Before you start

Uninstall any other FTL mods before proceeding!

NOTE This guide assumes your system is using KDE Plasma as the desktop environment (Same as the Steam Deck & Kubuntu) and shows shortcuts and navigation in the filebrowser & apps common to KDE, if you’re using a different desktop environment things might be slightly different but it should be close enough to send you down the right path. One noteable thing Konsole is KDE’s form of the terminal/command line/xterm/gterm/whatever your system calls it.

1. Launch FTL to make sure you’re running the correct version
2. Ensure the version says 1.6.13 in the lower right, if it says 1.6.14 or somehow 1.6.9 you’re accidentally running the Windows version under proton and need to turn off Steam play compatibility to run the native version.
3. Download Hyperspace FTL-Hyperspace.x.x.x.zip from here to your Downloads folder Do not extract this ZIP yet
4. Download Vhati’s Slipstream 1.9.1 for Linux to your Downloads folder Do not extract this tar.gz yet
5. Launch the Steam library
6. Browse for FTL’s local files by right clicking the game in Steam and going to Manage and then Browse local files
7. Navigate to the data folder (if you see FTLGame.exe then you need to stop & go disable SteamPlay compatibility on the title as you have the windows version installed)
8. It should look exactly like this, for an unmodified vanilla install
9. Open the Downloads folder in a new window where we previously downloaded Hyperspace & Slipstream to
10. Right click the Hyperspace zip file and Open with Ark as we need to extract just a few files from it and not everything
11. Expand the Linux folder in Ark by clicking on the little arrow to the left of it.
12. Select only Hyperspace.1.6.13.amd64.so and liblua5.3.so.0 and drag them over to the data folder to extract them there
13. Your data folder should now look like this
14. Open the file FTL with a text editor (KWrite/Kate/Vim/Gedit/etc…) (Or whatever your favorite editor is and it still better be Vim and not Emacs)
15. Modify the last few lines of the file to look EXACTLY like this You must add these two lines before the exec line but after the other export lines

    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$here":${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
    export LD_PRELOAD=Hyperspace.1.6.13.amd64.so
    

    For reference, BEFORE it will look like this:

    export LANG="${LC_ALL:-$LANG}"
    export LC_ALL=
    export LC_NUMERIC=C
    exec "$here/$command.$arch" "$@"
    

    AFTER it must look exactly like this at the end of the file:

    export LANG="${LC_ALL:-$LANG}"
    export LC_ALL=
    export LC_NUMERIC=C
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$here":${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
    export LD_PRELOAD=Hyperspace.1.6.13.amd64.so
    exec "$here/$command.$arch" "$@"
    

    So to be clear you are just adding the two lines but it’s very important you add them before that last line of the file that has exec

16. Save the file & close your text editor

    Slipstream

17. Go back to the downloads folder
18. Right click SlipstreamModManager_1.9.1-Unix.tar.gz and go down to Extract and select Extract archive here
19. Navigate into the SlipstreamModManager_1.9.1-Unix folder NOTE At this point we’re done with the Ark window for Slipstream (but not the other Ark window that has Hyperspace.zip open) we’re also done with any use of SlipstreamModManager_1.9.1-Unix.tar.gz so you can delete it now if you want to free up space.
20. Navigate into the mods folder It should look like this without any mods added
21. Go back over to the Ark window that has the hyperspace zip file open & select Hyperspace.ftl
22. Drag Hyperspace.ftl over into the mods folder of Slipstream NOTE You can now close the hyperspace Ark window and delete Hyperspace.x.x.x.zip from your downloads if you want we’re done with it for good
23. Navigate back up to the slipstream folder (you can click SlipstreamModManager in the title bar like I show here
24. Launch Slipstream by running modman.command (on KDE based environments you can right click and select Run In Konsole) NOTE Your system might be different if you’re not running a KDE Plasma environment, you might have an option like Run in Terminal or your desktop environment might not provide a shortcut for it, you might have to navigate here from the terminal and instead run ./modman.command in the terminal.
25. Slipstream will ask several questions, they should all match what you see here and you can just hit yes to them unless you installed FTL in a non-standard location (such as a second SteamLibrary in Steam) then it might prompt you to find the FTL.dat file.
26. You probably want to select Steam at this option.
27. Your choice, yes/no if you want it to check for updates
28. Slipstream running, check the box next to Hyperspace and hit Patch
29. Say NO to running the game right now, we need to stop here and go disable steam cloud saves & delete the save files to ensure a successful start.

    Disabling Steam Cloud sync & removing old saves

30. Go back to the Steam library
31. Right click FTL: Faster Than Light and select Properties
32. Uncheck Keep games saves in the Steam Cloud for FTL: Faster Than Light This is very important because otherwise it’ll constantly break the game from loading properly
33. Go back to your file browser (Dolphin) select Home on the left hand side
34. Select the hamburger menu in the top right and check Show Hidden Files
35. Navigate into the .local folder
36. And then the share folder
37. Find the FasterThanLight folder, you can back it up somewhere at this point if you want to save your vanilla save
38. Right click FasterThanLight and select Move to Trash It is very important to delete this folder the first time after cloud sync is off as cloud sync results in a save file that Hyperspace can’t read and will result in the game freezing at the end of the loading bar.
39. Launch FTL from Steam
40. You should see a language selector if you deleted the saves correctly.
41. You should notice it says HS-x.x.x x64 in the upper right corner, this indicates the Hyperspace.so file is running The 1.6.13 (Hyperspace x.x.x) in the lower right indicates a successful patching of Hyperspace.ftl with slipstream. You should see BOTH indicators showing hyperspace is running correctly.

Multiverse Install

1. Download the “RAW Files” for Multiverse and not the installer
2. Open your downloads folder
3. Open slipstream’s folder in a new window
4. Open slipstream’s mods folder
5. Move over the two multiverse mod zips
6. Navigate back up to Slipstream’s folder and right click modman.command and Run in Konsole to start Slipstream again
7. You should see something like this, with the Multiverse files missing, don’t panic we need to tell slipstream to see zip files as mods
8. Go to slipstream’s preferences
9. Check allow_zip
10. Apply
11. Now we need to tell slipstream to Re-Scan mods/ under the file menu
12. Multiverse now shows up in the mods list
13. Check both multiverse files but do not select Hyperspace exactly as shown here
14. Hit Patch
15. If patching completed without error, you can launch the game here or from Steam (if you got an error in patching, download the zip files again you might have a corrupted download)
16. First the game loading should show up like this
17. After a short amount of time you should see HS-x.x.x x64 in the upper right indicating the version of hyperspace that is loaded correctly
18. Enjoy the game