Launch games from terminal

[ScrotezMcBalls]

Hi, how would I launch games from terminal while I have steam client running, I want to see what a game outputs to console while it's crashing.

Whenever I try to launch a game fom terminal I get all kinds of errors about libsomething.so.1 not found, likely because i don't know how to set it so the game looks for libraries in steam's 32 bit runtime library folder or whatever, so what should LD_PRELOAD path be for game to start correctly?

[Drako Frost]

Launch Steam from the console, then launch the game. The output will appear in the console as well.

[Balderick]

Valve really need to try and widen their scope for support as ubuntu 12.04 is still the only officialy supported linux distro for the steam for linux client.

Arch seems to have the best wikis on the planet! Am pretty sure what you describe in op is directly related to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/steam#Steam_runtime_issues and this will then help even further https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam/Game-specific_troubleshooting#Game_does_not_run which is an example showing that simply just writing the complete path name to game .exe should launch that .exe

[Dusk of Oolacile]

1. Navigate to the game dir.
2. Issue the following command:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/.steam/bin32/ ~/.steam/bin32/steam-runtime/run.sh ./gameexecutable

That was the real question, wasn't it? Replace "gameexecutable" with whatever the game executable is.

[ScrotezMcBalls]

LOLCAT, thanks that worked. The game I'm trying to get working is Garrys mod. the game launches comes to a blue loading screen then segmentation faults on the loading screen.

The game inits in the console setting sdl video target to X11 then detecting available opengl extensions

then this happens:

dlopen failed trying to load:
~/.steam/linux32/libsteam.so
with error:
~/.steam/linux32/libsteam.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Steam_SetMinidumpSteamID: Caching Steam ID: 76561198045080156 [API loaded no]
Did not detect any valid joysticks.
GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info: UNAVAILABLE
GL_ATI_meminfo: AVAILABLE
GL_ATI_meminfo: GL_TEXTURE_FREE_MEMORY_ATI: Total Free: 853384, Largest Avail: 686444, Total Aux: 2001321, Largest Aux Avail: 12688
GL_MAX_SAMPLES_EXT: 8
IDirect3DDevice9::Create: BackBufWidth: 1920, BackBufHeight: 1080, D3DFMT: 3, BackBufCount: 1, MultisampleType: 0, MultisampleQuality: 0
GL sampler object usage: ENABLED
GL prefer MapBufferRange: NO
Could not load program cache file glbaseshaders.cfg
Could not find base GL shader cache file
Could not load program cache file glshaders.cfg
Could not find user GL shader cache file
Precache: Took 0 ms, Vertex 0, Pixel 0
ConVarRef mat_dxlevel doesn't point to an existing ConVar
Game.so loaded for "Garry's Mod"
~/.steam/steamapps/common/GarrysMod/hl2.sh: line 67: 10874 Segmentation fault (core dumped) ${GAME_DEBUGGER} "${GAMEROOT}"/${GAMEEXE} "$@"

Not very descriptive, I'm not sure how I would fix this. I emailed Garrysmod devs about it and I got something along the lines of:

This is a known issue, we're not sure when it will be fixed.

Kind of disappointing when the game has a linux icon so I buy it, but it won't even start on linux.

[Balderick]

Did you at least look at the steam runtime issue link i shared? the gl libraries shipped with steam for linux client are compiled for ubuntu 12.04. foolow instructions in link to delete steamrt gl libraries which forces use of native system wide libraries. voila any steam game will work on any distro.

Did not detect any valid joysticks.

may just need -nojoy option like what is described http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/846939071141808145/ but you may need to do your own research for the correct option for your game.

[ScrotezMcBalls]

Yeah, I'm checking it out right now. I'm running Xubuntu anyway so not sure if that applies to me, since most games run fine except garrysmod.

There are a few interesting things about garrysmod on it, trying a few fixes now but nothing is working.


I did make the "could not find libsteam.so" error go away by putting libsteam.so in ~/.steam/linux32/ directory, the game still crashes though.

[Balderick]

i edited last comment with more info that may help you out.

If this issue exists with just this one game and no similar errors reported like what is described in arch wiki steam runtime issues then you likely have no need to delete the steamrt libraries. Doing so does no harm any ways as if steam can not find usable libraries i.e. its own steamrt ones or native sytem wide ones the steam client simply updates itself and redownloads its own dependencies ;-) you could also just move or rename those files for testing purposes!?

[ScrotezMcBalls]

I just checked and the issue i'm having is in the game's github page

https://github.com/Facepunch/garrysmod-issues/issues/1833

It's been broken forever and devs haven't fixed it I guess

[Balderick]

Did you try the -nojoy launch option? garry's mod uses source engine just like TF2 so in theory can use same launch options. To set launch option https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1040-JWMT-2947
If that does work out for you and want to use a controller just use a config file/launch option/profile for xboxdrv or antimicro to allow controller to emulate kb + m.

[ScrotezMcBalls]

yeah, i tried that out, and it made the joystick thing go away, but the game still crashes.

After the game loads Game.so it crashes, must be something wrong in that shared object.. It gives no errors, strace doesn't show anything useful from what I can tell either. I'd have to debug it with gdb or something to figure out why it crashes, but my knowledge of using a debugger (especially gdb) is pretty much nil.