The RPG 'Pathfinder: Kingmaker' is out with critical bugs in the Linux version

On the steam forums, 1 hour ago the devs said there will be a patch for this on 8 hours "We're not leaving the office until this is solved. "

That does make them sound good, but let's remember issues like this are there because enough testing simply wasn't done. Frankly, loading it up once on Linux would have shown them the issues.

It's not that easy...
The developer might already have it running with a working savegame, and maybe not having any savegame at all is the problem. Once a savegame is created it might work.
I think it is good that they released it on Linux too, even with these bugs.
It shows they want to have it on Linux. Also that they are working hard to fix it is good too.
The problem is studio's need bigger testing audience that can really restart and play the game from beginning to finish.
I know exactly one developer that really plays his game from beginning to some end livestreaming and swearing. It takes him almost a month to run through it. The linux version is just an export for him.
And he has yet another update of his game (Fortresscraft Evolved, developer DJ Arcas/ProjectorGames).
The downside is that nightlies and beta builds are not exported, because to him, creating the export is easy, but to get two different platform versions correctly uploaded into steam is a big nuisance.
If anybody has a hint on how to automate that correctly for a primarily dotnet windows developer...

Apparently the Linux bug wasn't as easy to solve as they thought. Might be waiting a while.

Which just showcases that probably absolutely nobody tested this game on linux prior to release.
Absurd, really. If you cannot test a build at all before release, don't release it yet...

I had enough bugs hunting me for months that work perfectly fine on my testing platform, but yet in production it seemed to creep up. It was very hard to find, I had to plough through megabytes of straces that I obtained through wonky uplinks.

No amount of unit testing or stress testing would have revealed that bug. And in my case I had complete control over platform and kernels. There were no hidden gotchas.

Now expand that to numerous of different linux platforms, filesystems, kernels, drivers, libraries.

The only thing that can be said is that there was not enough testing done by the beta testers to hit these snags.

And has anyone experienced the game not loading at all. just freezing with the fancy in-game cursor?

Maybe too early to ask - but is it any fun? Skimming Steam reviews one theme is "the DM hates me" though this is "only" balancing. Mostly I'm intrigued by the RPG+city building/strategy aspect but this seems to be hard to do right - e.g. PoE's stronghold management felt (for me) always tacked on without really fitting with the rest of the game.

The only thing that can be said is that there was not enough testing done by the beta testers to hit these snags.

Did it have Linux beta test at all? I doubt it.

Apparently the Linux bug wasn't as easy to solve as they thought. Might be waiting a while.

Which just showcases that probably absolutely nobody tested this game on linux prior to release.
Absurd, really. If you cannot test a build at all before release, don't release it yet...

I had enough bugs hunting me for months that work perfectly fine on my testing platform, but yet in production it seemed to creep up. It was very hard to find, I had to plough through megabytes of straces that I obtained through wonky uplinks.

No amount of unit testing or stress testing would have revealed that bug. And in my case I had complete control over platform and kernels. There were no hidden gotchas.

Now expand that to numerous of different linux platforms, filesystems, kernels, drivers, libraries.

That is nothing but apologism.
If you control both platform and kernel, then the problem can obviously not lie in either.

Which is the exact opposite of their problem, which was that NOBODY (at least I haven't read a single report of anyone who did NOT have the bug) on linux (or at least its most used distro) was able to get save games working.
That the fix is already out after barely 24 hours shows that this was a simple to solve bug, supporting my point even more.

A single person using a recent Ubuntu (and not a VM) testing the game would have been enough. Nothing fell through any "cracks" in the testing environment, except if you consider not having a recent Ubuntu setup a "crack".

I'm a programmer myself, and I think you do us an extreme disservice by trying to sugarcoat incompetence and put it all on the testers. After all, you can't blame the testers if nobody told them to test on linux.
This bug could have been found by any developer who tested his own build appropriately.

My guess? They used a build server to cover the linux build, fixing only bugs that caused a build failure and rarely or never actually ran the linux version.

