If You play the demo on LINUX / STEAM DECK

[Jakub Machowski]

We made what we could to deliver the demo for Linux and Steamdec. But as it is the demo, not a full version, we had limited time for fixing all problems. Below we collected some info about Linux and Steamedec versions of the game.

The game demo was tested on Ubuntu 18 and 20 with Nvidia GPU.

LINUX / STEAM DECK DEMO LIMITATIONS & FIXES:

-Keep in mind that as we described in minimal requirements we support only Ubuntu 18.04 or higher.

-We support for now only the OpenGL version of the game. You could encounter crashes on the Vulkan version so we don't recommend it.

-The TAA (Temporal Antialiasing) in the native Linux version of the demo could be blurry on Low FPS playing (minimum requirements hardware). This is an overall problem with TAA on Linux OpenGL. HOW TO FIX PROBLEM: You could change TAA to SMAA in video settings or play using Proton which eliminates all of the graphical problems. (How to use Proton is described below) FIXED

-We had the opportunity to test the Steam Deck version of the demo but only for a limited time. It worked the same as on Linux but We encounter some graphical issues when changing game settings sometimes. HOW TO FIX PROBLEM: Forcing play by Proton. (How to use Proton is described below)

-Rope-making animation doesn't work on Linux - We expected some crashes connected to alembic animations on Linux, for the demo we didn't have time to investigate the problem so we disabled it. It's only one animation for the whole demo (rope making) so this is something that won't affect the gameplay.

HOW TO USE PROTON:

We noticed that the proton version which is used on the native build Linux version eliminates almost all graphical limitations. So If You encounter any problems You could just force the game to use Proton. What we recommend to try.

HERE IS HOW TO USE PROTON WITH YOUR LINUX / STEAMDECK GAME:
-Right-click on "The End of the Sun Demo" in Your Steam Client Library and click "Properties".
-Select the "Compatibility" Tab
-Check "Force the Use of a Specific Steam Play Compatability Tool".
-Choose the Highest version of Proton.

That's all :)

UPDATE 23.03.2023:

We upgraded the Linux Demo version to a newer game engine version (The full version of the game will be working on even newer) It fixed the problem with blurry TAA antialiasing, We will also be testing if that helped with Steamdec version native problems.

[MrΩ]

On native elf/linux, the demo only inits the x11 window and shows the demo mouse cursor... and nothing more. I have to kill the demo. I tried with -force-vulkan/-force-glcore/default.
Each time the last line of the player log is: [S_API] SteamAPI_Init(): Loaded '/mnt/128/home/user/.local/share/Steam/linux64/steamclient.so' OK.

No error reported elsewhere in the player log. Suspicion on steam client stuff: I run an up-to-date beta steam client.

Proton does not run on my distro.

I run dota2(gl/vulkan)/cs:go(gl/vulkan)/tons of unity3d games(recent or old)/metro exodus(vulkan)/shadow|rise of the tomraider(vulkan)/vein(unreal engine 5.1)/etc.

[Jakub Machowski]

Originally posted by MrΩ:

On native elf/linux, the demo only inits the x11 window and shows the demo mouse cursor... and nothing more. I have to kill the demo. I tried with -force-vulkan/-force-glcore/default.
Each time the last line of the player log is: [S_API] SteamAPI_Init(): Loaded '/mnt/128/home/user/.local/share/Steam/linux64/steamclient.so' OK.

No error reported elsewhere in the player log. Suspicion on steam client stuff: I run an up-to-date beta steam client.

Proton does not run on my distro.

I run dota2(gl/vulkan)/cs:go(gl/vulkan)/tons of unity3d games(recent or old)/metro exodus(vulkan)/shadow|rise of the tomraider(vulkan)/vein(unreal engine 5.1)/etc.

As I mentioned before We are supporting only Ubuntu. Please let me know what Hardware You have. ( I have Some older PC with Ubuntu 18 and 20 ) with Nvidia Gpu and nvidia official drivers it works perfect. We also tested it on Steamdec there was some graphical glitches sometimes bu worked perfectly with proton. (I tested it a few minutes ago but will do it again maybe some steam problems) Please Report a bug with info about Your hardware Here if You can: https://steamcommunity.com/app/912840/discussions/1/

[MrΩ]

I am full AMD. Zen2 CPU and RX 5600 XT (6GB video ram). (your link does not work coze of concatenation with "can:")

[Jakub Machowski]

Originally posted by MrΩ:

I am full AMD. Zen2 CPU and RX 5600 XT (6GB video ram). (your link does not work coze of concatenation with "can:")

Sorry I fixed the link also I saw You posted the report I will answer there.

