Cannot begin game on Native Linux version

[candy]

The native linux version of the game seems to have a completely broken main menu:
* The Begin button does nothing: Can't play the game.
* It is impossible to change any of the settings in any of the sub-menus. The selected options also get stuck and require a mouse input to deselect.
* Main menu also has no sound. I'd wager the game proper might have no sound either.

The game does run with Proton, but I'm concerned about the ominous "game breaking codec issue" the dev alludes to in the pre-launch news post. Additionally, the game doesn't capture the mouse cursor unless I'm in windowed mode, but that's not a big deal.

Any other linux gamers out there that could provide their input?

[Belief Engine]

Hmm! Wild. This is the first report of this I've heard so far with Linux. Something must be going crazy wrong somewhere if the main menu is not even usable.

Can you run DLD again in native Linux (in its broken state), see if the menus still behave incorrectly, and then close it. Afterwards please navigate to this folder:

home/[ username ] /.config/unity3d/Belief Engine/DEAD LETTER DEPT/

zip up the entire thing and send it to me here so I can try and identify any problems
https://www.dropbox.com/request/jZJl9PjLWJXqzClgJuAr
(just give it a fake email or something if it asks for one, otherwise Dropbox will probably start spamming you)

MOST IMPORTANTLY: which Linux distro are you using? And what version of DLD are you on?

As for Proton, the game might be technically runnable, as the game breaking codec issue is less relevant now after I had to force a certain codec across the board. However there will be some odd glitches here and there (like geometry suddenly getting WAY too shiny sometimes, animations not behaving correctly, and so on) and I really can't guarantee it won't randomly explode either.

[Weather ADHD gaming]

Try adding this to your start up commands if you haven't already. SDL_VIDEODRIVER='x11'

[candy]

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

MOST IMPORTANTLY: which Linux distro are you using? And what version of DLD are you on?

I'm on EndeavourOS KDE (arch-based) and, according to the main menu, the game's on version 1.4.

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

zip up the entire thing and send it to me here so I can try and identify any problems
https://www.dropbox.com/request/jZJl9PjLWJXqzClgJuAr
(just give it a fake email or something if it asks for one, otherwise Dropbox will probably start spamming you)

I sent you the folder! Looking through player.log, there's a lot of il2cpp spam and I seem to be missing fmod libraries. I'll see if I can deal with the latter later today.

Originally posted by Weather ADHD gaming:

Try adding this to your start up commands if you haven't already. SDL_VIDEODRIVER='x11'

Unfortunately, this didn't help.

[Weather ADHD gaming]

Originally posted by candy:

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

MOST IMPORTANTLY: which Linux distro are you using? And what version of DLD are you on?

I'm on EndeavourOS KDE (arch-based) and, according to the main menu, the game's on version 1.4.

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

zip up the entire thing and send it to me here so I can try and identify any problems
https://www.dropbox.com/request/jZJl9PjLWJXqzClgJuAr
(just give it a fake email or something if it asks for one, otherwise Dropbox will probably start spamming you)

I sent you the folder! Looking through player.log, there's a lot of il2cpp spam and I seem to be missing fmod libraries. I'll see if I can deal with the latter later today.

Originally posted by Weather ADHD gaming:

Try adding this to your start up commands if you haven't already. SDL_VIDEODRIVER='x11'

Unfortunately, this didn't help.

Do other Unity games function correctly?

[candy]

Originally posted by Weather ADHD gaming:

Do other Unity games function correctly?

They do, through proton. I also realized I don't actually know if I even own another native linux unity game to test this.
EDIT: Apparently, Enter the Gungeon is linux native. That works fine.

[Belief Engine]

Originally posted by candy:

I sent you the folder! Looking through player.log, there's a lot of il2cpp spam and I seem to be missing fmod libraries. I'll see if I can deal with the latter later today.

Thank you.
Yeah wow holy cow that log is 2mb just to get to the title screen. Something is blowing up real good, it's having some sort of specific issue loading FMOD and I'm not quite sure why, but everything sort of bursts into flames afterwards as a result.

