Handheld Tutorial: MapleRoyals on SteamDeck

I will try to be as thorough/hand-heldy/ELI5 as possible so that anyone can get this working no matter how tech-savvy they are.

I've been playing MapleRoyals for a while now in my SteamDeck without any major issues and it's great! The other guide that is posted here seems a bit outdated, so I wanted to post some more info on how to setup MapleRoyals to work in your SteamDeck.

To setup the game you will need to go to Desktop mode in the SteamDeck. In order to get there you can hold down the power button or go into power settings and select "Switch to Desktop" from the options.

Download the MapleRoyals installer

1. In Desktop mode open Firefox and go to MapleRoyals.com
   • You can open the on-screen keyboard pressing the buttons "Steam + X", Move your cursor with the right trackpad, left click with R2 and right click with L2.
2. Download the WZ installer in a folder you remember. The default should be Downloads.
   • I haven't tried the IMG installer, but it should work the same.

Download Bottles

Bottles is the application that allows you to run a Windows application on Linux systems without much hassle. We will be downloading this application to run the game.

1. Open Discover from the task bar and search for "bottles" on the top left.
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2. Once downloaded open it and you should see something like below.
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Setup MapleRoyals Bottle

Now we will tell Bottles how to run MapleRoyals and create it's own bottle for it!

1. Hit the "Create Bottle" button
2. Name your bottle whatever you want. I will be naming mine MapleRoyals. Then select "Gaming" environment and hit "Create"
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3. Before we continue with out MapleRoyals bottles, let's go back to the main Bottles menu and install some runners.
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4. Open the Preferences menu then select the "Runners" tab
5. From there open the Wine GE section and make sure you have download "wine-ge-proton8-24"
6. Now we will go back to our MapleRoyals bottle
7. In the section called "Options" click the "Settings" button
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8. Here make sure to select as Runner the one we downloaded before "wine-ge-proton8-24"; disable DXVK; disable VKD3D; and enable "Discrete Graphics". All settings should match the image below.
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9. On the Display section open the "Adavnced Display Settings" and make sure it looks like the image below. Only "Fullscreen mouse capture" should be enabled.
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10. Performance, Compatibility and Snapshots should be kept the same way. Here are some screenshots of my settings.
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11. Now we can go back, and we will install MapleRoyals.
12. To do this just hit the "Run Executable" button and select your MapleRoyals installer from the Downloads folder (or wherever you downloaded it).
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13. Now go through the installer with all the defaults.
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14. When it's done installing, uncheck the Launch now box and go back to the MapleRoyals bottle.
15. In the Programs section you will now see your MapleRoyals launcher listed.
16. Click on its more options button and then select "Change Launch Options..."
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17. Then enable the "Virtual Desktop" option and hit "Save"
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    • Technically we should be able to set this in the Advanced Display Options in Settings, but for whatever reason it wasn't working for me. So feel free to go back and set that as enabled there as well if you feel like it.
18. You can now press the play button (this is the button right before the more options button we clicked before) to test if your game is running. You will be able to see the Login screen and hear the nostalgic music. IF YOU DON'T GET THE LOGIN SCREEN REVIEW THE INSTRUCTIONS.
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    • Sometimes you can use the in-screen keyboard flawlessly in this step and actually login to further test if it works. Do not fret if you aren't able to do this (I wasn't).
19. We can now hit quit and move on to the next section.

️ Exporting MapleRoyals to Game Mode ️

This step will allow us to run MapleRoyals outside of Desktop mode and in your normal SteamOS environment.

1. For this we will need to go back to the Bottles preferences. In the General tab enable "Steam Proton Prefixes".
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2. This will inform you that you need to enable access to Steam from Bottles. Open the link it tells you to go.
3. The link will open in Firefox and you should copy the first item called "Steam non-Flatpak".
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4. Now open the Konsole application.
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5. Left click to Paste, and then open the keyboard to hit Enter.
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6. Close and reopen Bottles.
7. Now you should see some of your Steam games in the Bottles section.
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8. Go into your MapleRoyals bottle and open the more options button. Select the "Add to Steam" option and you should see a toast message telling you it was successful.
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9. OPTIONAL You can open Steam from inside Desktop mode to confirm that MapleRoyals was added to your library.
10. OPTIONAL Before exiting checkout the last section where I go over how to add artwork to your game when you go into Game Mode. I personally recommend doing this.
11. Exit to game mode. You can hit the bottom right corner icon to peek the Desktop and hit the "Return to Gaming Mode".

