Compatibility Report

Relevant part in the logs:

Unhandled exception: page fault on read access to 0x0000000000000000 in 64-bit code (0x00000140349cd6).
0164:fixme:dbghelp:elf_search_auxv can't find symbol in module
Register dump:
 rip:0000000140349cd6 rsp:000000000011aff0 rbp:000000000011b079 eflags:00010206 (  R- --  I   - -P- )
 rax:0000000000000000 rbx:0000000000000003 rcx:0000000000000000 rdx:0000000000000004
 rsi:00000001406def35 rdi:00006fffff203dd0  r8:0000000140349470  r9:000000000011b048 r10:0000000140736f60
 r11:0000000140701b50 r12:0000000000000000 r13:000000000011f490 r14:0000000000000000 r15:00006fffff203bd0
Stack dump:
0x0000000011aff0:  00006fff00000000 0000000000000000
0x0000000011b000:  00006fffff203bd0 0000000000000000
0x0000000011b010:  00006fff00000001 0000000000000000
0x0000000011b020:  00006fffff203dd0 000000014030fc75
0x0000000011b030:  0000000000000003 000000000011b079
0x0000000011b040:  00000001406def35 0000000019693297
0x0000000011b050:  00006ffffff63297 00000000002a7010
0x0000000011b060:  0000329700000003 0077000000001969
0x0000000011b070:  00000000002a6fb0 00000000002a7018
0x0000000011b080:  000000000011b0b0 0000000000000000
0x0000000011b090:  0000000000000000 0000000000000000
0x0000000011b0a0:  0000000000000000 0000000000000000
Backtrace:
=>0 0x00000140349cd6 in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x349cd6) (0x0000000011b079)
  1 0x0000014030fc75 in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x30fc75) (0x0000000011b079)
  2 0x000001403101cf in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x3101cf) (0x0000000011b130)
  3 0x000001402cb4db in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x2cb4db) (0000000000000000)
  4 0x000001402b44fb in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x2b44fb) (0x00000000004000)
  5 0x0000014026e687 in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x26e687) (0x0000000011f8f0)
  6 0x000001401742c0 in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x1742c0) (0x0000000011feb0)
  7 0x00000140168696 in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x168696) (0x0000000011feb0)
  8 0x000001401685d5 in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x1685d5) (0x0000000011feb0)
  9 0x0000014024ad10 in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x24ad10) (0x0000000011feb0)
  10 0x00000140174b5c in (the) gnorp apologue (+0x174b5c) (0x0000000011ffa0)
0x00000140349cd6 (the) gnorp apologue+0x349cd6: movq (%rcx), %rax

This sounds like a missing null pointer check.

This possibly highlight two problems:

• bad proton behavior leading to this codepath
• missing checks in the game

Oh hey, I actually tried looking into that a while back.

Think it's a game bug, possibly caused by compiler incorrectly optimizing out a null check in SDL controller initialization.

The workaround is to unplug the controller.

140349CD6 looked like https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/blob/07d0f51fa292895443f563f0cbde4cb3802d87fa/src/joystick/windows/SDL_dinputjoystick.c#L598 to me, but missing the said null check.

Apparently can also happen on Windows, or at the very least one person mentioned that unplugging their controller helped them.

In my case, my culprit "controller", for some reason, happened to be my keyboard, unplugging it gets the game going. Works fine with DS4 controller plugged in though.

@awaken1ng are you a developer of this game? If not, how did you map the stacktrace to this line in SDL?

I'm not, that's just results of me staring at Ghidra, realizing it looks like SDL and then narrowing it down to that line.

So it isn't guaranteed to be correct?

By the way, I did unplug my switch pro controller and the game still doesn't start.
I also tried to entirely disable the steam input, and it didn't solve the issue.

It could be deceptively similar looking function for all I know, but it did look pretty identical to SDL_DINPUT_JoystickPresent:

undefined4 FUN_140349ca0(undefined2 param_1,undefined2 param_2)
{
  undefined2 local_res20;
  undefined2 local_res22;
  undefined4 local_res24;
  
  local_res24 = 0;
  local_res20 = param_1;
  local_res22 = param_2;
  (**(code **)(*DAT_14076e250 + 0x20))(DAT_14076e250,4,FUN_140349470,&local_res20,1);
  return local_res24;
}

As I mentioned earlier, for me, the issue was my keyboard showing up as a controller, make sure you don't have something like that as well. In Plasma I can see it in Settings - Game Controller, not sure if Gnome has something similar.

I don't know if it helps, but this game uses this library: https://github.com/17cupsofcoffee/tetra (Rust 2D lib, SDL + OpenGL wrapper). Perhaps one of its examples could be used to reproduce this issue. Also I don't know if the game uses Joystick at all, since the game can be fully played with a mouse.

What would help is the game dev taking a look at the stack trace and fixing his game.

currently still doesn't work for me

Using that workaround still works. I cannot imagine how it is even possible that it works.