FAQ

FAQ

This page lists questions you might have about TinkerGame, with an answer to each one. It will be updated as and when more questions come up that might be useful to include here.

Where are the tabs?

TinkerGame's UI is written using Yad, a GTK3 toolkit for making user interfaces for Bash scripts. At present, Yad on Wayland does not support tabs due to a limitation of Wayland. Since TinkerGame attempts to support X11 and Wayland, we can't include tabs in the user interface.

How Can I Install Yad On My Distribution?

Yad is a project entirely independent from TinkerGame (GitHub Link). It is what TinkerGame uses for its UI. Due to a combination of factors, Yad is either unavailable or outdated on several distributions, including popular ones such as Ubuntu and its derivatives. It is possible to compile Yad yourself from source on any distribution, and there is also some guidance available on their GitHub page. This is the recommended way to get the most up-to-date Yad, should it be unavailable from your distribution or package manager.

If you are not comfortable installing Yad from any of these methods, it should also be possible to install Yad using the TinkerGame command line options, tinkergame yad ai.

For more information on TinkerGame and Yad, see the Yad wiki page.

TinkerGame from Discover isn't working

If you installed TinkerGame from Discover (i.e., on Steam Deck) you are using the Flatpak TinkerGame, which is for users of Flatpak Steam only. The Discover page also explicitly mentions that it is only for use with Flatpak Steam.

If you are not using Flatpak Steam, you'll want to install TinkerGame in the appropriate way for your system. For most users, you'll want to install with ProtonUp-Qt.

If you are using Flatpak Steam and you run into an issue, please open an issue. Please note that Flatpak TinkerGame is not supported on Steam Deck.

Will you add 'X' feature?

Maybe! Feel free to open an issue for your feature request, giving as much background and justification as possible. Any technical notes would also be appreciated!

We may not be able to add everything but suggestions are always welcome! If you're really passionate about getting a feature added, feel free to open a pull request, keeping in mind the Contribution Guidelines. Opening a feature request beforehand might be a good idea though, to get feedback on implementation and gauge whether or not a feature is desired. You can mention in your feature request that you would like to work on this issue.

TinkerGame is primarily a hobby project, available free-of-charge as open-source software, so even if a feature is desirable, it may not be added until someone steps up to add it, or until I have time and motivation to work on it.

Why does 'X' feature not work?

The most common cause of specific features not working is that the tool you are trying to use is not installed. This is especially common with native tools like GameScope or MangoHud. TinkerGame does not download and install native tools for you, it is a wrapper menu to help you easily configure options within those tools.

It would not be feasible nor desirable for TinkerGame to bundle or install all tools, as this means we would have to manage keeping these tools up-to-date and maintaining them on each system. Instead, we expect the user to download these tools and have them set up in the correct paths. TinkerGame does not develop these tools, we just allow you to easily configure your pre-installed native tools.

On Steam Deck, some functionality may be missing due to limitations of the read-only filesystem. See the Steam Deck wiki page for more information.

With all of this in mind, if you feel like a feature should be working but it is not, feel free to open an issue.

My mods aren't working!

There could be several reasons why specific game mods aren't working, and unfortunately most of the time it is unrelated to TinkerGame. Please keep in mind that TinkerGame does the legwork to get the modding tools running on Linux, but it does not guarantee actual mod compatibility. TinkerGame is not affiliated with and does not develop these mod tools, and officially these programs are still Windows only. There may be mods that are simply incompatible with Linux.

You can find more information on modding games, caveats, potential workarounds and more on the Modding Wiki Page. If you encounter an issue in your modding process that you are able to fix, please open an issue describing your workaround in detail, and we can get it added to the wiki.

See also the ModOrganizer 2 wiki page and the Vortex Mod Manager wiki page.

Where did Cheat Engine/GameConqueror go?

Previously TinkerGame had support for these two tools, but they were removed due to fear that they could cause invasive client-side anti-cheat software like EasyAntiCheat to ban users. This could also potentially lead to TinkerGame as a whole being flagged as a cheating program, and having TinkerGame installed could risk a ban. As a result, integration with these tools was removed.

Concerns were also raised with the Cheat Engine license not allowing the automatic download and installation, as well as the practices of Cheat Engine. See #618 for more information on the discussion and ultimately the decision to remove these tools.

Hedge Mod Manager won't start / 64bit Mod Loaders crash my games!

Hedge Mod Manager and the 64bit game modloaders depend on .NET 4.8, which is installed using Winetricks. On some systems and in particular on Steam Deck, this installation may fail due to a Wine incompatibility. The failure is inconsistent and does not affect very many users, but it has been reported many, many times over.

The main steps to fix this issue are:

1. Ensure Winetricks is up-to-date, running version 20220411-next or newer.
2. Select Proton 5.0 from the TinkerGame Global Menu to install HedgeModManager, then switch back to a newer version of Proton once installation has completed.
3. If you install a new game with Hedge Mod Manager support, use Proton 5.0 to launch HMM so that Winetricks will install dotnet48 using this version of Proton for the new game.

More details can be found on the TinkerGame Hedge Mod Manager wiki page. As this issue has been reported many times, you are encouraged to do some research and testing beforehand to ensure the issue you are experiencing is not related to this .NET issue.

This problem is unfortunate and can only be properly resolved by a fix upstream in Wine. Once the dotnet48 winetrick can be more reliably installed with Proton, this should become a non-issue.