Greetings,

Here is the guide I wrote a while back but didn’t quite circulate around except on the Sightless Slayers Discord and as an email to a few friends. It pertains to getting Diablo IV to work with the nvda2speechd adapter.

Assumptions

I assume the following:

  • You are on a Linux system.
  • You have a Steam account and have purchased Diablo IV.
  • You are using the Flatpak version of Steam.

Setup

Install The Steam Flatpak

If you need to do so, remove the --user for a system installation.

flatpak --user install com.valvesoftware.Steam

Install the Game

Fairly straightforward to do from Steam itself; grab a cup of coffee and watch the gigabytes fly by, I guess.

Run the Game Once

In order for the next couple of steps to actually work, you must run the game at least once. Just close it up when you’ve launched it.

Install SAPI

You’ll need to install the SAPI engine to get accessibility to actually start; don’t try using it though since it’s busted on 64 bit Proton.

flatpak --user run com.github.Matoking.protontricks 2344520 -q sapi

Grab a Copy of RHVoice

It’ll be a dummy for Diablo IV to actually communicate with. Copy that into the game’s directory (change the user path to tye system path if necessary).

cd ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/data/Steam/steamapps/common/Diablo\ IV/
cp <path-to-rhvoice-installer> .
flatpak --user run --command=protontricks-launch --appid 2344520 <whatever-you-called-the-rhvoice-installer>

BE WARNED: you must run the installer in the game’s directory so that the Flatpak has permission to read it.

Put DLLS into Place

The last couple of steps are fairly straightforward. Grab a copy of the nvda2speechd library and server and put the 64-bit version into the game’s directory. Additionally, you’ll need the patched version of Tolk that works with nvda2speechd. You may grab it from the stormux archive.. Once you have a copy of that, copy it into the Diablo IV game directory.

Edit the Game’s Configuration File

Now you can change the third party setting to on in the game’s configuration file. Fortunately, that’s not so difficult to do. Open up ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/data/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/2344520/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Documents/Diablo\ IV/LocalPrefs.txt in your favorite editor. Search for “UseThirdPartyReader” and switch the 0 to a 1, and there you go; you’re off to the races.