Steam Deck: Battle.Net (Non-Steam App) Install, Configure, Separate Launchers and MORE

foreign [Music] [Applause] Shane R Monroe here today we're going to install Battlenet show you how to handle large game installations outside of the proton prefix and we're going to show you how to set up multiple launchers within Steam to point to different Battlenet games while sharing the same core Battlenet install that was a lot let's get busy you'll need to download Battlenet save it to your downloads folder I've already done so so we're not going to do it again go to steam add a non-steam game we're going to hit browse we're going to go to home deck and your downloads folder change file type to all files find your Battlenet setup.exe add selected programs and find it on the list on the left a little searching will probably help and there we have it now before we move further we're going to do something that's a little bit different than my last Battlenet install uh I have learned new techniques and New Tricks so wherever you're planning on storing your Battlenet games either on the internal storage or on your micro SD card go to that location and make a games folder I have a games folder in each of these locations one off of Home deck and then one right on the root of my micro SD card now inside you'll see I've already installed the game's OverWatch and Hearthstone before so I have these games ready to go for when I reinstall bad on that today I don't have anything in this games yet but having one on each side gives you some options okay so now that I've made that game we're going to go ahead and go to our compat data folder now if you don't have these things on the side I highly recommend you configure places to do so if you look in the upper right up here I have a video showing dolphin tricks and tips that's going to drastically make your life a lot easier doing these sorts of tutorials we're going to sort by modified date and you're going to see that the last time a proton prefix was touched was yesterday we're about to change that by running Battlenet now I highly recommend for Battlenet we're going to go to properties for Battlenet set your compatibility to GE proton 7-49 seems to be the most compatible and you'll have the opportunity to change proton versions for other Battlenet games once we add individual steam launchers for those games but for the core install this is what I recommend if you do not have GE proton or glorious egg roll proton you'll need to install it using proton up QT which is installable from the Discover store I'll have a video up here again teaching you how to do that we're not going to go through that exercise for this video alright so now we've got GE proton we are ready to actually do our setup we're going to go ahead and hit play and it's going to run the Battlenet installer now one thing you're going to see right off the bat we're going to go ahead and start this so I can do something else while it's doing its thing you'll notice we just got a brand new proton prefix made just now it's randomized your number won't look the same as this one but this is where battlenet's being installed so now you know that's the proton prefix for battle that's going to be installed we're going to open that up go to the prefix folder and into drive C this is the windows simulated folder this is the quote C drive according to anything running from this proton prefix so when you run Battlenet and you go to your C drive this is what you're going to see so we're going to go over to our home folder or to our micro SD card wherever you decided you wanted to install games we're going to left drag it over here and create a link we've now created a symbolic link between this so-called C drive and this folder anytime you install anything in the C colon backslash games folder it's really going to go over here which is great because it's external to that proton prefix and in fact if you ever have to remove this prefix reinstall Battlenet whatever your games are safely preserved over here okay let's go back to our installation oh yes fine you can install Battlenet exactly where it defaults to and Battlenet will install okay so now battlenet's installed we're almost done here go ahead and log into Battlenet by the way mouse and keyboard this whole thing is a mess right you're gonna have to get through this once folks I have that password go away make sure you hit keep logged in I beg you all right so now we're going to log in okay we could not find any battle leg games all right we're gonna we could go and locate our games right now but let's not do that we're going to solve that a different way yes yes we're going to show you around Battlenet blah blah skip the tour now we're going to go into our settings of Battlenet and what we're going to do is we're going to stay on Game launch to actually exit Battlenet there's several reasons why to do that and we're also going to show a brief countdown because if Battlenet closes immediately it might stop the the proton version from running so we need to have a brief countdown to uh before we close that when clicking X we're just going to completely exit battle on that you don't really need to start battling that when you do your computer remember your login's fine blah blah blah here's The Magic Flute here for you folks change your C program files install go to my file C and select that games now remember games isn't inside the proton prefix it's really over here it's really in your home deck folder it's really in your micro SD folder wherever you chose to put it so now we're going to hit open now this is where it's going to install games now you can scan for games right we're not going to scan for games every time uh no need to automatically create a desktop icon don't limit your bandwidth ever right and that should be pretty much everything you need to alter here if you go to the game itself locate the game select OverWatch and hit open it found it just fine if we go to Hearthstone locate the game select the game and hit open now you're probably saying well Shane I didn't have these downloaded before how do I download it's real simple folks when you click the game and you hit install it's gonna it's gonna basically install to where that default folder was C games which as you know I know I'm hammering this Home Folks it's really home deck games okay so then you would just install it and everything would be fine there's no way I'm installing this right now but that's the idea so now OverWatch and Hearthstone are ready to go now you're not