Steamdeck crash

[SW-Fredrik]

As soon as a scene that contains a rive panel is loaded on the steam deck it crashes out with almost no info in the unity logs, I was getting some errors pointing to a shader issue earlier in my testing but I am not sure how relevant that is since the logged error is different in a blank unity project. But the result is the same.

Repro is simple, load up a blank project with the newest rive-unity release, (v0.4.0). It will work well in editor with linux set as the target but the game instantly crashes when a scene containing a panel is loaded on the steam deck.

Btw the steamdeck runs a linux distro called SteamOS3, (https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/).

This is a huge issue, since most games "need" to work on the deck today. Its WAY to big a part of the steam ecosystem to simply ignore.

[damzobridge]

Hello, the Unity package currently only supports Linux on Ubuntu 24.04+ . However, Steamdeck support is on the roadmap and I've brought this up internally.

Is Proton a potential option? I haven't verified whether that works on Steamdeck with the Unity package yet, but it might be worth trying to use a Windows Build with Vulkan and/or D3D11/12 , if you haven't tried that already.

[SW-Fredrik]

I have tried a bunch of the proton versions with no success, and using either vulkan and d3d11 causes the same issue on native.

[SW-Fredrik]

No linux expert, but I imagine that this is more than likely going to be tied to a missing dependency, or at least part the issue is from that. So if its possible you guys can get the rive-unity build running on something similar to steamOS - like some close distro of arch-linux or some such. We should be much closer to this working.

[damzobridge]

I have tried a bunch of the proton versions with no success, and using either vulkan and d3d11 causes the same issue on native.

Thanks for letting us know, that's unfortunate. We're currently looking into a few solutions for Steam Deck.

I don't have a set timeline for when we'll have an update as we're also working on wider console support for the unity package, but I'll let you know when we've made progress.

[royblackstone]

Hey guys, just wanted to throw my hat in the ring and mention I'd be in full support to get rive working on SteamOS - this is the FIRST non-PC target platform that consumers use when it comes to games on Steam. We're using Rive for our games and we love the tech, but we want to serve growing demand/requests to play these games on Steam Deck. Thanks for taking the time! Awaiting eagerly for the next update :)

[damzobridge]

Hi @SW-Fredrik , we've tested using v0.4.0 with a Windows build (Vulkan) and Proton 9 and that worked without crashing.

I have tried a bunch of the proton versions with no success, and using either vulkan and d3d11 causes the same issue on native.

I also tested with Proton 8, and that seems to work as well, so I haven't been able to reproduce this crash with Proton yet.

Could you try this Windows build? If that works, then it might mean that something is happening within your project specifically.

[SW-Fredrik]

Ok, got time for this again - tested the blank project with vulkan as the first rendering choice and that does seem to work along with proton 9, (at least it launches). It does not work with dx11 as the priority renderer tho, so its not about not having the api accessible it requires it as the priority choice.

But we still got a few issues that makes this non-functional, (aside from the forced vulkan renderer).

• cant change resolution while the app is live, if its changed the rive panels turn black.
• cant seem to get it to render in 16:9, it renders in 4:3 by default and ignore the call to change it, (as previous issue it becomes black if I change it after launching, and it launches in 4:3 even with 16:9 set as default). Unsure if this is from some unity setting, but on a windows machine it launches as intended. And a blank non-rive project launches in 16:9.
• after loading a scene all rive panels become black again, so basically only the first menu actually works. Our load process unloads and cleans the rive panels before launching new ones. This issue happens after I unload a scene that has rive panels and then loads a new scene with more rive panels. It does not have any issue with loading/unloading unity scenes that lack rive panels first. Considering it can play trough the intro for us just fine, it seems the issue is that after unloading a scene with a rive panel it does not activate the new panels in scenes loaded after that.

These are strange issues, and I have no more info on this Im afraid, so for now I would say that rive does not support the steamdeck. At least not with a windows build + proton combo. Havent tested more with linux, would need to change my dev environment to get that to run I think.