DOSBox-X Flatpak not running games through Boxtron on the Steam Deck.

[TylerJaacks]

I can't manage to get Boxtron to open DOSBox-X and run games.

Here is my ~/.config/boxtron.conf

(deck@tylerj-steamdeck .config)$ cat boxtron.conf
[confgen]
# Set this value to 'true' if you want Boxtron to re-create DOSBox
# configuration on every run.
force = false

[midi]
# You can disable MIDI support here.
enable = true

# Select preferred software synthesiser here.
# Can be either 'timidity' or 'fluidsynth'
synthesiser = timidity

# You can name your preferred MIDI synthesiser here to override the one
# picked by default. If not found then software synthesiser will be
# started as a fallback.
#
# Value is treated as a regular expression using Python syntax, matched
# against the name of a MIDI client (case-insensitive); to list MIDI clients
# connected, use: $ aconnect -l
#
# For example, to match client named 'CASIO USB-MIDI', you can use
# value 'casio'.
#
# You can override this per-game with BOXTRON_USE_MIDI_SEQ environment variable.
#
# use_sequencer =

# Boxtron will look for a soundfont in following directories:
# /usr/share/soundfonts/
# /usr/share/sounds/sf2/
# /usr/local/share/soundfonts/
# /usr/local/share/sounds/sf2/
# ~/.local/share/sounds/sf2/  (or wherever XDG_DATA_HOME points)
# ~/.local/share/soundfonts/  (or wherever XDG_DATA_HOME points)
soundfont = FluidR3_GM.sf2

[dosbox]
# Available modes:
# - screen 0, screen 1, etc:
#   The game will use fullscreen on selected screen, without changing
#   the native resolution of your display.  Mouse will be locked to the screen.
#   Default is 'screen 0', which is your primary display.
#   You can override this selection per-game with BOXTRON_SCREEN environment
#   variable, e.g: 'BOXTRON_SCREEN=2 %command%'
# - desktop:
#   The whole desktop area will be used (all displays) with the game centred,
#   the native resolution of your displays will be preserved.
# - disabled:
#   Start DOSBox in windowed modeby default.
fullscreenmode = screen 0

# Pick the default scaler, that you want to use for all games.
# You can override selection per-game by changing option render.scaler in file
# boxtron_<appid>_<id>.conf in game's installation dir.
# Here's comparison of different scalers: https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Scaler
scaler = normal3x

# Uncomment following line to specify a different DOSBox build:
# cmd = ~/projects/dosbox/src/dosbox
cmd = flatpak run --filesystem=%install_dir% com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X

[denilsonsa]

None of the flatpak DOSBox versions can be executed anymore. They all fail with:

/usr/bin/flatpak: /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_64/libcurl.so.4: version `CURL_OPENSSL_4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libappstream-glib.so.8)

This is likely related to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime/issues/551

I've tried these:

cmd = /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --filesystem=%install_dir% --command=dosbox com.dosbox.DOSBox
cmd = /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --filesystem=%install_dir% --command=dosbox-x com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X
cmd = /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --filesystem=%install_dir% --command=dosbox io.github.dosbox-staging

And none of them work.

---

A desirable and easy-to-install solution to Steam Deck users would be to release BoxTron as a flatpak that handles all of these issues. But, not know how steam runtimes, boxtron, or flatpak works... This is more a wish than a real solution.

[denilsonsa]

I've managed to launch the game (on both desktop mode and game mode) using the following line in ~/.config/boxtron.conf:

cmd = /home/deck/dosbox.sh

And then I created a shell script at that location, with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh
echo "LD_LIBRARY_PATH was: $LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

# Choose one out of these three:

# Vanilla DOSBox. Seems to work.
#export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/var/lib/flatpak/app/com.dosbox.DOSBox/current/active/files/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
#exec /var/lib/flatpak/app/com.dosbox.DOSBox/current/active/files/bin/dosbox "$@"

# DOSBox-staging. For some reason, it refuses keyboard input.
#export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/var/lib/flatpak/app/io.github.dosbox-staging/current/active/files/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
#exec /var/lib/flatpak/app/io.github.dosbox-staging/current/active/files/bin/dosbox "$@"

# DOSBox-X. Also seems to work fine.
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/var/lib/flatpak/app/com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X/current/active/files/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
exec /var/lib/flatpak/app/com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X/current/active/files/bin/dosbox-x "$@"

Please note that I'm abusing flatpak. I'm launching the binary directly, bypassing flatpak, and explicitly adding its own lib directory to $LD_LIBRARY_PATH. This may or may not be a good idea, I can't tell. Also, I couldn't see any difference between prepending or appending the directory to the path.

[TylerJaacks]

@denilsonsa this fixed it for me. I agree that it is probably not good to bootstrap Flatpaks manually, but it works. I think there needs to be an issue for creating a flatpak version.