CrossOver Support - Community Forums

Hi - New to Crossover so apologies for a basic question.

If a game is available on the home screen of Crossover, is there a difference between installing it from there over installing steam and then installing it within the steam install?

Looking to install Deep Rock Galactic ( https://www.codeweavers.com/unleash/deep-rock-galactic ). Any performance differences doing that way rather than installing from Steam instead?

Thanks!

Hi there!

To install a program into its own bottle you will need direct access to those installers like a purchase from Good Old Games (GOG). Otherwise to my knowledge and experience, you need to create the steam bottle to install steam content. That's what I've been doing for over a year now. But to make this simpler in the event of a messed up bottle, as soon as you make a successful steam bottle back it up and store it somewhere so all you need to do is load it and steam is installed ready to rumble.

I hope this answers your question other users if I'm wrong PLEASE correct me I would like to learn as well I was just going off my experiences.

Roars wrote:

Hi - New to Crossover so apologies for a basic question.

If a game is available on the home screen of Crossover, is there a difference between installing it from there over installing steam and then installing it within the steam install?

Looking to install Deep Rock Galactic ( https://www.codeweavers.com/unleash/deep-rock-galactic ). Any performance differences doing that way rather than installing from Steam instead?

Thanks!

If you use the Crosstie (the simple, automated method Crossover provides for installing Windows applications) to install Steam you will get a generic Steam bottle. The bottle will not be optimized for any game you install into that bottle.

If you use the Crosstie for a specific game to install that game, the bottle WILL be optimized for that specific game. Crossover will still install Steam into that bottle for you if it is a Steam game and in some cases you will then have to use that Steam installation to install that game. This is the preferred method because the bottle will have all the components and configuration necessary for that one game to run well.

It is recommended by Codeweavers that you install ONE game into a bottle and ONLY that one game. If that game requires Steam or some other application to run, that's fine. But Codeweavers recommends putting each game (or other application) into its own bottle. Some games work best with different Windows components installed into the bottle, others will NOT work well or at all with those same components. Some games won't work with, for example, D3DMetal but will work with different bottle settings. That's why it's usually best to have each game in its own bottle.

That does make something like the Steam library less convenient because you can't just run the Steam application and use it to launch any game you have in your Steam library and feel like playing at that moment. Instead, you have to launch Steam and that one game from that game's own bottle. But that is the best way to get the best performance from each of your Windows games installed into Crossover.

Thank you both, that's great to understand :)

Hey John!

Thanks for that info! I had no idea I should install one app per steam bottle. I usually have about 2-3 per bottle depending on size. and even then if I don't play the game I don't install it as I have a steam deck. It's mostly RTS and FPS games I install through Steam Bottle.

Very insightful thank you!

-James

Wow, I learned something. Though how would you tell if the Crossover is going to do the steam thing or the direct thing if the game can is on multiple platforms? For example, I bought Guild Wars 2 directly from ArenaNet back in the day when they supported Macs -- there are several advantages to that version over the Steam version. And when I used the Crossover load, I assumed it would load from ArenaNet and it did.

So for other Mac games that died when Apple eliminated 32-bit programs, I created a Steam bottle and then used Steam to install about 6 PC-only games, which seems like the wrong answer. Is the right answer to make 6 Steam bottles and then go into each one and load the game via Steam? Or is it truly automatic for some games: Steam is automatically loaded and then the game via Steam? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said.

At this point, would I be best served to duplicate my single Steam bottle five times, then go into each and delete the other games so it's a one-game (and Steam) bottle? And can the bottle start the game directly without going through Steam (assuming Steam is installed in the bottle)?

I’ve seen this recommendation about creating one bottle for each application before by users and while it can be useful it’s also unrealistic in many cases. If you only have a few apps it’s possible but as a BetterTester and Preview tester I could never do that and in fact never done it and I’ve tested and written over 800 test reports. Each bottle takes at list 500 to 1000MB and with over 700 games in different libraries I would need 350 to 700GB of storage only for Crossover bottles, apart from terabytes of game files.

The manual says ”CrossOver installs Windows applications into bottles. A bottle is a virtual Windows environment (e.g., Windows XP or Windows 10) with its own C: drive, fonts, registry, and software. You can install multiple programs into a bottle, but generally, CrossOver creates a new bottle for each application. Keeping applications in separate bottles prevents them from interacting with or damaging one another. For instance, you could test out a new version of a particular program in one bottle while keeping your original one in another. Multiple bottles are also helpful whenever a specific application requires otherwise undesirable settings”.

It’s as if you would install a new OS for each game you want to play or test even if it doesn’t take as much storage space. With a separate bottle for every game you would need to install the launcher in each and every bottle too which would take a lot of time and space. What I’ve always done without any problems is that I create a new bottle for each of my game launchers (Steam, Epic, EA, Heroic) and install all the games in the same launcher bottle. If you encounter problems it’s easier then to create a new bottle and test the app in a clean bottle. That takes far fewer bottles than the other way around. So if you want to test new versions of any app other than games you can create a new bottle to not mess with your essential apps you use for daily work.

Regarding installing components like DirectX for Modern Games, Nvidia PhysX or others you don’t need different bottles for such extra files either. Nowadays Windows 10 is standard in every bottle and if you install extra files only games that need those files will use them. It will not break other games. You may need a new bottle with other OSs for some apps, like Win 7 for Ubisoft launcher since it doesn’t work in Win 10/11 right now but otherwise Windows 10 can handle both old and new apps. You can even in a few seconds change the OS in the Wine settings if you want to test apps. I created one Win 10 bottle for Ubisoft launcher and when it didn’t work I just kept changing the OS in the Wine settings until it worked with Win 7 instead of creating new bottles.

You definitely don’t need new bottles for the advanced settings like D3DMetal/DXVK/WineD3D/MSync/ESync/Default. You just change those settings for each app/game before you start. In fact that’s what I do when testing games to see which settings work best. If I want to play a DX12 game I choose D3DMetal and if I want to play 32-bit Bioshock Infinite I change to DXVK.

I use Crossties when there is no direct installer available, like for installing Steam client. Otherwise I use the launchers to install games. Steam nowadays also installs missing components itself for each game so you don’t have to worry about forgetting. After that I test for myself which advanced settings are best for the game on my system.

OK, so that sounds better. At one time -- thinking Windows pre-10 versus Windows 10 and 11 -- you had to be careful what lived in the bottle or things would really go wrong. And you still have to figure the best Crossover settings per-game, but you can do that at each launch, if you want, or maybe go with a couple of different (Steam) bottles with those settings preset -- a tradeoff between remembering best settings for each game or remembering which (Steam) bottle that game resides in.

So far, the D3DMetal and MSynch seems to work well for everything I've tried, so I'm happy -- again, so far -- with a single Steam bottle.