going to get away from using the launcher right let me just stop you right there you're not going to get away without running this you must run the launcher select the game and hit play so we have a couple more things to do though let's go ahead and exit go back to steam okay so this isn't now see battle that's still running in the background here somewhere let's hit stop first we need to figure out what our proton prefix was and we're going to dig ourselves we need to find the Battlenet launcher itself not the installer the actual game launcher which is right here we're going to copy the location go back to here hit our properties browse paste in that location and hit open now instead of going to the setup exe you can see it's now going to the actual Battlenet launcher which is what we want that's fine now it's no longer Battlenet setup let's just call it I don't know easy peasy okay and we'll run it again just to make sure all is well that we actually linked up the Battlenet launcher correctly now if you didn't link up the Battlenet launcher correctly you're gonna have to go through the installer every single time that you run this thing and while it technically will inevitably play the game for you it's a huge waste of your time by the way while we're thinking about it you can go to your downloads folder now and delete that installer you no longer need it say goodbye oh it's getting an update it's getting an update that's normal folks a lot of people right on on Reddit hey every time I every time I open up Battlenet I'm getting updates for OverWatch I'm getting updates for Hearth and I'm getting updates for everything or Hearthstone um that's normal it's it's a quick blurb normally on the PC it happens so fast you don't see it uh in this case see it says it's initializing it's not really downloading anything it's just kind of checking to see if it needs to download something again on the PC normally it happens so fast you don't see it when you're inside a proton like this sometimes you will see those sorts of things okay so now you're saying I need I need OverWatch too in its own window I can't I can't be launching bad on it and then running the games individually I need my own launcher I need custom controls I need a custom version of proton for Diablo 4. blah blah blah okay okay message received calm down calm down I'm going to show you the way I do it there's a million ways you can do this it is Linux after all um but this is the way I like to do it so we know what our Battlenet proton prefix folder is now right um so we could go back to compat data and our latest one is right here all right so now we're going to go back over here we're going to select a compat data on both sides so now we've got this is Battlenet this is battlenet's prefix and then we're going to get a brand new prefix when we set up a new launcher go ahead add a steam add a new game browse into that proton prefix and we're going to select the battle launcher right this is the same this is the same one right this this is the battle launcher it's okay and then we're going to add selected programs all right we're gonna again here's our launcher that we just added now we're going to set the proton we're going to set everything separately this is going to actually be OverWatch two I know OverWatch 2 runs great in 7-49 it has 10 stamp problems in higher versions of proton GE proton this is the one I know works so please if you're going to use OverWatch just use it trust me on this one all right great now here's the problem as soon as we run this as you might have guessed a brand new proton prefix is created we don't really need that as you can see oh well wait a minute how come I don't have any credentials in here that's because it's running under its own totally different prefix all the stuff that you did and saved is gone it's like it's brand new so here's what you do this is this is Battlenet the original one that we set everything up on this is the brand new one we set up for OverWatch too watch this capture this number you can write it down or do whatever you need to do all right I'm just going to copy it to my clipboard then we're going to delete it just because remember now let's go over this real quick there's nothing in here this was specially created to run a game from or a launcher from another prefix we don't need it let's get rid of it now what we're going to do is create a new link to a file or directory the new name is going to be the original name of the proton prefix that OverWatch 2 just installed right we cut it to the clipboard where we really want to send that to is to this location which unfortunately why you got that dialog box open you can't get to so I'm just gonna I'm gonna open up another copy here go back to my compat data and this remember this is the one that we had for our original battle net about 10 minutes ago we're going to copy the location I know this seems a little bass awkward to people but believe me this works well then where'd it go too many windows there we go all right now let's take just a moment to explain what we did here this location houses our original fully installed Battlenet all configured everything is happy this is the proton prefix folder created for OverWatch 2 which we no longer need and we're gonna go ahead and stop that while we're here so by linking this folder to this one everything from OverWatch 2 is going to be seen in here right so we're gonna hit okay perfect now you can see it's a little Sim link going to this folder and that's cool now presumably if we launch OverWatch 2 from here you should log in all of our credentials should be there everything should be as if we were just running our battle net look there it is there's our login everything is hunky dory and you'll see see OverWatch 2 started an update it's not updating anything it's just looking for an update all right so now when we come back OverWatch 2 should be installed and it is Hearthstone should be installed and well it's doing a stupid update it but it's installed so we have OverWatch too sweet now let's go ahead and get out of here now you now you probably already know how to do this for Hearthstone now but let's go ahead and go through the motions anyway make sure that gets stopped add a new game at a non-steam game browse right and we need to go to oh we're already there look at that we're already in our proton prefix for Battlenet oops all files Battlenet launcher same thing as before add selected programs there's our recently added Battlement launch and go to properties change