Linux support thread (Updated September 2018)

[Stranger]

Hello,

We're aware Linux support can be hit-or-miss. We're doing our best to ensure Linux is a first-class citizen :)

Nvidia hardware

Nvidia hardware used to work fine using the proprietary driver, but the recent 396.24 or 396.54 drivers will break the game and cause a white screen on Ubuntu systems.read up on this problem here[devtalk.nvidia.com].

You will needed to revert to an earlier driver, or try the workaround suggested in the thread, by setting the following command in the Steam launch options.

__GL_GlslUseCollapsedArrays=0 %command%

AMD hardware

AMD hardware generally requires the open-source mesa/radeonsi driver, and our optional Vulkan support. Vulkan support is known to fix lighting issues with the open-source radeonsi driver for modern AMD GPUs.

To enable Vulkan support, please go to the settings for the game in Steam, and in the additional command-line parameters input, add the " -vulkan" parameter, without the quotes, and confirm the change.

Other issues

• Steam Link, or Steam streaming, is not supported.

If you happen to find issues, please tell us which Linux distribution you are using, which GPU you have, which driver version is used and what exactly happens. The more detail the better !

We're very much looking for your feedback.

[76561198062259956]

I would be happy to try this, except one thing. Is there a reasonable guarantee that if I use beta branch, my saves won't later become incompatible with later updates? (I say reasonable guarantee because you can't foresee all breaking changes, but it would be enough if you say "we'll try not to break saves on beta branch"). I don't care if there are e.g. crashes.

[Stranger]

Our policy is to never intentionally break game saves. Playing on the beta branch, moving from the default branch to the beta branch is supposed to be 100% safe for your game save. We also use the same save formatting no matter the engine version.

What might be an issue in the future is if we change something in the game save, push that behaviour to the beta branch only, and not to the default branch ; and if people play on the beta before moving back to the default. That is the only situation where things might not go well ; so I'd advise creating a backup of the SaveGames folder before moving from beta to default.

When in doubt, the best approach is to ignore the beta and stay on the default branch - it's not like we don't have regressions there from time to time...

[beniwtv]

I just tried this new beta. (Still can't resolve the DNS for the tracker) :(

Good news: It no longer hangs the system
Bad news: When launching the screen is all corrupted and purple with the following messages repeating over and over in the console:

.AMDGPU.config is empty!
radeonsi: cannot read an ELF shader binary
LLVM failed to compile shader
.AMDGPU.config is empty!
radeonsi: cannot read an ELF shader binary
LLVM failed to compile shader
.AMDGPU.config is empty!
radeonsi: cannot read an ELF shader binary
LLVM failed to compile shader
.AMDGPU.config is empty!
radeonsi: cannot read an ELF shader binary
LLVM failed to compile shader
.AMDGPU.config is empty!
radeonsi: cannot read an ELF shader binary
LLVM failed to compile shader

Searching on the Internet this seems to be the libelf issue, but the LD_PRELOAD trick did not help, nor did NOSPLASH.

[Stranger]

So it's still not working with the Radeon driver, I guess. That's pretty infuriating :(

We're going to move forward with the new engine version, since it's less bad of a problem. We need to talk with the driver developers at this point, which is going tot ake time. So no promises...

[beniwtv]

I got the old (not beta) branch to work with AMD Mesa GIT by upgrading to LLVM 5.0, replacing the older 4.0. The beta branch is still broken, however, with the messages above (may be a configuration problem in that build though).

Have not checked everything yet to see if there are any rendering issues, but so far I did not notice anything.

[Stranger]

That's frustrating, since we've updated to the new engine version now. We're going to need to fix that one...

[Madame Presse-étoupe.]

Just tried the beta version on Solus 64bits with an AMD HD7850 and Radeon drivers, unfortunately this is what it looks like: http://reho.st/https://i.imgur.com/cFmyJ9N.png. I can't interact with that screen, but it does not crash the system as the non-beta version does.

Hope a fix can be found (I bought that game from my Nvidia laptop during holidays knowing it was not powerful enough, and was counting on my desktop computer to play the game... But err, problem with Radeon drivers it seems :P).

Keep up the great work!

[Edit] Just saw that it might be related to UE4 itself, and there is a potential workaround in the comments: https://www.spinics.net/lists/dri-devel/msg152323.html (I know this link has also been posted by someone else on Reddit, just putting it here as well as not everyone reads about the game on Reddit).

[beniwtv]

Yep, this is in the beta version, there is an issue with shader compilation in that build.

If you switch to the normal build, it will work fine as long as you're running Mesa from Git compiled against LLVM 5.0 (4.0 will hang the syste).

[Stranger]

Can you confirm the following information ?

• AMD hardware freezes on non-beta with LLVM4 ?
  
• AMD hardware works well on non-beta with LLVM5+ ?
  
• AMD hardware doesn't crahs but doesn't work on beta ?
  
• nVidia hardware works well on the beta ?

Trying to clarify whether we need to roll back the engine version, or wait for a fix before releasing the next update.

[beniwtv]

Correct for the first three.
(Don't have Nvidia, so can't comment there)

[Stranger]

Thanks for the very detailed information here. The good news is that you can play, I guess ? The bad news is that we're moving to the new engine, so we have to take care of the shader artifacts you saw in the beta. These appear to be caused by UE4.

Can I suggest trying -opengl3 in command line ?

[Vaelund]

Tried opengl3, did not change anything.

[Renny]

Hello,
I have just installed the game and unfortunately I got a minor issue - my mouse cursor is shifted by ~800 pixels to the left i.e., if I want to click on a button I need to aim to the left. My configuration is following:
Linux Mint 18.2
Nvidia GTX 960
Proprietary nvidia drivers version 375.66
I have three 1920x1080 screens in a configuration "two in the bottom + one on the top"
Unfortunately I am unable to play around with the settings, because the bug is preventing me from changing any values.
Do you have any advice? I can provide additional info if needed.
Thank you.

EDIT: Solved. The screen on the top was the problem. When I switched it off it started working.

[Stranger]

Hello Linux users !

We've updated the beta branch with the latest hotfix from Epic Games. According to the main Linux maintainer, Radeon driver patches were issued in this release - we're hoping to fix some more problems with Helium Rain.

Please test the new beta branch, and tell us if it works better !

[Vaelund]

I can report significant improvements^^

The new version runs again. So far i can only see one minor issue, the global ilumination seems very weak. But i have this issues on the stable branch as well.

Graphics details:
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon RX 580 Series (AMD POLARIS10 / DRM 3.15.0 / 4.12.0-1-amd64, LLVM 5.0.0)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5 (Core Profile) Mesa 17.2.1