[Solved] XCOM not starting on Linux (crash after EU/EW selection menu)

[astenu]

Hi, guys I just came here to share the solution annoing problem with starting the game on linux (namely Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon, I guess it'd be the same on Ubuntu). The game most of the times just closed right after the first menu where you choose between Enemy Uknonwn and Enemy Within. Strangely this did not happen allways, but sometimes I had to try ridiculously many times before the game started.

The solution turned out to be removing the .bmp "splash screen" image that was shown right after the first menu (before the actual game showed up). The files were located in the game local files directory under:
{Steam Library Path}/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/XCom-Enemy-Unknown/engine/splash/pcconsole
{Steam Library Path}/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/XCom-Enemy-Unknown/xew/engine/splash/pcconsole
(just use "Browse local files" options in the Steam library to find the game directory).

After that no more problems with startup (only "drawback" is that you don't get to see the splash screen). Actually I never had any major issues in-game, I've completed the whole game without a single game crash and only minor glitches from time to time.

Hope that helps somebody, the game still feels great.

[Planewalker]

Omg, that wonky workaround actually works. -there's even no need for adding the lib-path manually to pop os anymore. LMAO.

Can i ask how you figured it out?

[stgermain77]

Wow, it just works.

[☭ Soviet]

Originally posted by astenu:

Hi, guys I just came here to share the solution annoing problem with starting the game on linux (namely Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon, I guess it'd be the same on Ubuntu). The game most of the times just closed right after the first menu where you choose between Enemy Uknonwn and Enemy Within. Strangely this did not happen allways, but sometimes I had to try ridiculously many times before the game started.

The solution turned out to be removing the .bmp "splash screen" image that was shown right after the first menu (before the actual game showed up). The files were located in the game local files directory under:
{Steam Library Path}/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/XCom-Enemy-Unknown/engine/splash/pcconsole
{Steam Library Path}/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/XCom-Enemy-Unknown/xew/engine/splash/pcconsole
(just use "Browse local files" options in the Steam library to find the game directory).

After that no more problems with startup (only "drawback" is that you don't get to see the splash screen). Actually I never had any major issues in-game, I've completed the whole game without a single game crash and only minor glitches from time to time.

Hope that helps somebody, the game still feels great.

You made my day!

[astenu]

Originally posted by Planewalker:

Can i ask how you figured it out?

I'm glad you've asked so I can boast a little bit about my insightfullness.

- First thing I've noticed was that whenever the splashscreen get displayed the games starts OK. If the game crashed on startup, there was an empty square instead of image.
- Next I've run the game from commandline (executable file from steam app driectory) and noticed that it throws an error "error while loading shared libraries: libjpeg.so.62" so this is probably a compatibility issue with the new versoin of this library, also this suggested that the issue is not in the actual game but in the launcher itself
- Next I've tried to update/replace the library with working version but this didn't succeed.
- Then I just connected the dots and made a blind trial to find the image file on filesystem (BTW it's actually a .bmp file) and to see if by removing it the launcher will just carry on loading, this worked.

I'm happy this helped, cheers.

[ptwr]

Interesting.
I just fought with this, or similar, issue on Ubuntu 21, it kept crashing at splashscreen due to some weird issue with Gnome (according to other threads it works with other UI's).

When launched from console game there was error message
"X Error of failed request: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
Major opcode of failed request: 40 (X_TranslateCoords)"
What error message did you have?

Switching UpscaleScreenPercentage to False in baseengine.ini solved this issue, and now game launches everytime but splashscreen image is not properly centered in its window.
Interestingly switching it back to True does not break the game again, it keeps working with crooked splashscreen.

[Ozzy the Scrapper]

I deleted the splash image files on ubuntu and the game sill wont start. I get a error message saying theirs a map missing.

[BBUCommander]

Upgraded from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04, XCom booted fine once then started having this problem. Never encountered it before, presumably an issue with newer libjpeg as astenu mentioned?

Anyhow, fix worked, thanks astenu!

I wonder if it is non-deterministic because there is a very short JPEG loading timeout that depends on I/O contention or some such, and if a timeout occurs due to high resource usage the launcher carries on, otherwise it tries to decode the JPEG and runs into a libjpeg compatibility issue. Either way it's bad error handling by whoever made the launcher - the splash JPEG isn't critical so the launcher should just keep trucking regardless.

[Krel]

Unbelievable, so simple. Thanks!

[tzyrro]

Yep, it's wonky af, but it works lol. Thanks a lot!