Apr 112017
 

Since Exagear lets me run X86 applications, the first X86 application I installed was Steam so I could try out some of the lower requirement games to see how they handle on the Pi.

Installing Steam

Because exagear uses a x86 image, you need to modify the apt sources once you’ve installed ExaGear and started the ExaGear ‘guest’.

$ exagear
Starting /bin/bash in the guest image /opt/exagear/images/debian-8
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

You’ll see the default entries for Debian

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main

The non-free and contrib repositories need to be added to the end so the line should look like this –

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie main non-free contrib

After updating the sources.list file, an apt-get update will need to be done so that Steam can be installed.
While the update is going, you may notice that the repositories

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get -y install steam

Playing Games!!

I’ve installed the Linux version of Steam for these tests. Big picture doesn’t work and just crashes XFCE.
For my games testing, I’ve disabled the Steam overlay in case it affects compatibility. I’ve also removed pulseaudio from my installation

Games so far that I’ve tried
Counterstrike 1.6 works, gets between 5-20 FPS on most maps.

Half-Life works, again gets between 5-20 FPS.

Probably a safe assumption that any Half-Life engined game will work.

Osmos works, performance is pretty good, however I did get some screen flickers when I was playing.

Papers Please works, performance is good, but again I got some screen flickering when playing.

Now, for the games that didn’t quite work –

  • Cities in motion starts up, but then crashes after language selection
  • Nation Red starts up, but then crashes
  • Cogs starts up, but then crashes after the first logo
  • Prison Architect doesn’t start properly at all, even in Safe mode.
  • FTL starts up briefly, but then actually crashes the DM and boots me back to the login screen.

And games that didn’t start at all…

  • Race The Sun
  • Uplink
  • Solar 2
  • SpaceChem
  • TIS-100
  • Bridge Constructor Playground

As I try more games, I’ll write more posts as to game compatability.

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  8 Responses to “ExaGear and Steam Games”

  1. Hey SirLagz, I’m triying ExaGear 2.0 on a Raspberry Pi 3
    After installing Homeworld demo https://archive.org/details/HomeworldDemo without problems I can start the game in full screen. Inside the game in video config if I select OpenGL driver the game crashes.
    How you selected openGL on CounterStrike or Half-Life?
    Thanks!!!

  2. Hello,
    It’s some lags in games… Can you make a short tutorial about overclocking on raspbbery, please ?

  3. Hello,
    I just follow your article, and I don’t know why, it dos’nt work on my raspberry!

    After I run Exagear, when I run
    $ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
    I have:
    sudo: nano: command not found

    but if i don’t run exagear, it’s work

    can you help me?
    Thanks

  4. I’m a little bit underwhelmed by Exagear so far. Paid for it, but it seems to be lacking. I hope the team will improve features over time, but as it stands, it’s my regretted purchase of 2018!

  5. Do I have to change the link in the sources.list file when using a newer raspbian, since it is stretch?

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