vdsk/bolt

An alternative launcher for your favourite MMO

Bolt

A third-party launcher and helper for your favourite MMO

Installing

For Linux/Steamdeck users, Bolt is available on the following package managers:

• flatpak: com.adamcake.Bolt
• AUR: bolt-launcher

Others should see the "releases" section on the right.

Building

If you just want to get Bolt installed then you don't need to build it from source! See the "Installing" section.

But if you do want to build from source, the first thing you should know is that Bolt is based on Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF), so to build it, you'll first need either to build or download a binary distribution of CEF.

Clone this repository with submodules:

• git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Adamcake/Bolt.git

If you accidentally cloned without submodules (no modules directory), you can checkout submodules like so:

• git submodule update --init --recursive

Place your entire CEF binary distribution folder inside the cef directory with the name "dist", or create a symbolic link with the same effect.

You will need GTK3 development libraries and cmake's pkg-config installed. If building on Linux, the following are also required:

• X11 development libraries (libX11-devel or libx11-dev on most package managers)
• xcb development libraries (libxcb-devel or libxcb1-dev on most package managers)
• libarchive development libraries (libarchive-devel or libarchive-dev on most package managers)

Once that's done, you can start building. Open a command window or terminal in the root directory of this repository, then follow the build instructions for your platform.

Linux

• cmake -S . -B build -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
  • note: build types "Debug" and "Release" are supported
  • note: if you have Ninja installed, specify -G Ninja for much faster builds
  • note: specify CC and CXX env variables at this stage to direct cmake to the C and C++ compilers you want it to use
• cmake --build build
• cmake --install build --prefix build
  • note: the last line creates a staging build in the build directory, this needs to be done between changing and running the program every time
  • note: if a --prefix is not specified, Bolt will be installed to /usr/local, requiring root privileges

After that, the helper script ./build/bolt.sh can be used to launch Bolt from its staging location.

Windows

Windows builds have only been tested using Visual Studio 2022 (a.k.a. Visual Studio 17) in Release mode, per recommendations by chromium/cef. Other configurations may work but have not been tested.

• cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17"
  • note: use -A Win32 instead for 32-bit targets
• Open the .sln file created in the build directory and go to "Build" > "Build Solution"
• Create a new directory and copy all of the following into it: bolt.exe, the entire contents of the "Release" and "Resources" directories from your CEF distribution, and the "html" folder from this repository. Then you can run bolt.exe from that directory.

Mac

Not yet supported

Maintenance

When doing the initial cmake setup step, the following options exist which you may find useful. These are to be used for local development only.

• -D BOLT_HTML_DIR=/some/directory: the location of the launcher's internal webpage content, html/ by default
• -D BOLT_DEV_SHOW_DEVTOOLS=1: enables chromium developer tools for the launcher
• -D BOLT_DEV_LAUNCHER_DIRECTORY=1: instead of embedding the contents of the html dir into the output executable, the files will be served from disk at runtime; on supported platforms the launcher will automatically reload the page when those files are changed

Credit

Icons - Kia
Flatpak integration - @nmlynch94

Disclaimer

Bolt is an unofficial third-party project and is not in any way affiliated with any of the games or companies it interacts with. Said games and companies are not responsible for any problems with Bolt nor any damage caused by using Bolt.

Bolt is NOT a game client. It simply downloads and runs unmodified game clients. Bolt has absolutely no ability to modify or automate gameplay.