I'd say it's all good now, but there are still so many bugs left and the game seems to be plagued with absurd difficulty scaling (level 2 parties facing enemies with 40AC and nonsense like that)... it's such a shame, really. Once patched properly, the game must be really good. But I don't think that will happen before the end of October - and by then they'll be lucky if the ratings don't drop below 60%.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 28 Sep 2018 at 1:09 pm UTC

And has anyone experienced the game not loading at all. just freezing with the fancy in-game cursor?

It happened to me, it seems to be an issue with the static SDL version linked in Unity. I solved it applying the same fix that worked for PoE2, change the launch command to load your system SDL library, mine for example looks like this: SDL_DYNAMIC_API=/usr/lib64/libSDL2.so %command% If it's the same problem that should let you get into the game.

With that change, the fix that Avehicle7887 provided for the sound, thanks again, and the recent update that makes saved games work finally I can get into the game and play.


Last edited by Devlin on 29 Sep 2018 at 10:20 am UTC

A bit late to the article, but I just wanted to say that this game runs rather poorly on Windows as well. Save corruption, crashes, freezes.

I've been running it under windows without issue so far, however I'm only just starting the kingdom building part. Haven't had time to download and install under Linux because my SSD is filling up, need to schedule a upgrade sometime.

Runs a lot better with the new patches. I will test it in Linux at some point as well.

are windows and linux save files compatible? does anyone know because I have a game in windows but don't want to restart if I move to Linux version.

Is the game good in general as an RPG? I didn't buy it yet.


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 Oct 2018 at 10:30 pm UTC

Probably one of the best ones to come out, only criticisms really is that only %10 is voice acted (so get your reading glasses out) and the difficulty level is pure enemy stat based, however I have watched someone play it on HARD and it is indeed insanely hard at the start, but once you get to levels 6,7,8 things get considerably easier on HARD.

Unfair mode might get easier at levels 15 ish? I don't know why anyone would play on that, again its pure stat based difficulty, you will not find a unique experience playing on hard or unfair! and some enemies will be extremely hard to defeat and won't make any sense (because it can be a ordinary mob that wipes you team out).

Some people switch to hard level after they get to level 5 or so, thats an option sure.

The kingdom building system is interesting but, seems it could be expanded on a fair bit in the next kingmaker, then again I haven't really gotten far in the game yet (only at level 8)

Latest updates fix quite a few issues however their still using a broken .so audio file which you can find the correct one from the pathfinder forums in a thread with a google link or take the Linux version of PoE2 so file and dump it into the correct folder.

Other then that oversight which shouldn't exist, the game has 60% of the windows performance level for some reason, at 4k under windows with high I get 56fps around the starting level but under Linux its 34fps, this is not good because some areas of the game tank to 30fps area under Windows, so that would make it very choppy under Linux (example is Stag Lords fort).

The game is using Unity3D engine and I suspect their only using the OpenGL render path and not Vulkan, if we can convince them to update unity3d to the latest vulkan supporting version and spin that then I'm sure the performance issues would go away when compared to windows...


Last edited by TheRiddick on 12 Oct 2018 at 8:57 pm UTC

Just by reading the Steam forums, it seems the game is still in a very buggy state, even has some game breaking bugs. Also I can't repeat it enough, GOG Linux users still don't have access to the Pre-Order DLC.

It seems like a good game but I'll wait for the bugs to be fixed before I jump in.


Last edited by Avehicle7887 on 12 Oct 2018 at 9:06 pm UTC

I haven't encountered game breaking bugs but only at level 8 on one play through, I have restarted a game recently with a male barbarian tanker because that seems to be lacking with the NPC choices (don't really want to random gen my own since they have no party storyline!).

I did have a Ranger with an annoying boar companion, and IMO the perma companion classes are just too annoying, the animals get stuck and are tethered to the player at ALL times, even when going to bed! plus they grunt and make noises like someone is cattle prodding them every 2sec!