Game launches fine through GUI, Fails when using command

[DinoSour69]

Describe the bug

When running the executable for Fallout NV using my usual method of Right Click > Open with... > Protontricks Launcher, the game boots up fine, however I needed to manually set up a shortcut as Steam does not seem to want to run it normally. This is likely due to some chicanery related to it being a Non-Steam Game I added from a GOG download. I thought it would be as simple as running protontricks-launch --appid [ID] /PATH/TO/FILE/FalloutNV.exe with a .bat file but I am instead greeted with a few frames of black screen followed by the command exiting seemingly with no obvious error codes.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. run protontricks gui to launch the game fine.
2. run protontricks-launch --appid [ID] /PATH/TO/FILE/FalloutNV.exe
3. question reality

Expected behavior A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

Expected game to run exactly how it did (and still does) using GUI (is this too much to ask? /j)

System (please complete the following information):

• Distro: Arch
• Protontricks installation method: AUR
• Protontricks version: 1.12.1
• Steam version: No Beta

Additional context

verbose output: gist

[Matoking]

I'm guesssing when launched from the GUI, Protontricks inherits some environment variables that set up the Wine environment slightly differently allowing New Vegas to run correctly?

The development branch of Protontricks has some improvements for automatically setting environment variables that aren't in a release yet, so with some luck that might help with the issue as well. Since you're on Arch, could you try installing protontricks-git from AUR instead of protontricks and see if that solves the issue?

[DinoSour69]

I'm guesssing when launched from the GUI, Protontricks inherits some environment variables that set up the Wine environment slightly differently allowing New Vegas to run correctly?

The development branch of Protontricks has some improvements for automatically setting environment variables that aren't in a release yet, so with some luck that might help with the issue as well. Since you're on Arch, could you try installing protontricks-git from AUR instead of protontricks and see if that solves the issue?

Just got around to trying this suggestion. Looks to be the same result.

I checked the output of protontricks -V just as a sanity check to make sure I did the reinstall properly. it gave protontricks (1.12.2.dev3+g47257a8) which I assume should be correct. Would there be some way to manually invoke the environment variable inheritance you mentioned that i could copy into my bash script as a workaround until this gets polished? Thanks in advance for your help.

[Matoking]

OK, looks like the newer development version isn't helping. If you run protontricks-launch -vv ... you should see a bunch of lines like Setting Wine DLL override: ... indicating those environment variables are being set.

Another possibility is that launching Protontricks via the terminal inherits different environment variables than launching from the file manager (or possibly the desktop environment's app launcher). If you've customized your ~/.bashrc or other similar file this might explain what's happening.

It's a bit of a pain, but you could check whether the environment variables for Protontricks are different when launched from the terminal vs. the desktop. To do so, run the Protontricks command, leave it running without doing anything else and then run the following command in another terminal to retrieve the environment variables for the active Protontricks process:

$ pgrep protontricks | xargs -I PID strings /proc/PID/environ | sort

Run the command once when running from terminal, again when running from desktop and compare the output to see what differs. Not all of the environment variables are related to the issue, but it should hopefully provide a clue.

[DinoSour69]

I don't remember needing to edit the bashrc on this install... but it's a likely guess. I'm about to check this command right now.

from terminal: gist

from apps list: gist

I can definitely tell the two outputs have major differences, however I wouldn't be able to pin down the relevant info on my own. best of luck.

[Matoking]

Yeah, that doesn't seem to explain what's happening. Maybe you have two installations of Protontricks, with protontricks-launch launching one and the file association (i.e. Protontricks Launcher) launching the other? You could check whether they match by running command -v protontricks-launch. Since you seem to be using KDE Plasma, you should be able to check the Protontricks Launcher command under System Settings -> Default Applications -> File Associations -> x.ms-ne-executable -> Edit... -> Application -> Arguments.

If those point to executables in different locations that could explain what's happening.

[DinoSour69]

I wouldn't have any idea where a second protontricks would have come from. This is a very recent clean install of arch and I even removed my original protontricks package when installing the git from AUR, just in case they would have conflicted. Even then the issue was arising on my initial install. In any case...

command -v protontricks-launch outputs /usr/bin/protontricks-launch

in the Application tab:

Program: protontricks-launch Arguments: --no-term %f