I bought E:D a few months back, but couldn't get it to run at all. I can't remember what versions I tried, so not much help to be honest, but it was an easy refund for me. If this thread takes off with any advice for getting it running, I might give it another try.

Just tried my installation here, still runs just fine. I have the Steam version and use SteamPlay/Proton for ED.
I've setup protontricks and with that I installed dotnet40 into the prefix (`protontricks 359320 dotnet40 win7`). Note that you need to start the game once before running protontricks for having an existing prefix folder.
My launch options are `WINEDLLOVERRIDES=rundll32=d gamemoderun %command%`, though the dll override is just to prevent a rundll message box in case the prefix got updated.

Sorry to necro this thread, but is Elite still working for anyone else?
I wanted to get back to playing again but the game kept crashing within about 5-10 minutes so I decided to try and reinstall it. So far I've tried with Proton 4.11-3, Proton 5.0-9 and Proton 5.0-9-next, each time wiping the pfx directory (and the files in the directory containing pfx) and launching the game from Steam two times before running protontricks. As for protontricks, I've tried the following (following the procedure just mentioned before each, meaning 12 attempts in total):
protontricks 359320 -q dotnet40
protontricks 359320 -q dotnet40 win7
protontricks 359320 -q dotnet472
protontricks 359320 -q dotnet472 win7

None of the installs work; Proton 4.11-3 segfaults every time and Proton 5 silently dies, both before showing any window.
Installing with Proton 5.0-9 and then running the game with Proton 5.9-GE-5-ST does show the launcher window, but it freezes when clicking the log in button.

Is it just me or is anyone else having similar issues? More importantly, does anyone know of a solution?

P.S. I've also edited all the .config files to make sure they include <supportedRuntime version="v4.0"/> (both as the single supportedRuntime and with the line placed right above the original one).

P.P.S. I would have normally just used 5.9-GE-5-ST but it doesn't seem to work with VR and I just got my Valve Index, so I'm not giving that option up! ;)

Last edited by Cybolic on 1 October 2020 at 10:59 pm UTC

This is going to sound dumb, but try only installing the dotnet package you need (I think they just need 4.0). I haven't played in almost a year, but I remember having a number of issues when I tried installing newer dot net, specifically 4.7.

I also had a number of issues with proton, but regular wine worked fine. Might be worth trying it with wine. I'm not sure how VR works though, I don't own one.

Hot damn, I solved it! After starting over yet again and ending up with a pfx preset that was missing everything in the windows directory and constant errors when installing .NET I decided to see what file-relevant ENV options might be affecting this and the answer turned out to be ESYNC!

So, what I did was:

1. Deleted the 359320 directory
2. Set PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command% in the game's properties in Steam and ran it again (which failed as expected)
3. Ran env WINEESYNC=0 protontricks 359320 -q dotnet472 win7
4. Ran the game, and now it works again!

So, as my ulimit is set to infinite, I'm guessing this is actually a kernel issue in 5.8.11 (Arch), but at least it's back to working again :D

Quoting: denyasisThis is going to sound dumb, but try only installing the dotnet package you need (I think they just need 4.0). I haven't played in almost a year, but I remember having a number of issues when I tried installing newer dot net, specifically 4.7.

I also had a number of issues with proton, but regular wine worked fine. Might be worth trying it with wine. I'm not sure how VR works though, I don't own one.

I already tried that one (as mentioned). It's good advice regardless, but not the issue in this case. And no, regular Wine and the Glorious Eggroll versions of Proton don't work with VR, unfortunately.

Hey Cybolic. I just re-installed my PC yesterday, clean install. I fired up Elite Dangerous, let it fail, then I used the bottom-most of your commands - protontricks 359320 -q dotnet472 win7. After a few minutes, it finished, and I ran Elite:Dangerous okay.

I'm on Manjaro and choose the Cinnamon desktop, but otherwise, just using fairly stock install. It's using Proton 5.0-9.

That was all in 2D mode - I chose the Horizons option when starting the launcher. Lemme go try VR mode and see if it works.

Edit: Just saw your update, which you made while I was playing/testing Elite for you! Incredible timing. Glad it's working!!

Edit2: Although I'm on kernel 5.8.11-1-MANJARO, and I didn't have to do any of the esync stuff you did. Odd!



Last edited by scaine on 3 October 2020 at 2:10 pm UTC

Hey scaine, did VR mode work for you?
2D works for me as well, but in VR I'm consistently getting the Elite splash screen and then SteamVR crashes, both when starting the game from desktop Steam and from the SteamVR dashboard; tried the SteamVR beta from yesterday as well with the same results. No info in the terminal, no error messages, just a black headset screen and the "SteamVR needs to restart" popup dialogue.

I'm honestly considering a reinstall as well at this point :/ My motherboard might be the culprit though, it's an MSI Big Bang XPower-II, which needed special kernel boot flags for years and Manjaro still won't boot on it. I keep seeing "ioctl (SFEATURE): Broken pipe" in the terminal output from Steam (in general), which is what's fuelling my suspicion.

Yeah, I just played over an hour in VR there, so definitely working okay. I had some issues getting the mouse to show up in menus, but after finding the "in-game cursor" option in the Graphics options, that's working now too. Seems fine overall, I'm sorry to tell you!

Well, at least I now know not to direct my disappointment at Frontier, but at my system.
Thanks for the report, scaine :)