Linux no display only cursor and sound

[awenger]

After "patching" the launcher with "LD_PRELOAD=/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 %command%" I was finally able to start EU4 again.
However after launching the game, it only flashes for a second before it returns to whatever was displayed before (or alternatively a black screen). The mouse cursor still has the EU4 style and the sound is playing. Also nothing is clickable anymore. Even if I kill the eu4 process the Xorg session stays unusable and I have to restart the system.

Before the manchu 1.29 update, I just used a pinned proton version to run EU4. This worked flawlessly, however the new launcher is not starting with the proton version any more "Failed to install Paradox Launcher: exit status 1603"

The settings.txt contains the right resolution and refreshRate for the used screen. The borderless mode is sadly unusable as it renders the gui behind the OS bars, HOI4 for example runs great with the Borderless mode. Stellaris on the other hand seems to have a similar problem

I'm running Ubuntu 19.04. I could imagine that it is gpu related. I'm using a nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 with driver 430.50

 

[AndrewT]

If you run the EU4 executable from a terminal command line, what output do you see there?

 

[awenger]

To save us some iterations I also did the following steps:

- uninstalled eu4 from steam
- removed these directories
rm -r ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Europa\ Universalis\ IV/
rm -r ~/.local/share/Paradox\ Interactive/Europa\ Universalis\ IV/
rm -r ~/.local/share/Paradox\ Interactive/launcher-v2/
- reinstall eu4 via steam
- verify integrity in steam

then I executed eu4 from the terminal:

./eu4 > ~/Desktop/eu4-run.log
[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; SteamAPI_IsSteamRunning() failed.
[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; unable to locate a running instance of Steam, or a local steamclient.so.

cat ~/Desktop/eu4-run.log
<no content>

The game showed again the cursor but didn't start. The Desktop was frozen so I had to restart (The output above was copied manually from a photo I took after it froze)

 

[awenger]

and here all the logs that are not empty after the crash

 

[AndrewT]

No error or exceptions log, and no errors on the command line ... this is going to be tricky to diagnose!

FYI the game runs on my Ubuntu 19.04 installation just fine.

I'm a little unclear on your OP here - is proton involved now still, or not?

 

[awenger]

I only used proton before the manchu update. I switched to proton as I encountered this issue and proton "solved" it. This issue existed on this computer since I got it. I more or less got the computer installed ubuntu, steam, eu4 and ran into the problem. However now that the launcher is broken with proton, I'm looking for alternative ways to solve this problem.
Another thing I noticed: If I move the cursor around the cursor only has the eu4 theme in the middle of the screen. If the cursor approaches the top or bottom of the screen it switches back to the system cursor style. This is more or less the area of the system bars.
Also if I switch to another tty and back to the one that started eu4, the screen is completely black, before switching to the other tty, I can see the normal desktop (nothing is clickable)

I am also happy to run the game in Borderless mode, however currently it then renders behind the system bars and all the important things are not clickable. If you could make the Borderless mode as in hoi4 (it renders ontop of the system bars) I would use it.

What steam settings are you using for eu4? I could imagine that this steam overlay stuff could be the cause as well?

 

[AndrewT]

I have Steam overlay enabled. I'm not sure what other settings in there you might be thinking of?

I am able to run this game in fullScreen, borderless, and windowed modes perfectly fine on Ubuntu 19.04 . And this is in a VM on my Mac, not even real hardware. I cannot account for all your difficulties on the same platform!

BTW 1.29.2 has a new launcher update with some Linux changes in it, maybe worth trying that again under proton?

 

[awenger]

Hey,
I updated to 1.29.2 and also updated my nvidia driver to 435. However the problem still persists.
The borderless mode also works "fine" for me, at least in term of the game starts and works. However the window is behind the os bars (gnome shell). So all relevant buttons (bottom/top) are not clickable. Also using proton with 1.29.2 is not working. The installer for the launcher always "terminates prematurely".

However I found the root cause of the problem. I connected the PC to my TV which is a bit more modern then my computer screen, and fullscreen mode works as expected. The only thing that was changed (besides adopting the setting to the TV resolution) was the TV and the cable to connect to it. I have a quite old screen that uses DVI-D. So I use a DP to DVI cable. It looks like this configuration is causing the see through/black screen once the game starts. However so far I only observed this behavior with Paradox games. At least no other game caused any problems so far.
I guess this is nothing that will be fixed? I guess I need to retire me old screen a bit faster then I planned...

 

[grotaclas]

As a tip from a fellow Linux user: As a workaround for the problem that the game is behind the OS bars, you can switch to windowed mode and set a non-standard resolution in ~/.local/share/Paradox\ Interactive/Europa\ Universalis\ IV/pdx_settings.txt, so that the window leaves enough space for the OS bars. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to work for borderless fullscreen anymore. Another workaround is to configure your window manager to display the window above the bars. Unfortunately I don't know how to do it in gnome. In KDE I can right click on the window in the task bar and select the option "Fullscreen" or "Keep above others". Or I can go into the system settings to make a permanent change. In older ubuntu versions you could install an additional program that allowed to configure more things in the window manager which were not available in the normal system settings.

 

[awenger]

Thanks for the input and the ideas. It inspired me to find a very similar solution for Ubuntu with gnome shell

Step 1) Switch to Windowed Fullscreen
This was already a bit of a adventure because I couldn't find the right keyword for this display mode. If somebody else is looking for this, it is "borderless_fullscreen"
I found it by first switching to "windowed" with a smaller resolution. Smaller resolution can be done with (notice that it uses windowed_resolution instead of fullscreen_resolution):
```
"windowed_resolution"={
value="1650x900"
version=0
}
```
Then once the game is running I was able to switch to the Windowed Fullscreen mode in game (to finally find the right keyword)...

Step 2) Open OS System Settings -> Keyboard -> scroll all the way to the bottom -> set a shortcut for "Toggle fullscreen mode". If the game is started in windowed fullscreen switch the thing into proper fullscreen with the newly created shortcut (now it is no longer behind bars). Only works with the windowed fullscreen mode, the windowed mode does not react to the shortcut.

My full pdx_settings.txt is now:
```
"Graphics"={
"display_index"={
value="0"
version=0
}
"display_mode"={
value="borderless_fullscreen"
version=0
}
"fullscreen_resolution"={
value="1680x1050"
version=0
}
"windowed_resolution"={
value="1650x900"
version=0
}
}
"System"={
"language"={
value="l_english"
version=0
}
}

```