Finally, Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena!
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena working on Steam Deck / SteamOS
Finally, we can play The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena natively on Steam Deck! Amazing game, one of my all time favorites and well worth a look even today.
Thanks to mesa developers (@twisted89), we can now run it using latest mesa-git drivers. Once this hits SteamOS system, the installation of mesa-git will be unneeded and the game should just run!
For the impatient, there is a way to get it running today, it is somewhat involved but not too complicated. Guide/steps below. You need to be in Desktop mode to set it up but you can play it from game mode afterwards.
Heroic Launcher
Open Discover store, search and install Heroic Launcher. Once it is installed you can run it and then the next part is different depending on the version you own/plan to install.
GOG
If you own AODA on GOG simply log to GOG in Heroic Launcher and install the game. Do not launch it just yet.
Other / Steam
I don't own the game on Steam or have used other ways to install the game but I would assume you can install it either with Steam or by using Add non-Steam game technique for setup. After that look for installation files/folder. Steam version will be somewhere in compatdata and if you install manually it will be where you have put it. There should be ./System/Win32_x86/DarkAthena.exe in there.
For Steam version you migh need to do some extra patching to get the game in working condition due to activation servers being shut down. Look here for more info. I don't own Steam copy so cannot help with that. Since Steam version is installed in compactdata prefix folder, you need to copy the installation folder (not whole prefix but just the Riddick AODA installation in Program Files) somewhere else (/home/deck/Games/Heroic). You're not gonna be using that prefix anyway - you just need the game files!
Next you can select Add Game in Heroic and down there is Select Executable. Browse to DarkAthena.exe (/home/deck/Games/Heroic/Riddick-AODA/System/Win32_x86/DarkAthena.exe).
Heroic Launcher / Steam Client
So now you should have the game in Heroic. You can go to properties and select Proton version. I am using Proton-GE 8-13 but I believe it launches fine with Valve Proton 8 or Experimental as well.
Then you add it to Steam, click on the game icon and then three dots up right, select Add To Steam. Restart Steam client and check that the game is added in Library. Right click it and open Properties, in Shortcut section you will see Target as "flatpak" and then something like this in Launch options:
run com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl --no-gui --no-sandbox "heroic://launch/sideload/8B8fTKVmkpU78NVHfRd3fA"
Modifying launch options (below) is no longer needed, default flatpak mesa drivers are updated and you don't need mesa-git any longer.
You need to edit the Launch options:
FLATPAK_GL_DRIVERS=mesa-git %command%run com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl --no-gui --no-sandbox "heroic://launch/sideload/8B8fTKVmkpU78NVHfRd3fA"
The important part is bold and put a space after %command%, before run. But we're not done yet.
You can close Heroic Launcher now.
Terminal / flatpak
These steps are no longer needed, default flatpak mesa drivers are updated and you don't need mesa-git any longer.
For the next part you need to open Konsole applicaton and type/copy/paste flatpak commands manually. We are just adding a flathub-beta repository and installing mesa-git runtime from there. It won't interfere with anything, takes about 350mb of disk space.
Add flathub-beta repo:
flatpak remote-add --user flathub-betahttps://flathub.org/beta-repo/flathub-beta.flatpakrepo
Install mesa-git packages:
flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.mesa-git//22.08
flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.mesa-git//22.08
flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.mesa-git//23.08
flatpak install --user flathub-beta org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.mesa-git//23.08
Testing
Getting close :) Once mesa-git is installed you can open Steam and try to run the game. Open steam and run the game. It should hopefully just work. I ran it once in desktop mode and then configured it later in game mode (resolution and other video settings). Don't forget to set the artwork using SteamGridDB so it looks nice.