Controls mapping and Mapleing

1. Now if you go back into Gaming mode look for MapleRoyals in your library.
   
2. Once you find it, hit the Controllers Layout button.
   • https://i.filehostingsite/nR2DxQ5/IMG-1183.jpg
3. Hit Edit Layout.
   • https://i.filehostingsite/Bg99kT5/IMG-1184.jpg
4. Move to the Community Layouts and find Rex Omnium's layout as a start. Select/download this layout.
   • https://i.filehostingsite/chcbg0w/IMG-1185.jpg
     
   • Try the search functionality if you don't see it in Community Layouts.
5. From here you should be able to edit some stuff. But you can always change this while playing the game. This is my current edited layout for MapleRoyals.
   • https://i.filehostingsite/rdZnmh1/IMG-1187.jpg
6. Now you can hit play and enjoy the game!

✨ Add artwork to your MapleRoyals launcher ✨
This will allow your Game mode MapleRoyals launcher to look pretty among your other games!

1. Open Firefox and visit https://www.steamgriddb.com/ there open the SGDBoop tab on the top.
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2. Copy the Linux (Flatpak) command in Step 1.
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3. Open Konsole, right click to paste, hit enter, input 2 then hit enter again to finish.
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4. Go back to Firefox and test that SGDBoop works.
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5. Enable the SGDBoop buttons.
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6. Search for Maplestory in SteamGridDB and hit the button with the "+" for non-Steam games. Feel free to select any image you like. I chose the MapleRoyals branded ones.
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   • Make sure to add a horizontal image as well as a portrait version. Portrait is for viewing in library and quick-access SteamOS menu, while horizontal is for last game played quick-access SteamOS menu.
7. Search for MapleRoyals and hit "Ok".
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8. If you scroll to the top, you will see Grids, Heroes, Logos and Icons. Select an image for each of those categories.
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9. You can close Firefox and exit Desktop mode. It will now look like this:
   • https://i.filehostingsite/rsHrqYZ/IMG-1188.jpg

 

Hi, thanks for the guide. I managed to complete the installation of mapleroyals but when I try to run it within the bottle on my steamdeck, I keep getting a no such host error. I had this error on my desktop and I resolved it by putting in preferred dns addresses as 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 then flush my ipconfig etc. May I know if you know how to resolve this issue or do what I did on my desktop but on the steamdeck?

 

I’ve seen that error message a couple of times while tweaking, but never had to solve it by changing DNS.

Did you make sure the virtual desktop is enabled in step 17? Also do you have the latest IMG downloaded and installed? Can I know which version you have if not? How did you know to change the DNS? Is there a guide you followed for that? You can always try to change the DNS settings of the steamdeck in the internet options in the OS mode.

I’ll try to fiddle around with the new patch since I haven’t played in a bit. Will try to see if I also get an error or if its an issue with your internet comfig.

 

Curious now, how do you actually log in? I can't seem to type anything into Login ID and Password as it won't bring up the keyboard unless its used in desktop mode XD

 

You can use the same shortcut as in desktop mode “Steam + X” to bring up the keyboard!

 

Beautiful guide

 

This worked. Thank you. Anyone know if you can multiclient? I will be working on getting multiclienting to work for the next few days. I can't hit the "play" button in Bottles while an exisiting client is already running. Hoping if I can just get the game registered twice in Bottles, I can run it twice. Perhaps I'll need 2 separate installations of MapleRoyals registered through Bottles.

Additionally, I have dual booted Windows on to my Steam Deck. I installed MapleRoyals, but I get an unknown error when running it. If I can't get multiclienting to work on Linux, I will attempt to get it running on Windows. I'm going to try such fixes as installing different drivers and DirectX versions. Has anyone gotten MapleRoyals to work on a dual booted Windows Steam Deck? If so, what steps did you take?

If only I had this capability when playing MapleStory way back in the day I'd have never slept. Lol

 

Maybe it's a limitation from Bottles itself? You can also try to run a different client using another app instead of Bottles, i have seen some other guides on other servers to run Maple in Linux machines. So technically you should be able. I just don't know how you are going to switch between clients very easily, and you'll have to play in desktop mode. Let us know if you manage it!

 

It turned out to be quite easy. I just created another bottle named MapleRoyals2 and followed the whole process again. It installed a second instance of MapleRoyals and I can run each in parallel. I obviously have to use Desktop mode but that doesn't bother me as long as I can get the controls mapped properly. Luckily, MapleRoyals is a small filesize so having multiple installations isn't a huge issue. If there's a way to get Bottles to use the same installation multiple times, that would be better, but I am new to bottles so I'm happy as long as it works.

I created three bottles and I can run them all in parallel in case I want to run 3 clients. Now I just need to figure out the controller mapping.

 

Turns out you can just hit "Duplicate Bottle" in the vertical dotdotdot menu and you can have as many MapleRoyals bottles as you like. Super easy way to multiclient in Desktop mode.

 

Actually it turns out that if you launch it from Steam in Desktop mode rather than Bottles, you can just click "Play" in Steam as many times as you want and it will open as many MapleRoyals clients as you like with only one Bottles installation. Lol

 

And the Steam controller setup works when I launch the game from Desktop Steam, so that's handled.