Do me a favor can you select DEAD LETTER DEPT. in the Steam Library, right click on it and select "Browse Local Files". Then look in "DeadLetterDept_Data\Plugins" and tell me if these 3 files are in there:
libfmod.so
libfmodL.so
libfmodstudio.so

If they aren't, try running the 'Verify the integrity of the game files' thinger, you can find it by going into the properties of DEAD LETTER DEPT. in steam and look in the Installed Files section. [Maybe just try running that anyways regardless and see if that changes anything...]

[candy]

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

Originally posted by candy:

I sent you the folder! Looking through player.log, there's a lot of il2cpp spam and I seem to be missing fmod libraries. I'll see if I can deal with the latter later today.

Thank you.
Yeah wow holy cow that log is 2mb just to get to the title screen. Something is blowing up real good, it's having some sort of specific issue loading FMOD and I'm not quite sure why, but everything sort of bursts into flames afterwards as a result.

Do me a favor can you select DEAD LETTER DEPT. in the Steam Library, right click on it and select "Browse Local Files". Then look in "DeadLetterDept_Data\Plugins" and tell me if these 3 files are in there:
libfmod.so
libfmodL.so
libfmodstudio.so

If they aren't, try running the 'Verify the integrity of the game files' thinger, you can find it by going into the properties of DEAD LETTER DEPT. in steam and look in the Installed Files section. [Maybe just try running that anyways regardless and see if that changes anything...]

OK, unfortunately it seems like all the libs are indeed inside the Plugins folder. I also verified the game integrity to avail.

[Belief Engine]

Oof, well dang.
Well, the good(?) news is I've installed EndeavourOS KDE (Mercury) and am encountering this problem too. So at least it was easy enough to repro.
Tbh, as it is right now I'm completely stumped on what the hell is going wrong here. I only have a small lead with this thread[qa.fmod.com] on the FMOD forums

I hate to say it but Proton may be your only option for the time being. I haven't fully tested running with Proton myself, but one of my playtesters did manage to play DLD on Endeavour with it, and the video codec problem should no longer be an issue since I've forced everything to just use VP8. That said, it's absolutely understandable if you'd like to just request a refund and try again later.

[candy]

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

Oof, well dang.
Well, the good(?) news is I've installed EndeavourOS KDE (Mercury) and am encountering this problem too. So at least it was easy enough to repro.
Tbh, as it is right now I'm completely stumped on what the hell is going wrong here. I only have a small lead with this thread[qa.fmod.com] on the FMOD forums

I hate to say it but Proton may be your only option for the time being. I haven't fully tested running with Proton myself, but one of my playtesters did manage to play DLD on Endeavour with it, and the video codec problem should no longer be an issue since I've forced everything to just use VP8. That said, it's absolutely understandable if you'd like to just request a refund and try again later.

Hey, I appreciate your honesty and you trying to help. Troubleshooting game issues on linux can be quite challenging!
Grasping at straws, I went to the fmod website and downloaded their latest studio api (2.03.06) and dumped the x86_64 libs into the Plugins folder and now, according to the log, they are indeed being preloaded. Unfortunately, the game still doesn't have sound and the menu is borked even with that.
EDIT: The problem's probably glibc. x[

Don't worry, I've been enjoying DLD with proton no problem! I really dig the vibe and I'm not going to refund just because the linux build is a bit broken. :D Would be cool to eventually get it working, though.

[Belief Engine]

Originally posted by candy:

Hey, I appreciate your honesty and you trying to help. Troubleshooting game issues on linux can be quite challenging!
Grasping at straws, I went to the fmod website and downloaded their latest studio api (2.03.06) and dumped the x86_64 libs into the Plugins folder and now, according to the log, they are indeed being preloaded. Unfortunately, the game still doesn't have sound and the menu is borked even with that.

