Since a few weeks my Unity games are not working anymore on Steam (not flatpak) on Linux Mint.

I have tried Stick It to the Stickman, Olija and Dystopika. They all behave the same, with the audio starting playing fine, but still on a black screen. After that, nothing happens and even trying to switch window doesn’t work or is extremely slow, requiring a few minutes to have anything happening.

Adding the same games to another launcher (Heroic), makes them work a bit, but eventually they stop at some loading screen and remain there forever.

I am on the latest OS version, I have the latest proprietary drivers from Nvidia, I have tried switching Proton versions and my GOG Unity games all work fine on Heroic.

I don’t know if there are any logs I can submit, but I am all ears for any suggestions.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    21·
    19 hours ago

    Typically when (some) 3D games don’t work, I’ve found that 3D library support for one of the 32-bit or 64-bit binaries isn’t present — Steam relies on the systemwide libraries — and the game bails or tries to do software rendering. I’ve hit some other users on here who have had the same issue.

    It looks like the full versions of those are all run through Proton, are Windows binaries, though there are Linux-native demo binaries.

    I have Dystopika myself.

    installs

    $ file Dystopika.exe 
Dystopika.exe: PE32+ executable for MS Windows 6.00 (GUI), x86-64, 7 sections
$

    So probably 64-bit.

    There’s some environment variable that will force Proton to use the older Direct3D backend based on OpenGL (WineD3D) instead of Vulkan (DXVK). Let me see if I can find that.

    searches

    You want:

    PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

    In the Steam launch properties for the game; that’ll force it to use OpenGL instead of Vulkan. Here, it will run with or without it. Does that magically make it work?

    One useful tool for debugging 3D issues is mangohud. If you stick it in the Steam launch properties before “%command%” and it can display anything at all, it’ll show an overlay showing which API (WineD3D or DXVK) is being used as well as what the rendering device being used is, which will let you know whether it’s trying to render using software or hardware. So MANGOHUD_CONFIG=full mangohud %command%.

    On my system, Dystopika appears able to render in pure software (not at a great framerate, mind):

    PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 MANGOHUD_CONFIG=full mangohud %command%

    So I don’t know if it’d be falling back to software causing that. Rendering in software is listed in the mangohud overlay as being “llvmpipe”.

    Another way to check that each path functions is to run the following programs, see if they display correctly and at a reasonable clip. They’re in the mesa-utils-bin:i386 and mesa-utils-bin:amd64 packages on Debian, so probably same for Mint:

    $ glxgears.i386-linux-gnu
$ glxgears.x86_64-linux-gnu
$ vkgears.i386-linux-gnu
$ vkgears.x86_64-linux-gnu

    That’ll be a simple test of all of the OpenGL and Vulkan 32-bit and 64-bit interfaces.

    • ArgentRaven@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      20 hours ago

      Whether this fixes the OPs issue or not, this is a valuable post and my future self thanks you for making it as I’m sure I’ll hit similar problems eventually. And I thank you now!