[MrΩ]

Originally posted by Jakub Machowski:

Sorry I fixed the link also I saw You posted the report I will answer there.

Yeah, I did try a bit harder :)

[mruuh]

The Linux version of the demo works for me (Intel i5-6600K, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 32GB RAM, Debian 11), but at a severely reduced FPS, compared to playing the same thing via Proton.

On Linux version I get around 20 FPS on maximum details, and around 35 FPS on minimal details.

With Proton, I get around 50 FPS on maximum details, and around 60-80 FPS on minimal details.

There is a lot of variance in FPS depending on where I am and where I am looking. I was testing this in the initial "scene", at the hill dwelling in summer. The foliage render distance (it has a different name in the options, I just can't remember it exactly) seems to have the largest effect on this, but always only within ~15FPS, and obviously only when looking at a lot of distant foliage. :)

I know that the Linux build is just experimental, and Proton support only best-effort - and understandably so, given the size of the dev team - so this is not really a complaint, merely an observation/report.

[Jakub Machowski]

Originally posted by mruuh:

The Linux version of the demo works for me (Intel i5-6600K, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 32GB RAM, Debian 11), but at a severely reduced FPS, compared to playing the same thing via Proton.

On Linux version I get around 20 FPS on maximum details, and around 35 FPS on minimal details.

With Proton, I get around 50 FPS on maximum details, and around 60-80 FPS on minimal details.

There is a lot of variance in FPS depending on where I am and where I am looking. I was testing this in the initial "scene", at the hill dwelling in summer. The foliage render distance (it has a different name in the options, I just can't remember it exactly) seems to have the largest effect on this, but always only within ~15FPS, and obviously only when looking at a lot of distant foliage. :)

I know that the Linux build is just experimental, and Proton support only best-effort - and understandably so, given the size of the dev team - so this is not really a complaint, merely an observation/report.

Thanks a lot. We noticed that too. This is why we recommend to play it with proton. It's really strange behaviour but seems like proton is iinterpreatating game better than native build with unity. It could be related to driver etc. This is why we will for sure test the whole full game on proton. If that works good proton that's great as turning it on by steam is just few seconds :)

[MrΩ]

Proton does not run on my distro... have not investigated... but it is very probably because it is a massive msft grade horrible kludge (aka a money sink hole for valve to maintain). The steam client is also a pain to run, but valve still manages to have not too shabby distribution.

But I have a lean wine+vkd3d build (win64 core + dx12|vulkan), but I guess doz games/engines dependencies tantrums are even worse than with native elf/linux games/engines, so I don't flex high hopes of this running any doz games (for instance, a recent native elf/linux game does require a full blown install of GTK+ on the system... enlightenment/kde/(zero gfx toolkits)/others users will be happy...).

I noticed an even worse behavior from unity3D: a 3D demo which has unbearable performance on vulkan3D and is super fast on glcore, and if I recall properly and this is where it hurts: on a recent unity3D build (max 2 months ago). I suspect the new new unity 3D pipeline actually to be still garbage on dx12/vulkan (namely they have not finished to code it!).

I wonder if I should jump on the valheim train just to push bugs and perf issues upstream on native elf/linux, because with 120+ FPS on AAA games...

[MrΩ]

Good News:

Got the update of the demo: the game starts, I was able to play thru the whole demo with max video settings (only opengl, vulkan will hang): no vsync, sma antialiasing, everything else to max.
BUT, I had tons of visual glitches... but there were all fixable and than, most of the time, in-game by setting the texture details to min, apply, set back the texture to max, apply (sometimes several times in a row were required, for instance in the title screen). I suspect my 6GB of vram/unity doing some really nasty stuff.

[Jakub Machowski]

Originally posted by MrΩ:

Good News:

Got the update of the demo: the game starts, I was able to play thru the whole demo with max video settings (only opengl, vulkan will hang): no vsync, sma antialiasing, everything else to max.
BUT, I had tons of visual glitches... but there were all fixable and than, most of the time, in-game by setting the texture details to min, apply, set back the texture to max, apply (sometimes several times in a row were required, for instance in the title screen). I suspect my 6GB of vram/unity doing some really nasty stuff.

1.Hello that's a good news, but in the same really strange! :) We not made a single change related to graphics in new Update. Also we changed nothing in main menu if I remember well. It was mainly changes to input system. Now we are using unity standard way without "Disambiguation" process You could read more about it here[docs.unity3d.com] This is only think I may think could make a problem on your distro. I mean it sounds to me like some antivirus conflict or blocking game by something else on PC (for example some antivirus blocked game on windows sometimes "false positive") but it didn't happened when running by steam. I don't thing then that crash on start was related to graphics.

