Touhou

Touhou Project
is the name of a series of
danmaku
games, also known as
bullet-hell
shooters.
Bullet-hell shooters is a genre of
2D
shooters based on really complex patterns, which are beautiful and interesting to look at, and implies great difficulty, memorizing patterns and fast player reaction.
Touhou Project games are one of the most popular of this genre because—among other things—the in-game world is a giant universe, the music (at least the WAVs in the full version) is spectacular, and—if you have been on the internet for a while—you might stumble upon its curious fanbase, which has produced videos, music,
manga
(Japanese comics) and even unofficial games.
Tip
Despite the difficulty, they can be very addicting games.
Installation
PC-98
games can be played using Linux-native X Neko Project II emulator—
install
the
xnp2
AUR
package.
The following packages only depend on
Wine
to run, and
Timidity++
to play
MIDI
music. They install the free trial versions. You can easily replace the trials with the full game if you have it.
Tip
A
#Python engine
is under development to remove the Wine dependency.
These games have been packaged for your convenience:
Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil —
th06-demo-wine
AUR
or
th06-demo-pytouhou
AUR
Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom —
th07
AUR
Touhou 8: Imperishable Night —
th08
AUR
We need help
packaging
more Touhou games for the
Arch User Repository
. This is a list of games that have free, downloadable trial editions to build off of:
Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power
Touhou 9: Phantasmagoria of Flower View
Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith
Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
Touhou 12: Undefined Fantastic Object
Touhou 13: Ten Desires
Touhou 13.5: Hopeless Masquerade.
Touhou 14: Double Dealing Character
Touhou 14.5: Urban Legend in Limbo
Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom
Touhou 15.5: Antinomy of Common Flowers
Touhou 16: Hidden Star in Four Seasons
Touhou 17: Wily Beast and Weakest Creature
Touhou 18: Unconnected Marketeers
Python engine
Linkmauve
has made an experimental
Python
engine to make the games more portable. See the
pytouhou-hg
AUR
and
th06-demo-data
AUR
packages.
Note
It is definitely not stable, and is more of an outline for an engine than an actual one, but it is interesting nonetheless.
Extra information
Installing the full version
If you have the full version of either Imperishable Night or Perfect Cherry Blossom, you can place them in your home folder, or you can place them in the overlay so that they will work in the liveCD and also get installed to disk.
Tip
.th08
is Imperishable Night Wine prefix folder, and
.th07
is Perfect Cherry Blossom one.
Find the folder with the Touhou game files.
Set your file manager to see hidden files/folders.
Tip
In Cherimoya Dolphin file manager, just press
Alt+.
.
Go to your "Home" folder and find the folders
.th08
and/or
.th07
.
Paste your game files right over the shortcuts in either
.th08
or
.th07
Start your games normally. They will use the full version.
MIDI Music
If you are using the trial edition, they only include MIDI files. To play them, you will also need to install
timidity++
along with some soundfonts (
freepats-general-midi
).
Now add the following lines to the Timidity++ configuration file:
/etc/timidity++/timidity.cfg
dir /usr/share/timidity/freepats
source /etc/timidity++/freepats/freepats.cfg
Remember to
start
the
timidity.service
user unit before playing.
Audio in Windows-era games
If you find that you have no audio in any of the Windows era or later games (Touhou 6 and later), make sure to install
lib32-alsa-lib
and
lib32-alsa-plugins
, and recheck your configuration in
winecfg
. In addition, set the audio in-game to "WAV" mode.
Steam version
You can find games available on Steam from
this
list.
thcrap
The
Touhou Community Reliant Automatic Patcher
(thcrap) is mainly developed to facilitate self-updating, multilingual translation of the
Touhou Project
games on
Touhou Patch Center
, but can theoretically be used for just about any other patch for these games, without going through that site.
The simplest way to launch Touhou games with thcrap is to use
thcrap-steam-proton-wrapper
script.
Download your purchased game from Steam.
Install
thcrap-steam-proton-wrapper-git
AUR
. For
Flatpak
version of Steam install
com.valvesoftware.Steam.Utility.thcrap_steam_proton_wrapper
from
Flathub
instead.
Change your Touhou game launch options. Right click your Touhou games in your Steam library, then click
Properties
. Under the
General
tab, change
LAUNCH OPTIONS
to
thcrap_proton -c
en.js
-- %command%
Checkout the
manual
to launch Touhou games with other languages.
First time launching the game, it will ask you to install thcrap.
After that, it will update thcrap and launch the game. When thcrap window show up, it's recommended you uncheck the
Keep the updater running in background
in the setting, so Steam could properly shutdown the game when you quit.
thprac
thprac
is a tool for practicing. Add
-p
option will install and launch Touhou game with thprac.
thcrap_proton -p -c en.js -- %command%
vpatch
Note
Vsync Patches (vpatch) only works for the executable file from original disk. You need an
.exe
file from original disk, not the steam version. See
this
for purchasing guide.
Vsync patch reduces input delay (game responds more quickly when a button is pressed).
Download the patch from
touhouwiki
.
Copy
vpatch.exe
,
vpatch.ini
and
vpatch_thxx.dll
to your game directory
~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/thxx/
(or
~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/data/Steam/steamapps/common/thxx/
for Flatpak version of Steam).
Open
vpatch.ini
in the game directory with your favorite text editor. We are going to change windows size. For TH10 the default window is very small. First, set
enabled = 1
under
[Window]
section. If using 4K display, set
Width = 2667
and
Height = 2000
. If using 1080p display set
Width = 1280
and
Height = 960
. Based on
this
tutorial. To fix the Th10 Marisa B 3.xx power bug, add
BugFixTh10Power3 = 1
to
[Option]
section.
Make a backup of original Steam executable
~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/thxx/thxx.exe
. This is for convenience, you can always recover it using
verify local data
in Steam.
Replace the
~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/thxx/thxx.exe
with the one you legally obtained from original disk.
Change the Steam game launch option to
thcrap_proton -v -c en.js -- %command%
the
-v
flag let Steam runs
vpatch.exe
.
See also
Running Touhou Games in Linux
Wine PKGBUILD Guidelines
How to use thcrap (Touhou Community Reliant Automatic Patcher) on the Steam Deck
[WIN/LINUX] English Patch with ThCRAP, Plus V-Sync Patch, All From Within Steam