linux: The animated story segments are laggy/choppy

[long skiff]

It may be related, but the opening splash screen when opening the game is already freezing for me after a few seconds, but the story elements are straight up broken, the segment starts, a frame or two plays, and then only the audio plays further, this goes on for ~5-10-15 seconds then a full freeze (but the game is still rendering at 60, as i can see in the corner with steam overlay), and a new frame is given, but still only the audio that keeps playing in the background. (stopped after the first story transition)
Happens both on protonGE and using no compatibility tools as well.

EndeavourOS
kernel: 6.19.12-arch1-1 (64-bit)
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.4
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 6 × AMD FX(tm)-6100
AMD Radeon RX 460 Graphics
game version: default public branch: 2026.04.18.

(otherwise the gameplay felt smooth)

[candid berry]

Hey there, I think this has to be a hardware thing as we've not had this report before and the videos work nicely even on standard Proton now - @fathom salmon would you agree?

[long skiff]

hmm, i checked these movies out in the gamefiles and saw they are vp8 and vp9, my video player played them just fine, but i was missing the 32bit version of the libvpx library, sadly even with that, the intro video still freezes after a few seconds, makes sense, didn't see anything indicating the game would be using 32 bit stuff

[fathom salmon]

The game engine has a built in software decoder for VP8/9, so it shouldn't need any libraries on your system to playback. There's a possibility that this built in software decoder requires a more modern CPU (may depend on instructions that yours doesn't have). I'm not sure though. If you can pull the proton logs I can see if there is anything obvious

[long skiff]

used this for launch settings: PROTON_LOG=1 %command%
launched the game, waited a bit on the stuck splash video, clicked, exited

[fathom salmon]

Thanks! I shall take a look when I am home. I appreciate your help!

[candid berry]

@fathom salmon did you ever manage to get to the bottom of this one mate?

[sharp hound]

I also had this happen, you do get the stills, but they hang the game before they appear, in all two (three?) cutscenes of this type. Assuming there are three, the second one ended before any art appeared.

Same thing happened in the similar still image cutscenes in Everspace 2, maybe it's something about how those work in general.

[candid berry]

Was this recently for you?

[fathom salmon]

I couldn't make out anything in the logs of interest no, but I'm no professional in Unreals playback engine or wine so

[sharp hound]

Just hit the ending yesterday, yeah. Oh, just read the thread title again, actually on Windows.

[long skiff]

if it's not the os, maybe you also have old hardware that could cause this?

[sharp hound]

I wouldn't think so, given the rest of the game still runs just fine, which I'd assume takes more graphical power than a series of still 2d images. Also, beefier games such as FFXIV.

[candid berry]

On Windows? 🤔 I have no idea then honestly at this point, it seems like there's literally no way to make it work for everyone, stupid video codecs and players...

If the end cutscene didn't work properly then you can watch it in the game files @sharp hound but I'm sorry about that 🙁

[candid berry]

@long skiff perhaps you might be so kind as to test if my changes to the video files I've just made work better for you? I didn't change the splash screen but the intro and outro are reworked - if you just start a new save slot and skip the prologue via the vehicle, you can see if it works better! Would be super helpful to know if it's OK for you! ❤️

You'll need to opt into the Unstable branch, you can do it by right clicking the game, properties, betas, then put in the password areyousureaboutthis

[long skiff]

@candid berry Yepp, this fixes the issue for me, thank you for that! (the splash screen could get the same treatment if possible)

sadly i can't tag Shienth for some reason to have a windows user test it as well

[candid berry]

Ah that's great! The splash screen is just frozen after a second or two still, right?

[long skiff]

That's correct

[candid berry]

Yeah Shienth has left the server, but that's OK! This should work well for Windows too! I will see if I can do the splash screen too, but it will cause a seam between the end of the video and the loop point sadly, but at least it should work!

Thanks so much for trying that out for me! ❤️ Really appreciate it!

[long skiff]

Thank you for making a fix! Really appreaciate it! ❤️

[candid berry]

If you try out the latest unstable build the splash screen should be working!...

[long skiff]

Sadly the splash video still just freezes up after a few frames played, if even that.

(i still have the splashvideo.mp4 in the movies directory, i don't know if that is the problem, somehow the game still prioritises that?)

[long skiff]

although deleting it just leaves a blank screen

[candid berry]

Really! That's definitely with the latest unstable build? 😮

[long skiff]

yes, here are the folder contents

[candid berry]

Ok thank you, it works on my Deck so I assumed it would be OK on regular Linux but it seems not 🤔

[candid berry]

@long skiff can you try the latest new build when you get a chance? If this doesn't work then I have no idea 😂

[long skiff]

it now plays! just with a white bar at the top

[candid berry]

Ok awesome, and that's weird but at least it's playing, step forward 😂

thank you!

Ok sorted, going to fire out a build to the main branch now! Thank you for all your help solving that! ❤️

[long skiff]

Thank you for your patience with this and with me!

[candid berry]

No problem at all! Super glad I could get it sorted in the end!