Steam ↗ installs and updates your games automatically. However, in some cases it may be needed to change local files manually.
Running a game with flags
- right click game, properties
- in general change the Launchh options
The entered command can be anything run from the relative location of the correct folder, but, usually we do not want to alter the run command itself – that one is available through variable %command%.
For adding a flag use
%command% -flag
And for delegating start to a script, use a command like
./start_game_bepinex.sh %command%
Find game files
First, we find where Steam keeps files of a game.
- open Steam game library
- right click game, properties
- installed files, browse
The opened folder will be important later, save the target location.
Steam console
Steam has a hidden console that can be opened by opening steam://open/console in web browser.
This shows a new tab on steam named Console which allows you to input commands directly.
The same can be achieved by running:
steam -console
Downloading an old build of a game
First find App ID, Depot ID, and Manifest ID.
- open https://steamdb.info/ ↗
- find the game
- note that url contains AppID, e.g. https://steamdb.info/app/730/ ↗ has AppID
730 - go to Depots
- find the one you care about and click it
- note Depot ID
- go to Manifest
- note Manifest ID for the version you want
Run command in steam console
download_depot <App ID> <Depot ID> <Manifest ID>
This command does not seem to display progress but will print message when the download is finished. The command then prints the final directory location, which will be similar to the following.
/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steamapps/content/app_730/depot_734
From this location the game can be run directly or copied to the location of the Steam copy. Steam copy may get automatically updated, which may defeat the purpose of doing this, but updates do not verify integrity so overriding the files may just work for you.