Adapted from opekope2/Space Engineers Plugin Loader Linux.md

Info

As I am new to Space Engineers and the plugin community, I was looking for solutions to run the game with plugins on Linux and found little support. I hope this helps others who come after me.

Due to changes in how the new Pulsar v2 is structured in the release zip file, the current version of StarCpt/SpaceEngineersLauncher (v1.0.10) is unable to handle unpacking and installing Pulsar. In addition, the new StarCpt/Pulsar-Installer is not very practical on Linux. The old loader will not be used for Pulsar going forward, so you will need the following steps to get the game working.

Setup

Step 1: Download the latest release of Pulsar.

Make sure to update the version to the latest release in the below url if outdated.

curl -OL https://github.com/SpaceGT/Pulsar/releases/download/v2.0.3/Pulsar-v2.0.3.zip

Step 2: Extract the zip file.

Replace the Pulsar directory path below with the location where you have Space Engineers installed, or wherever you would like to keep Pulsar. I recommend placing it in the same directory as Bin64 (or inside it) so we can easily use relative file paths in the Launch Options in the next step.

unzip ~/Downloads/Pulsar-v2.0.3.zip -d ~/.steam/steamapps/common/SpaceEngineers/Pulsar

Step 3: Update Launch Options.

bash -c 'ARGS=(); exec "${@:0:$#}" "../Pulsar/Legacy.exe" "${@:$#}" "${ARGS[@]}"' %command%

Breakdown of command

• bash -c ' ... ' %command% is run by Steam and passes the original launch command for the game to the inline script.

• ARGS=( ... ) is an array that holds the arguments to be passed to Pulsar:

• exec "${@:0:$#}" ... runs the original Steam Proton command with all arguments except the last (the path to SpaceEngineers.exe) from %command%. Then, the following arguments are passed after:

  • "../Pulsar/Legacy.exe" is run by Proton in place of SpaceEngineers.exe.
  • "${@:$#}" the path to SpaceEngineers.exe.
  • "${ARGS[@]}" expands to the arguments we defined earlier, which are passed to Pulsar at runtime.

• Note: Do not put any arguments after %command%, as it may break.

Optional arguments

You can add these options inside the ARGS=( ... ) array:

• -bin64 "/path/to/SpaceEngineers/Bin64" tells Pulsar where the Bin64 directory is located if it cannot find itself.
• -keepintro Restores the intro video (Pulsar disables it by default).
• -useallavailablecores Forces the game to use all available CPU cores.

Step 4: Launch the game to verify it is working.

Have fun!🎉