Thimbleweed Park / Steam / Linux does not launch

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  • Linux Mint 20
  • Nvidia 440.100 drivers

I don’t know whether the game worked before on my Linux machine.
(I tried it today because while testing Delores, Ron asked whether or not TWP was working).

When I launch the game I crashes (I assume it is crashing) immediately. I don’t see any window… I just press “Play” on Steam, I see the “Cancel” button that replaces the “Play” button, and in less than a second, I see the “Play” button again (meaning that the game crashed).

I tried removing the ~/.local/share/Terrible Toybox/Thimbleweed Park folder. But my Steam client re-populates it with the save data back from April 2017.

I wonder if the newer client has problems parsing data from 2017. Did the format changed?
I don’t have any logs…

What’s the best way to report Linux issues for TWP?

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I guess that the save files are platform agnostic, but in case it helps, those savefiles where created in a Mac, and now I’m running it on Linux.

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Nothing has change in the save files since launch. Save files should work on any platform.

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would you know how to run it from command line ? Perhaps I might be able to find some error.
Also, is FMOD also being used in TWP? If so, then probably it is the same bug that I’m seeing in Dolores.

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TWP did not use FMOD.

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I seem to recall that being mentioned as a mistake in retrospect, but I couldn’t find anything other than this from the very beginning. Maybe @ZakPhoenixMcKracken can help me. :smiley:
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/roadmap1.html

Sound system and basic commands to play sounds - I’m currently just using SDL_MIXER for audio and based on using it in other projects, it seems to do everything I need. I’ve looked at solutions like FMOD, but they are too expensive, even with their “indie” pricing. We’d end up spending over $6000 just to license FMOD for Win/Mac/Linux, I’d rather use that money on actual music. I might drop in a better system down the road, but this gets us started.

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@riq Sorry, the topic. If you start Steam from the terminal (just type steam in a terminal emulator) you might be able to see some console output of error messages (if any).

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Nope, I’m sorry I can’t help here.
The magician user is @Nor_Treblig

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9

Thanks all for the help.

Not sure what did I change in my system, but now the game launches Ok (?).

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10

You’re welcome :wink: :smiley:

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I’m experiencing the same issue. Haven’t played TWP since June 2018. Back then it launched and ran flawlessly. Now, when I click the Play button on Steam, a few seconds later the game silently shuts down and Steam shows the Play button again. I ran Steam from a terminal window but did not see any output when the game attempted to run. I don’t know if there are logs somewhere that would provide more detail.

Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (64-bit)
linux-image-5.4.0-58-generic
GNOME 3.36.3
PulseAudio 1:13.99.1-1ubuntu3.8
Nvidia GTX 960 (nvidia-driver-450 proprietary)
Steam 1607372145 (build Dec 7, API v020)

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This is a known problem due to something Steam changed. We have a fix. Maybe a few days.

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Can you try this executable and tell me if it fixes the issue?

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I tried on my machine and it seems to work. I had the same problem after updating Steam, but the new executable runs correctly.

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@RonGilbert — With the new executable, I was able to launch the game from Steam just fine. Thanks!

Hopefully this update can be deployed through Steam expeditiously. I also discovered a way to jury-rig the Steam installation to run the game directly from the command line (for anyone who might be hesitant to download a replacement executable from Dropbox).

  1. Go to the game installation folder

cd ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Thimbleweed\ Park

  1. Create a new file steam_appid.txt. The contents of the file should be the App ID for the game (569860).

echo '569860' > steam_appid.txt

  1. Add an environment variable so the game can find the libsteam_api.so shared library module that’s in the game directory. (Replace [username] with your username.)

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/[username]/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Thimbleweed\ Park

  1. Launch the game. (I put steps 3 and 4 in a batch file, because the environment variable export will go away after the end of the terminal session.)

./ThimbleweedPark