2. What about graphics glitches. We encourted problems with graphical glitches (colors everywhere) when using steamdeck and disabling TAA. What I mean is that if you will run the game at start it works ok until You don't change TAA to other SMAA or disabled. that have been creating problems on Ubuntu to at start but we fixed problem. This is why we support Ubuntu only, Linux drivers are really hard to develop on. The same version of open GL is very often working on Windows when on linux have glitches...
What you could try is go to config/unity3d/TheEndOfTheSunDemo and remove Settings, file as well prefs registry file, run the game again and see if that works when you wont change any settings. Another way is to run the game go to Very Low settings. save that exit the game and run it again. As I mentioned We didn't changed anythic graphic related, this is what makes me think that on different linux distributions miracles are happening :) This is why we support only Ubuntu as we could spend Years on just debugging different linux distro :) One thing that I have in mind that it could be related to some Radeon GPU , we are testing mostly on Nvidia.

[MrΩ]

As I said, I could play the entire demo, to max gfx settings (no vsync/smaa): to solve the graphical glitches, I just needed to apply the lowest texture quality, then re-apply with the highest texture quality and exiting the settings menu (that in the game, or in the title screen).

I did check the player logs, I have errors and warnings, and linux specific stuff which unity does enable:
...
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Hidden/Nature/Terrain/Utilities' - All passes removed
WARNING: Shader Did you use #pragma only_renderers and omit this platform?
...
SET_VOLUME_LIGHT_FOR_DIFFERNE_PLATFORMS : FSM : Linux : LINUX_DETECTED_ENVIRO_VOLUME_LIGHT_SET_TO_FULL
...
SET_VOLUME_LIGHT_FOR_DIFFERNE_PLATFORMS : FSM : Linux : LINUX_DETECTED-PostProcessing NanPropagation Enabled
...
[OPTIMIZERS] There is no camera on the scene!
...
[OPTIMIZERS] There can't be two Optimizers Managers at the same time! I'm removing new one!

[Jakub Machowski]

Originally posted by MrΩ:

As I said, I could play the entire demo, to max gfx settings (no vsync/smaa): to solve the graphical glitches, I just needed to apply the lowest texture quality, then re-apply with the highest texture quality and exiting the settings menu (that in the game, or in the title screen).

I did check the player logs, I have errors and warnings, and linux specific stuff which unity does enable:
...
WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Hidden/Nature/Terrain/Utilities' - All passes removed
WARNING: Shader Did you use #pragma only_renderers and omit this platform?
...
SET_VOLUME_LIGHT_FOR_DIFFERNE_PLATFORMS : FSM : Linux : LINUX_DETECTED_ENVIRO_VOLUME_LIGHT_SET_TO_FULL
...
SET_VOLUME_LIGHT_FOR_DIFFERNE_PLATFORMS : FSM : Linux : LINUX_DETECTED-PostProcessing NanPropagation Enabled
...
[OPTIMIZERS] There is no camera on the scene!
...
[OPTIMIZERS] There can't be two Optimizers Managers at the same time! I'm removing new one!

This is not unity but us. We have to turn on some setups especially for Linux to avoid problems (tested on ubuntu) Basically, these things in the log are not harmful at all and are created by us. Hmm what I could say that we will test also linux Ubuntu with Radeon if there will be problem we will debug that and fix, if won't that basically means it will be something elf specific and we can't support that.
Thanks for reporting!

[Unbeliever]

Wow, this is nice to see from a developer. The one problem I had playing on Mint 19.3, was that I had to switch to a lower anti-aliasing, because the preset one was causing extreme motion blur. I turned the motion blur off too, however. The other problem is that the game was a bit slow / laggy.
Gorgeus graphics! The translation however feels a little weird at times.

[Jakub Machowski]

Originally posted by NOOBMASTER:

Wow, this is nice to see from a developer. The one problem I had playing on Mint 19.3, was that I had to switch to a lower anti-aliasing, because the preset one was causing extreme motion blur. I turned the motion blur off too, however. The other problem is that the game was a bit slow / laggy.
Gorgeus graphics! The translation however feels a little weird at times.

DId You try to play with a proton? It gives better experience on linux. We know about Antialiasing problem on linux we just didn't want to turn it off by defeault as it is working good by proton. Hmm what about translation, we have native English proofreader, could You tell a little bit more about it so I will share that remark with him ;)

[Jakub Machowski]

UPDATE:

We upgraded the Linux Demo version to a newer game engine version (The full version of the game will be working on even newer) It fixed the problem with blurry TAA antialiasing, We will also be testing if that helped with Steamdec version native problems. We will post update about it soon