager, you can stop here and start playing. To get CM to run, you’ll need to complete a couple more steps.

Important: Changing the Proton version and launching the game will break your prefix, so you should always have a backup of your pfx directory at /path/to/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/244210. That way you can just copy back your backup in case you break your prefix, saving you from having to go through all these steps again.

1. Firstly, we need to create a symlink to your loginusers.vdf file so CM can find it. Replace the /path/to in the following commands with the actual path to your SteamLibrary directory:

   mkdir /path/to/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/244210/pfx/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Steam/config
   
   ln -s $HOME/.steam/root/config/loginusers.vdf /path/to/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/244210/pfx/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Steam/config/loginusers.vdf

2. Download Content Manager from https://acstuff.ru/app.
3. Extract Content Manager.exe to your game’s installation directory. You can find it by right-clicking Assetto Corsa in Steam, then going to Manage –> Browse local files.
4. Rename Content Manager.exe to Content Manager Safe.exe. This disables hardware acceleration in its UI.
5. Set the Assetto Corsa launch parameters in Steam to start Content Manager instead. Right-click Assetto Corsa in Steam and paste the following parameters after modifying the paths according to your Steam library location:

   /path/to/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/'Proton 5.0'/proton waitforexitandrun /path/to/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/assettocorsa/'Content Manager Safe.exe'; echo %command%

   Hint: If you have multiple SteamLibrary folders, make sure that the one Assetto Corsa is in has a Proton 5.0 directory. If it doesn’t, you can either copy it over from your other library or point the first path in the command to wherever Proton 5.0 is installed.

6. Run this command and copy the result:

   echo 'Z:\home\'$USER'\.steam\root\steamapps\common\assettocorsa'

7. Launch the game. If you’re on a Deck, run it in Desktop mode for now. It might take a while to launch.
8. Set your installation folder by pasting the result from earlier, then set your player name and exit the launcher.

Nice! Content Manager is set up. Now let’s install the Custom Shaders Patch.

1. Run the following command:

   protontricks -c winecfg 244210

2. Go to the ‘Libraries’-tab, type dwrite into the ‘New override for library’-textbox and click ‘Add’.
3. Look for dwrite in the list and make sure it also says ‘native, built-in’. If it doesn’t, switch it via the ‘Edit’ menu.
4. Press ‘OK’ to close the window.
5. If you still don’t have a backup of your pfx directory, now would be the perfect time to make one.
6. Download the latest version of CSP from https://acstuff.ru/patch.
7. Extract the ZIP file into the root of your game’s install directory (dwrite.dll and the extension folder should be where we put Content Manager Safe.exe earlier).

Enjoy the game! 🙂

Credits: This guide is a mix of a bunch of guides I found online, but ANBAL534 on Github did the bulk of the work, so huge thanks to him! The original icon I used was made by Blagoicons on DeviantArt, I just added Tux.