Sim City 3000 Unlimited – Steam Deck and Desktop Linux Guide

I had problems getting this to run on Desktop Linux; but people gave some tips, and I think I figured it out, and just retraced the steps on both Desktop Linux and SteamDeck.

Run on Steam Deck/Desktop Linux

1. Install game, launch it once so it builds the Proton/Wine data (called “prefix”).
2. Go into game settings, set it to Proton 8, and set launch parameters “-r800x600 -intro:off” (-r800x600 was a resolution that worked on the Deck, on Desktop I used 1280×1024, for example. Intro:off disables the intro which crashes on Proton 8).
3. Now go to Desktop mode and open KDE Discover.
4. Search for Protontricks and install it.
5. Launch Protontricks; if you have SC3000 installed on an SD card, it will ask you to give it permssions to access the SC card first (which is done in Konsole). Otherwise you will directly see a list of your installed games, select SC3000.
6. Now, in Protontricks, “Select the default wineprefix”, then “run winecfg”, which will run the Wine Config for that specific Wineprefix. Go to the Tab “Graphics” and tick the box “Emulate a virtual desktop. Set the desktop size to the same resolution as in the Steam Sc3000 launch parameters, in this case we’ve used 800×600. Click OK.
7. Back in Protonticks, select “Change settings”, which will open a list of Winetricks settings. Scroll down to “renderer=gdi”. Tick that box, click OK. Then just exit out of Protontricks until youre back on the desktop – you should be good to go; launch the game. It should open in a window and be functional.
8. Now you should be able to run the game and switch back to gaming mode and play it there as well.

I hope this works for you as well, it IS a bit tinkery but I went through it twice now, on my Desktop Linux system and the Deck, and it worked both times, so I hope it will work for you.