Call of Duty Alt Launcher

Call of Duty Alt(ernative) Launcher

A Call of Duty launcher that allows you to play while being offline (and online too) on unofficial launchers like Plutonium and IW4x, mainly developed with Steam Deck in mind and powered by Avalonia. It has controller, touchscreen, mouse/kb support and works on both Linux (through Wine/Proton) and Windows.

The main objective is giving a shortcut to play offline Call of Duty old title on Steam Deck, with an easier to use HUD.

I'd love to support CoD2x and CoD4x too, but they don't support controllers currently, so they're useless for this project.

Oh btw, I'm not affiliated with the Plutonium/IW4x/AlterWare team in any capacity, show some gratitude to the devs!

Requirements

• Call of Duty game files
• Plutonium
• IW4x

How to install

1. Download and extract the CallofDutyAltLauncher.zip from Releases
2. Here's my folders structure in, you can copy it if you want:

├── CallofDutyAltLauncher
    ├── Assets
    ├── config.json
    └── CallofDutyAltLauncher.exe
├── Plutonium
    ├── PlutoniumWAW    # Contains World at War game files
    ├── PlutoniumBO1    # Contains Black Ops 1 game files
    ├── PlutoniumBO2    # Contains Black Ops 2 game files
    ├── PlutoniumIW5    # Contains MW3 game files
    └── plutonium.exe   # Plutonium executable downloaded from Plutonium site
└── IW4x                # Contains MW2 game files with `iw4x-launcher.exe` downloaded from IW4x site

You can change this folder structure editing the config.json file.

3. Add CallofDutyAltLauncher.exe as non-steam game in Desktop Mode.

4. Set Proton Experimental or Proton-GE in compatibility settings, Proton GE is recommended.

5. Add the following line (if you're on kernel < 6.14 or without the NTSync module loaded) on command launch arguments (fsync and esync are known to cause issues with BO1/2):

   PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%

6. With NTSYNC on kernel >= 6.14 and Proton-GE integrating it by default there's no need for these launch arguments anymore. With Steam Deck update 3.7.20 now NTSYNC is available!.

7. Start the program, we need to fill our Proton prefix with the necessary files first:

   • 7a. If you want to play Plutonium offline titles, you must launch Plutonium Online at least once
   • 7b. If you want to play IW4x MP offline, you must launch IW4x online at least once

8. You're done, if you've done everything correctly now all games will be available offline!

Extra

• You need to install through Protontricks the xact audio library to have all Sound FXs on BO1 and WAW
• You can edit config.json from the program itself when clicking/touching on the settings icon on the top right of the screen. You'll probably need a mouse or trackpads for better navigation in settings.
• It's my first dotnet project, have mercy
• Why a Windows launcher and not native Linux? Because I wanted to simplify the whole configuration process, add CallofDutyAltLauncher.exe as non steam game, that's it, no looking for Proton versions, no different prefix for Plutonium or IW4x itself. Just a single prefix with everything related to this custom launcher.

Configuration

There are some editable fields in config.json:

• PlutoniumExecutablePath set your plutonium.exe path
• IngameUsername set your ingame username while playing offline
• T4/5/6/IW5/IW4 FolderPath set your game files path
• CloseAtLaunch exit the launcher when booting the game, or leave it in background so you can open it back later
• DisableBackgroundMusic disable the background music immediately

Building

dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true
robocopy CallofDutyAltLauncher/Native/libvlc CallofDutyAltLauncher/bin/Release/net10.0/win-x64/publish/libvlc /MIR

Todo

• Add Controller support
• Play background music
• Set IW5SP image
• Replace images with higher resolution ones? Meh
• Stop music when launching Plutonium
• Option to close Launcher automatically when launching Plutonium
• Change music (and loop it) when changing game in main menu
• Check if player started Plutonium at least once
• Add support for other clients (like IW4x)
• Replace that horrible settings icon
• Better UI in settings, controller navigation?

Issues

• Blank screen on some windows randomly while using Gamescope, just moving the pointer fixes it, weird
• Black screen with Mangohud enabled on Gamescope