Red Dead Redemption 2 Opens to Black Screen (ROG Ally/Bazzite)
Good morning, everyone, I hope you're all doing well. Thank you so much for reading this, I greatly appreciate it.
I've been looking to play RDR2 on my Bazzite-only Ally, but the install process was weird and the game is not working properly. Specifically, the install process required installing the Rockstar Launcher a number of times, over and over. Furthermore, when I open RDR2 on my Ally, it opens to a black screen. I can hear game audio, there's just nothing on the screen.
I've found that using an external keyboard to hit "alt-enter" does bring up the graphics of the game, but controller support and external keyboard inputs both do not work. I was able to also get the game to show its graphics via opening it in Desktop mode, with the same issues.
I looked up on ProtonDB to see if RDR2 had known issues on Linux, but most people on there said it worked more or less out of the box. Of course, before I came here I googled "red dead redemption 2 opening on black screen with audio steamos" and "red dead redemption 2 opening on black screen with audio linux", but I couldn't find anything that seemed relevant.
I'm not using Lutris or Heroic Launcher, simply the Steam version of the game booting into the Rockstar Launcher.
In addition, the Rockstar Launcher struggled to find my copy of RDR2, though it seems to be working fine now in that the game (imperfectly) boots.
Weirdly, this is just a problem with RDR2, GTA V Enhanced actually works fine (though GTA V not enhanced does only work in 4:3 - changing the aspect ratio doesn't seem to do anything - but that's no big problem atm).
I would greatly appreciate some help, and I'm very thankful for anyone who chooses to do so. I know we all have busy, complex lives and there's a lot of fun and work we could be doing, so I really do value people who are willing to help out strangers like this. It's a kind thing to do.
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Oh, and my device is a Z1 Extreme used ROG Ally with 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage, if that changes anything.
I believe I tried Proton 8.0-5. Trying experimental now, launching from desktop. It's a great suggestion!
Okay, booting into experimental, I'm still getting a black screen with the title screen's audio playing.
I've tried it in gaming mode and desktop mode, though this one with Experimental was in gaming mode. I would like to be able to boot the game from Gaming Mode, if possible?
I can access the Rockstar launcher enough to boot the game, but I can't seem to find it in desktop mode
Okay, starting it in the desktop start menu (which seems to work through Steam anyway), it actually shows the graphics and works with the controls (even if the game's loading screens are at a very low framerate)
But that said, it does seem to be rotating between loading screens and then going to a black screen with the loading wheel, which is taking a long while for some reason, which googling it, seems like a known issue.
It's been like ten minutes of just loading, which I'm not sure if that's typical or not?
I think it might be frozen on a loading screen
Okay, rebooting the game to try and change the settings, but the settings are pretty low and the computer keeps freezing up and I keep having to restart the computer, also even that is extremely slow
When I load it in Gaming Mode I don't see a progress bar booting the game
but in Desktop mode the progress bar works fine
Are these freezing issues? Is it consistently freezing right before the progress bar appears?
It also seems like in desktop it was booting into Windowed Borderless
The game crashed because of a memory shortage
I tried to change it to Fullscreen, but it froze up and I had to force shutdown
Is there anything I can do, or is this just, like, a game that if I want to play I'll have to install windows?
I'm not sure what's up with this, ProtonDB says it should be very playable
If anyone has any help at all, I would appreciate it so much.
Hey @Aviatrix , I went through this exact thing on my Legion Go last night.
I found the solution, it's not a problem with Proton versions or your game install itself.
The Problem: The game gets confused inside the Linux environment and tries to use the wrong "graphics adapter" index. It tries to use "adapter 1" (which is like a phantom GPU) instead of your real AMD GPU (which is "adapter 0"). This is why you hear sound but see a black screen.
Here is the fix that worked perfectly for me: We need to manually edit a settings file to force the game to use the correct GPU.
1. Set Compatibility Tool: In Steam, right-click RDR2 -> Properties -> Compatibility. Check the box to "Force the use of..." and select the latest GE-Proton from the list. This is a good baseline.
2. Find and Edit the Settings File-
Go into Desktop Mode.
Open the terminal.
Copy this entire command, paste it into the terminal, and press Enter. This will take you directly to the correct folder:
cd ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1174180/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My\ Documents/Rockstar\ Games/Red\ Dead\ Redemption\ 2/Settings/
(Note: The number 1174180 is the Steam App ID for RDR2).
3. Edit the system.xml file:
Now that you're in the right folder, type this command to open the file for editing:
nano system.xml
Inside the text editor, use the arrow keys to find the line that looks like this: <adapterIndex value="1" />
Change the 1 to a 0, so the line now looks like this: <adapterIndex value="0" />
Save the file by pressing Ctrl+O, then press Enter. Exit the editor by pressing Ctrl+X.
4. Launch the Game:
Now, try launching RDR2 again from Game Mode.
This change forces the game to use your real AMD hardware and should get you past that black screen into the main menu. I hope this solves it for you too. Good luck!
BTW, here is the link to the original post where I found this fix, in case you want to read more about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxCrackSupport/comments/189n2e7/red_dead_redemption_2_black_screen_fix_steam_deck/
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Well, I went through every "My Documents" folder in that directory, and one had "Rockstar Games", but that one just had "Rockstar Launcher" and "Rockstar Social Club", no "Red Dead Redemption 2".
I am very new to this too, so I'm not quite sure what's going on in your specific case, but maybe the reason you don't see the "Red Dead Redemption 2" settings folder is that the game is crashing before it has a chance to create it? The "Rockstar Launcher" folder is there because the launcher is working, but the game itself isn't fully loading.
Maybe you need to force the game to run, even in a broken state, for just long enough to create that system.xml file by just launching the game and letting it sit in the broken state for like 20 minutes and hopefully that's enough.
Sorry I couldn't be more help!
The game actually hasn't crashed when I've opened it up on the desktop: I even got into the main menu, settings menu, and pre-game loading screens once.
Do you think that changes things?
I've had it run for a substantial amount of time: over fifteen minutes, once, if memory serves.
I hope this helps?
Um....you could try finding the settings file using the terminal, try running this in the terminal to see if it shows up-
find ~ -type f -name "system.xml"
Typing this into the terminal doesn't seem to do anything, it just creates a new line after a bit of waiting. Is this normal? Thank you so much for the help!
I read that if you change your resolution to the proper resolution, and go back to game mode, itll start to work
Thank you! How would I go about doing that?
my bad, i meant to say if you go to desktop mode, boot the game and change the resolution there
also this is a fix as well
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Thank you. What is the appropriate resolution?
Alright, I got into RDR2 in desktop. I tried changing Display Output, which caused it to crash due to a memory leak. I then tried changing the resolution, but it was greyed out and froze on the settings page, so I had to hard reset.
I could find system.xml now, and I made the change you suggested. It works, but now the autosave screen is broken and I when I click yes or no on replacing the autosave nothing happens, so now I'm stuck on that screen
I genuinely have no idea what's going on, if someone has any insight I would greatly appreciate it.