OpenGL help with Steam games

English Games
#1

I am running openSUSE 12.3, 64bit. nVdia GTS 250, and as far as I can tell the drivers are installed correctly.

I believe the problem to be OpenGL/Mesa, but I am unsure where to begin troubleshooting. My issue is that the games will launch without error, but the window is just solid black with my mouse cursor. I’ve let it sit for about 10-15 minutes to see if it was perhaps loading but this is not the case. I am in the “users” and “video” groups.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#2

To check if the video driver is really working properly install the package “Mesa-demo-x” and type the following in a terminal window: (as user, not root)

glxinfo | grep render

If those games are 32bit you may have to install some 32bit Mesa packages as well.

Try to run a game in a terminal window. You may get some output then that could point to the problem.

#3 
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTS 250/PCIe/SSE2
    GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color, 
    GL_NV_path_rendering, GL_NV_pixel_data_range, GL_NV_point_sprite, 
    GL_NVX_conditional_render, GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info,

This is my output from the glxinfo, and I can’t seem to get any output running Counter-Strike from terminal. Just opens the terminal window and remains blank.

#4

That looks fine.

and I can’t seem to get any output running Counter-Strike from terminal. Just opens the terminal window and remains blank.

Hm, then please try this:
https://en.opensuse.org/Steam#Failure_to_start_Steam.2C_when_trying_to_load_Steam_without_local_runtime

#5

This game me some semblance of progress, the game is no longer blank when I launch it, I can see the loading screen. Though the terminal is still the same, just blank.

For a little more info, I am using the proprietary nVidia driver, I opted to install the 32bit libraries as well.

http://i.imgur.com/izyPpPO.png

These are the Mesa packages I have installed. If there’s any other information you’d like/need please let me know.

#6

There are a few things that I found help with getting the steam client to work on opensuse.

First of all, go into software management and use drop-down to choose pattern 32-bit runtime.

Secondly, I got the 32-bit flash plugin from adobe, rpm version and that fixed client crash issues on pages that had videos.

Thirdly, the SDL_AUDIODRIVER environment variable in opensuse is set to “pulse”, so the following command will launch the steam client with it set to “alsa”

env SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa steam

so you might see if that helps you with your loading problems. Some steam games seem to want to use alsa for that and since alsa routes through pulse by default, it’s pretty harmless to set that env variable.

I found that when I did those things I had no further issues with steam, if you want further info I have a short video about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bt54dV6AJU where I talk about steam issues and a short script I use to fix the steam client startup on my opensuse/kde system.

#7

Just out of curiosity, are you running 32bit or 64bit? I opted to switch to 32bit after I messed up my video drivers and couldn’t boot past command line. Perhaps it will be a bit easier, as I don’t have to micromanage as much. At least I think so.

#8

Got it working!

I guess it was neither OpenGL or Mesa, but the first time around I had my drivers improperly installed. Grabbed the 1-click install drivers from here and then had to use the

STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam

command to launch steam. After this everything works fine, sound, and all.

Thanks for your help guys, pointed me in the right direction.](https://software.opensuse.org/search?utf8=✓&q=nvidia&search_devel=false&search_unsupported=false&baseproject=openSUSE%3A12.3)

#9

The prop Nvidia drivers (which you are using) do not use Mesa – they have their own OpenGL implementation .