Source 2013 Singleplayer Crashes Immediately When Launched [Linux]

[TheMaster974]

Hello, I did some testing recently which required me to launch into a Source 2013 Singleplayer mod on Linux, however when I booted up the mod, it seemingly crashed instantly with no error message. When attempting to directly open Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer with the upcoming beta branch installed, the same crashing behaviour happened. This testing was done on my Steam Deck with SteamOS installed on it, which I factory reset twice and the issue still persists at the time of writing.

The only piece of useful information I have is when trying to run hl2.sh or hl2_linux, I get the message "Failed to load the launcher" with nothing else that could be used to determine the source of the crash, even when attempting to debug a mod via Visual Studio Code. Is anybody else experiencing this issue? What could be done to resolve it? I would really appreciate some advice! One thing to note is that I haven't experienced this behaviour with Source 2013 Multiplayer mods, Half-Life 2 or Portal, it looks like only Source 2013 Singleplayer mods are affected.

I've also created a short YouTube video which shows the crashing behaviour in action and the things I have already tried to stop this from happening: https://youtu.be/yMRdxg6Bdo8

[RainOrigami]

This workaround has worked for me:

ValveSoftware/portal2#451 (comment)

[RainOrigami]

Follow-up on making it work from terminal (and then, probably, visual studio debugger).

I've added these lines in hl2.sh just before the game is called on line 64 and ran it from steam to see the environment set by steam itself:

    declare -px >~/argsfile
    echo "${GAME_DEBUGGER} \"${GAMEROOT}\"/${GAMEEXE} \"$@\"" >>~/argsfile

This dumped all environment variables and the game arguments. Relevant is LD_LIBRARY_PATH and specifying -game sourcetest. The full command to make sourcetest boot up from terminal is the following (ran from the Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer install directory):

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer/bin:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_64:/opt/cuda/lib64:/opt/cuda/nvvm/lib64:/opt/intel/oneapi/compiler/latest/lib:/usr/lib32:/usr/lib/libfakeroot:/usr/lib:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/lib/i386-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/lib:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer" ./hl2_linux -game sourcetest

(replace /home/user with your actual home path)

It still complains on my system about some character set or whatever (maybe you can find the environment variable that has to be set for this to go away in the argsfile too) but at least it starts into the main menu and looks like it's working. These paths in LD_LIBRARY_PATH may differ on your system so I recommend that you also do the declare -px >~/argsfile in the hl2.sh file, run it from steam, and copy the LD_LIBRARY_PATH directly from there.

edit: oh also I did execstack -c bin/video_bink.so because it complained about that library too but I did not test if it had any impact (maybe it didn't play the intro videos before?)

[TheMaster974]

@RainOrigami Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I can confirm the execstack thing worked! Quick question, when obtaining the LD_LIBRARY_PATH stuff, what should I do with that to be able to launch into the mod via a debugger? Does that need to go in hl2.sh or added as launch arguments or what?

[RainOrigami]

@TheMaster974

In bash, you prepend it to the ./hl2_linux -game sourcetest command (bash env variable setting) - see the example from my previous post:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer/bin:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_64:/opt/cuda/lib64:/opt/cuda/nvvm/lib64:/opt/intel/oneapi/compiler/latest/lib:/usr/lib32:/usr/lib/libfakeroot:/usr/lib:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/lib/i386-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/lib:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib:/home/user/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer" ./hl2_linux -game sourcetest

I'm not sure how you launch it from visual studio but there should be some way to apply environment variables there too.

edit: changed the bash env variable setting link to something more useful

[TheMaster974]

@RainOrigami Thanks for clarifying that for me, I tried doing what you suggested in a Terminal and in Visual Studio Code and got the following error: Failed to create SDL window: Couldn't find matching GLX visual. I know this is deviating away from the initial issue at this point, I may close this issue and repost it in the Source 1 games GitHub instead, as this is more for issues with the code rather than with the actual application.