Testing Bepinex installation with the wrong Steam

[MatthusKakttus]

Everything seemed to work fine when i used the plugin but at the step when gib is supposed to launch the game to test signs of BepInEx activity, it launches Steam installed in Crossover instead of native MacOS Steam. Therefore it fails as Subnautica is not even installed there.

I have native MacOS builds of Subnautica with native MacOS builds of Steam installed and I have not told the script to go looking for the Windows version of Steam running through Crossover.

I launched the game nevertheless, and BepInEx is loading because there are signs of it in BepInEx/LogOutput.log, so in the end it seems to work.

The terminal log I have :

To perform the test, gib will automatically launch the game, wait up to 30 seconds for signs of BepInEx activity, and then force quit the game.

Return to this Terminal window once the game has closed.

Press enter when you're ready to run the test [Enter] 

Launching Subnautica with Steam...


error: Timed out waiting for the game to launch. Test cancelled.
Unable to verify whether BepInEx is correctly installed. We recommend running gib again, making sure to run the right game.
Timed out waiting for the game to launch. Test cancelled.
Unable to verify whether BepInEx is correctly installed. We recommend running gib again, making sure to run the right game.

Bun v1.3.5 (macOS arm64)

PS: Thank you very much for this useful script, I was not expecting this kind of involvement in MacOS gaming and ever less in MacOS gaming modding :P

[toebeann]

hmm, well it uses the steam: uri protocol to launch steam games, so this would seem to indicate that the crossover version of steam you have installed has taken over that protocol handler. idk if there's an easy way for you to fix that yourself - if you even want to, maybe you prefer the windows version being what opens via the steam protocol handler 🤷. if you do want to, maybe somewhere in system settings? (would have to get on my aging macbook to check)

also, you're welcome! honestly the main reason i made it was because as someone who maintains bepinex packs and such for various games, i noticed that the steps to get bepinex working on macos were very tedious and quite technical for the average person. i ended up writing out really in-depth guides, but most macos users couldn't handle it lol.. didn't help that the guides were really long to cover all the possibilities. so the motivation for making this was getting tired of walking people through it on discord xD

[toebeann]

did you choose to have a vanilla shortcut installed? if so, you might want to check whether it was installed to the right version of steam. if you type "vanilla" in the steam library search filter it should show up.

if it got applied to the wrong build of steam then for now you could just copy the details of the shortcut over to the macos steam build manually. sorry for the inconvenience in advance

that said, the shortcut won't work correctly until the steam: protocol handler issue is addressed

if you do ever want to launch the game vanilla in the meantime then there is a section in the readme with a workaround for when the shortcut doesn't work

at least the modded version is working just fine tho 😁

[toebeann]

note to self for when i work have time to work on this:

could potentially migrate to calling the steam executable directly to launch the game via -applaunch parameters instead of relying on the steam: protocol handler 🤔

also might be worth updating the test so that if it fails to detect the game launching, it could ask them to try again by having them manually launch the game themselves and exit when they reach the main menu

[MatthusKakttus]

I have no idea why crossover decided to take priority over the steam: uri protocol but it's good to know. Maybe because I installed it after native Steam so it just replaced it. And I absolutely don't know how to change the default app that handles this kind of uri on mac.

I did not choose to have a vanilla shortcut installed :)

I did not mean to make you have more work but at least the issue is there for anyone to read if it happens to anyone else, and at the end of the day the mods work so :)

but most macos users couldn't handle it lol

lol 😂

PS : I did all that to use performance booster mod but performance is still trash on MacOS because it uses OpenGL and not the Metal graphic api 🥲 The only solution is to play Below Zero instead which uses Metal API ... At least I know now :)

[toebeann]

I did not mean to make you have more work

no no it's fine, i appreciate getting informed when things don't work right, i want gib to be as good as it can be so genuinely thanks for letting me know about this - users who run into this issue could end up with the impression that it isn't working and just give up, definitely don't want that! also it shouldn't be too much work, just need to find the time for it 😸

PS : I did all that to use performance booster mod but performance is still trash on MacOS because it uses OpenGL and not the Metal graphic api 🥲

i don't know if this will work, but according to the unity docs for the version used with Subnautica, there is a -force-metal command line argument which supposedly will force the game to use the Metal API, maybe give it a try and see if it it helps? if you put it in the steam launch options after %command% (or on its own if you have removed bepinex), it should get applied to the game, e.g.:

/usr/bin/arch -x86_64 /bin/bash '/path/to/game/directory/run_bepinex.sh' %command% -force-metal # with bepinex

or just

-force-metal # without bepinex

also i note from that log that you're on apple silicon, and as such using bepinex may also reduce performance somewhat, as currently bepinex only supports x64 CPUs, so to run the game with bepinex we have to also force the game to run through rosetta which is apple's built-in compatibility mode for x64 apps, the drawback being that you lose some performance, similar to with crossover. how much of an impact it has will depend on your specific hardware.

(that being said, if the game only ships an x64 binary and not an arm64/universal one then you're stuck running the game through rosetta regardless. i'd have to check whether that's the case with Subnautica, don't remember off the top of my head)

[toebeann]

@MatthusKakttus If you're willing and able, would you do me a favour and test whether this issue has been addressed by gib v0.9.0?