it to Hearthstone compatibility I'm going to use the same thing as I did before now we do have to run it once so that it builds the proton prefix it's going to give us that stupid login again for Battlenet be the same way that happened for OverWatch too this is normal okay right we expected that gonna go back up there's our brand new proton prefix capture the number copy delete it create new link to filer directory the new link is going to be the new proton prefix folder number for Hearthstone once again we're going to have to pop over to we have to pop over to our other copy of dolphin copy location paste it in once again this should be old hat to you by now this is the new proton prefix we created for Hearthstone it's not we don't even need that prefix we deleted it we're going to replace it with a link to the original Battlenet installer prefix folder this is Battlenet this is a shortcut essentially to OverWatch 2. this is a shortcut essentially to Hearthstone now let's make sure it works again please don't leave a comment saying how do I make it Hearthstone launch without battling it it doesn't work you cannot launch the games without launching Battlenet first there are some games in the Battlenet archive that will allow you to launch the game separately without launching Battlenet but eventually it will run out of authentication and it'll say oh you can't you're not authenticated you need to go log into Battlenet again so just get used to it you're gonna launch Battlenet every single time they're not going to let you get away without looking at their storefront every time you want to run one of their games welcome to the wonderful world of third-party digital lockers okay so now we need to actually play these games and make sure they work okay and to do that we're actually going to go back to gaming mode by the way Battlenet crashes all the time just get used to that too sometimes you'll see it sometimes you won't when you do all you have to do is close it and probably during the course of this video the remainder of this video you're gonna see it happen again and I'll show you from gaming mode how to escape that nasty window when it pops up okay we are back in gaming mode and as you can see we indeed have three different launchers let's launch Hearthstone which as you know is just launching the Battlenet launcher right the Battlenet digital Locker a lot of people say why do you call them lockers instead of launchers that's because the word launcher has like 17 uses lockers has one right in this context anyway so that's why I call them lockers it saves some of the problems okay so what a lot of people have said is that um this window is weirdly oriented and when they select a game I can't play it there's no play button where to go very simple and you can do this with the touchscreen I'm using a mouse but if you double click this title bar here ah resize the window yay so now you can actually get to the buttons that you need right so right now this hearthstones being a real bummer because it's trying to pull this uh update down there we go finally got it it's not an update really and again you'll notice that the window went kind of wonky so again just tapping that by the way once you see this is why the launcher is a pain in the butt the launcher likes to take over and do crap in the background when you're not paying attention all right so we were here to play Hearthstone right so let's go ahead and make sure that that starts up and runs foreign that thing would pop up now I'm not going to use the mouse at all I'm going to use the deck itself all you have to do is hit the steam button go down to where it says steam error and hit X that'll close the window and you're back to normal that happens about one out of every 10 launches ish all right so we know that this works I don't play Hearthstone it was the quickest thing I could install so now we're going to exit the game and it's going to completely kill everything including the digital Locker of Battlenet and we're back here now we're gonna go check out the OverWatch okay so we know the game works great let's get the heck out of here again and of course Battlenet will continue to run as a separate instance as well so now we have three copies we have three essentially launchers to Battlenet and this is good there may be some game you want to try on Battlenet without creating an individual launcher for it and you want to use a separate uh control scheme right you may want to have a separate control scheme for that I'm using a gyro assisted scheme for OverWatch 2 where I wouldn't necessarily need that for Hearthstone but if for some reason you hid you I mean you could hide that right you could hide that Battlenet launcher if you didn't want to see it anymore personally I'd keep it around because you never know when you might need it for something now if we go back in and run OverWatch 2 again remember I told you that it would add it to that quick launch they will show up on that quick launcher at the top and now Bing you can just launch it from here you don't have to click OverWatch or whatever so this is a consolation price for making us look at this screen obviously now if you have the amazing decky loader steam DB plug-in steam grid DB plugin right we can make some very short order of adding artwork to this right we can have this OverWatch 2 skinned very very quickly okay now everything's nice clean and happy all right so now you know what you're up to so next time you add another Battlenet game you're going to do the same thing you're going to create you're going to install it through Battlenet right you're going to install it it's going to go in that special games folder you made then you're going to create another non-steam game you're going to point to the original Battlenet launcher inside of the Battlement prefix then you're going to delete that one that folder as we did before and Link it Sim link it over to your Battlenet proton prefix and then you can change the name add all your controls everything you want to do all right listen I hope this video helped you out please like subscribe that notification Bell will ensure you get the latest information on my newest videos just like this one I Am Shane R Monroe thanks always so much for watching and take care

Channel: MonroeWorld

Views: 23,676

Keywords: battlenet, battle net, activision, blizzard, blizzardnet, blizzard.net, launcher, third party launcher, digital locker

Id: Z_HYcdrYR38

Length: 22min 6sec (1326 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023