My only issue now is that the on screen keyboard doesnt work when im logging in. I also tried an app in Discover called CoreKeyboard and it didn't work either. Seems that MapleRoyals loses focus when you tap on the soft keyboard. Taps must be registering behind the keyboard, because one way I got it to work was by dragging MapleRoyals behind the keyboard so that the taps were registering behind the keyboard and right onto MapleRoyals. Not a great solution, though.

That said, I can just connect a Bluetooth keyboard and it works perfectly. However, I won't always have one on me, and it can die due to battery loss.

So if anyone figures out how to get a soft keyboard to work on the MapleRoyals login screen on Desktop, let me know. I might just write a script that types it in for me, lol.

 

So it turns out that you can only multiclient through Steam if Bottles is open. If Bottles is not open, you cannot press the "Play" button more than once. But if Bottles is open, you can open as many MapleRoyals clients as you like. No idea why this works.

However, if Bottles is running, my Steam controller configuration for MapleRoyals is ignored. So I changed the controller configuration in the Steam global settings (not just for MapleRoyals) and that seemed to work when Bottles was open.

So as long as Bottles is open, and you set your controller configuration globally in Steam, you can multiclient MapleRoyals in desktop mode.

Some other tips:

Moving the MapleRoyals windows around with the touch screen mouse just puts MapleRoyals in full screen mode. However, you can move the windows properly if you use the physical touch pad to control the mouse, instead.

In Steam controller settings, you can set one of your physical buttons to trigger Alt-Tab in order to switch between the windows. In order to do this, you have to set two buttons to be triggered by tapping the gear next to the input rule. For whatever reason, setting "Alt" as the first input does not work. You have to set "Tab" as the first input and "Alt" as the second input. Unfortunately, if you have a key in MapleRoyals bound to "Tab", it will trigger during this action. You might have to unmap "Tab" in MapleRoyals as a result.

 

After the MapleRoyals software updated on February 10th, 2024, I can no longer get MapleRoyals to run on my Steam Deck. Anyone have any solutions?

 

I also have this issue. The run executable in bottles and selecting the downloaded WZ installer does not work.

 

Is wine version vs patch version compatibility random? If I just try each installer vs each version of wine is it possible I'll find a match?

Anyone know?

 

After some trial and error, I have found that MapleRoyals works on the following runners:

lutris-7.2-2 (recommended) [supports sound but not onscreen keyboard while multiboxing]
caffe-8.21
kron4ek-wine-9.2-amd64

Why do they work? No idea. They also all support multi-boxing, as long as you open MapleRoyals twice directly from Bottles (I will include a guide on how to launch twice from Bottles lower in my comment). I can't get MapleRoyals to launch from Steam in Desktop mode anymore on any Runner, so launching from Bottles seems to be the only way to multibox now. However, all the Runners work when MapleRoyals is launched from Gaming Mode, though that doesn't support multibox.

caffe-8.21 and kron4ek-wine-9.2-amd64 work, but I can't get sound to work on them. However, the Steam Deck On-screen Keyboard works with these Runners, so that's an improvement.

lutris-7.2-2 works and has sound. The one drawback of lutris-7.2-2 is that the Steam Deck On-Screen keyboard does not work when MapleRoyals is launched directly from Bottles. However, it DOES work when MapleRoyals is launched from Gaming Mode. This means if you want to multibox, you'll either need to use a bluetooth keyboard, or use a different runner that doesn't support sound. Another benefit of lutris-7.2-2 is that it has a nice unfullscreen button.

To multibox directly from Bottles, you do the following:
1. Press the start button that looks like a triangle in Bottles (this launches MapleRoyals).
2. Drag the edges of the window surrounding MapleRoyals to make it smaller (if you're using lutris runner you can tap the unfullscreen button at the top right).
3. Switch back to Bottles.
4. Since the triangle play button is now a square stop button, navigate back to the home screen of Bottles by leaving the MapleRoyals bottle page.
5. Navigate back into the MapleRoyals bottle page.
6. Wait a couple of seconds, because the play button will flash between being a play button and being a stop button, for some reason, and you don't want to accidentally hit it when it's a stop button. After a few seconds, it will stop flashing. Very glitchy. Now that the play/stop button is back to being a play button, press it.
7. Drag the edges of the new MapleRoyals window to make it smaller.
8. You now have two MapleRoyals windows open. Congrats. On lutris runner, the Steam Deck On-Screen Keyboard doesn't work, so either use a bluetooth keyboard or use a different runner).
* Optional: set up an Alt-Tab keybind so you can easily switch between MapleRoyals windows. I set mine to one of the buttons on the back.

Happy Mobile Mapling.

 

So the guide above does not work anymore?

 

It does. I had to do a full reinstall. But when you pick wing-ge-proton instead pick one of the ones suggested by Gossamer depending on your needs

 

Thank you for this guide.
Using Lutris as a runner made it work for me.