Compatibility Report

I still experience crashes.

I also notice that the intro video runs very slowly. (Restarting the game speeds up the intro it remains out of sync with the sound.)

Below is my system information. Is there any other information I could gather to help this investigation?

System Info

• Proton 3.7-7 Beta
• Kernel 4.18.9-200

Trying this out on my OLED Steam deck with Proton Experimental, the launcher this game uses has a visual issue, the buttons are completely white until you hover over them, then they render. Happens in game and desktop mode.

steam-34010.log

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Alpha Protocol
• Steam AppID of the game: 34010 (GOG RELEASE)

System Information

• GPU: AMD Custom GPU 0405 (vangogh, LLVM 15.0.7, DRM 3.54, 6.1.52-valve16-1-neptune-61)
• Video driver version: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 23.1.3 (git-87ebaf765d)
• Kernel version: 6.1.52-valve16-1-neptune-61
• Link to full system information report as file: systemreport-20240325043328.txt (File dumped to the desktop via handheld mode settings menu; I'm filling this report out on Android and I can't copy the contents to my clipboard to paste in a gist because it fails)
• Proton version: 8.0-5

I confirm:

• [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

steam-17843855494314196992 log.zip
steam-logs.tar.gz

Symptoms

Using radial menus doesn't work after using the D-pad. Only the first/default option is selected and the choices can't be changed.
(Menus such as ammo/weapon select, gadget select, and ability select.)

The game also cannot auto-detect controllers despite the GOG release flaunting controller support and auto-detecting default settings.

Reproduction

Initial setup:
To workaround a SteamOS/Client bug, you cannot use the "add to Steam" right-click context menu to add the installer to Steam. You must do so with the Steam client desktop client button otherwise executables won't launch. After choosing your install location (ideally not the default), you have to go into the Steam properties for the game and change the executable and folder path to where "APGame.exe" is in the game's Binaries subfolder.

Once starting the game:

1. Change the Steam Input trackpad to behave as a clickable mouse
2. Go into "Options" using the mouse
3. Click Controls
4. Set "Enable Controller" to "On"
5. Go back to the main menu
6. Start a new game
7. Play the game until you get to the "tutorial" (After the initial gameplay sequence there'll be a locker room; don't leave that locker room. There'll be 3 doors in that room and you want to enter the one to the left [the gadget room].)
8. Attempt to complete the gadget tutorial

@kisak-valve Did the controller issue ever get worked on...?
Having dug more into this, recently, I found that the issue with the controller seems to be a result of Steam running for some reason.

On a separate device (not the Steam Deck this time, but on a Linux desktop), I noticed similarly strange issues where controller support misbehaves even if run with vanilla Wine (9.20) with just Steam open (which makes me suspect this might be connected but I'm not entirely sure). In this test, turning Steam off caused controller support to work as intended (albeit I did also have to set DisableHidraw to 1 in Regedit also, for some reason, for my PS4 controller to work.

It'd be great if this would get figured out, because I think this would be a good Steam Deck title but as-is, it's basically unplayable without resorting to Mouse+Keyboard.

The game requires Legacy PhysX, as mentioned in PCGamingWiki, but works nicely afterwards. Installed PhysX 9.13.0604 using protontricks:

protontricks-launch --appid 34010 $HOME/Downloads/PhysX-9.13.0604-SystemSoftware-Legacy.msi

Also, you can compile a minimal launcher with MinGW:

#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(const int argc, char *const argv[], char *const envp[]) {
    const char DIR[] = "Binaries";
    if (chdir(DIR) != 0) {
        const int error = errno;
        printf("%s: chdir '%s': %s\n", argv[0], DIR, strerror(error));
        return (error != EXIT_SUCCESS) ? error : EXIT_FAILURE;
    }

    const char EXE[] = "APGame.exe";
    if (execve(EXE, argv, envp) != 0) {
        const int error = errno;
        printf("%s: execve '%s': %s\n", argv[0], EXE, strerror(error));
        return (error != EXIT_SUCCESS) ? error : EXIT_FAILURE;
    }

    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Then run:

> i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -std=gnu23 -O3 main.c -o main.exe 
> mv main.exe ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Alpha\ Protocol/APLauncher.exe

Alpha Protocol launcher is apparently fixed on Wine 10.0-rc5. See Bug 38975 - Alpha Protocol launcher: menu options hidden behind grey boxes.