Thanks for understanding. Now that I've actually tried out EndeavourOS I think it's pretty damn slick, so it's now a goal to find a way to get DLD to run on it. I have a couple complete shot in the dark attempts to try at least.
That's really curious about getting the libs to load, I wonder what would happen if you used the same version I'm shipping with (2.0.1.15)

Somebody also suggested trying to switch to the legacy linux runtime to see if that changes anything. Edit: I had no luck there

Originally posted by candy:

EDIT: The problem's probably glibc. x

Can you tell me more? I'm not super familiar with glibc in this context

Originally posted by candy:

Don't worry, I've been enjoying DLD with proton no problem! I really dig the vibe and I'm not going to refund just because the linux build is a bit broken. :D Would be cool to eventually get it working, though.

Hell yeah, well once again I very much appreciate your understanding. I'm hoping I can find a solution relatively easy. The life of game development is a non-stop sequence of mysteries.

[Squiddy]

This issue appears to be affecting other games too, if it is indeed glibc related.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1129310/discussions/0/604147304925051238/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/504230/discussions/4/601895505111349304/

Valve also updated their games due to the issue
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/6978
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/portal2/issues/451

Upstream bug report: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=32653

Other possible workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1ijlmrg/tip_how_to_run_games_that_depend_on_glibc_240_and/

Don't think there's much a game dev can do right now? Running a rolling release comes with breakages.

[Belief Engine]

Originally posted by Squiddy (GOL):

This issue appears to be affecting other games too, if it is indeed glibc related.

THANK YOU. This is incredibly useful.

After looking through the Celeste thread I've tested running execstack -c on the fmod libraries in the Plugins folder, and that got the game to run correctly, with sound and everything. So that confirms it's the glibc update issue.

I still have to wrap my head around exactly the breakdown of the problem, so I'm not quite sure what MY solution here is quiiite yet. But at least we've identified the clear source of the issue.

[candy]

Originally posted by Squiddy (GOL):

This issue appears to be affecting other games too, if it is indeed glibc related.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1129310/discussions/0/604147304925051238/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/504230/discussions/4/601895505111349304/

Valve also updated their games due to the issue
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/6978
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/portal2/issues/451

Upstream bug report: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=32653

Other possible workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1ijlmrg/tip_how_to_run_games_that_depend_on_glibc_240_and/

Don't think there's much a game dev can do right now? Running a rolling release comes with breakages.

Thanks! All the workarounds didn't do anything except for running execstack -c on the libs. The game seems to function now!

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

Originally posted by candy:

EDIT: The problem's probably glibc. x

Can you tell me more? I'm not super familiar with glibc in this context

It's a bit over my head, but the glibc developers have a history of breaking backwards compatibility for the sake of "security," or whatever. Honestly, this has caused most of the heartache on linux for me, stuff just breaking.

Originally posted by Belief Engine:

I still have to wrap my head around exactly the breakdown of the problem, so I'm not quite sure what MY solution here is quiiite yet. But at least we've identified the clear source of the issue.

If what I read in the bug report is true, this might actually require you to update to a newer fmod library that works with 2.41, as the glibc devs may just refuse to fix this breakage. I think this is a bit unreasonable and might be too much work with little benefit. :[

[Belief Engine]

Thanks for the update candy. Are you going to continue playing via the native version?
If so, let me know how that goes. It seems like the execstack -c might be my only real solution here until glibc comes to a decision on how to possibly introduce backwards compatibility. So I'm going to probably push an update to the Linux build using this tweak and I guess hope for the best 😬

The version of Unity+FMOD I'm using is old enough I doubt they will bother backporting any fixes there, and updating to the very latest of both of those is not going to be a super casual feat.

[Belief Engine]

Update. I reached out to FMOD[qa.fmod.com] to ask about this issue and they confirmed running the execstack command should be a safe and valid solution. So I'm going to try and include this hotfix in the upcoming update (tonight or tomorrow), and then try and update my FMOD project+libraries to the recommended version to eliminate this specific issue from returning in future builds.