Comment by bsimpson
That link is hard to follow.
Does that effectively replace the .exe parts of a Proton game with an equivalent Linux engine, while letting Steam et. al. manage the artwork/levels/etc?
That link is hard to follow.
Does that effectively replace the .exe parts of a Proton game with an equivalent Linux engine, while letting Steam et. al. manage the artwork/levels/etc?
No, it packages open source game data (which can't be distributed because it is copyrighted) so that it can be installed and will work with the games that already have debian packages.
So in the case of quake (for example) it makes a .deb file, which when installed will create the directory structure in the correct place and put the .pak files, config files, etc. where debian's quake engine package(s)[0] will look for them. This .deb file for the quake game data won't do anything on its own. You need to also install a quake engine, which debian includes.
You can create the game data packages from the installation CD, from a working install directory, or from a Good Old Games installer.
[0] https://packages.debian.org/stable/games/quake