UMU breaks the Steam Deck's UI while the game is running, among other things, and it should be disabled by default

[pizzadude]

Describe the bug

UMU causes many issues for running games on the Steam Deck. For example, with shader pre-caching disabled on the deck, games don't start at all (you only hear audio).

I found a new bug today with umu:
Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher#470

UMU also breaks the Steam UI and causes controller configuration, power menu, etc in gaming mode to disappear (the game is forced to be always on top). Therefore I think it should be disabled by default, given all these issues.

Add logs

N/A

Steps to reproduce

1. Install game with Heroic on Steam Deck
2. Enable UMU
3. ps aux | grep umu (to make sure umu is running)
4. Try and go to controller settings while you're actually in the game, notice you can't, as the game is always on top

Expected behavior

for umu to be disabled by default because it's buggy

Screenshots

No response

Heroic Version

Latest Stable

System Information

SteamOS

Additional information

No response

[arielj]

Can you share more details? maybe a screen recording of the issue?

I just tested a game on my steamdeck with UMU in gaming mode and the SteamDeck's UI works just fine, I can change the controller settings, the power settings, and everything else (if I understand what you are reporting correctly).

Regarding the pre-shared caching, heroic shows a warning in the logs when it's disabled and UMU is used to let the user know

HeroicGamesLauncher/src/backend/logger/logger.ts

Line 711 in f1fe209

if (await shouldToggleShaderPreCacheOn(info, gameSettings)) {

(showing a popup would be better, but not sure if it's possible since UMU handles the screens at that point)

[pizzadude]

Can you share more details? maybe a screen recording of the issue?

I just tested a game on my steamdeck with UMU in gaming mode and the SteamDeck's UI works just fine, I can change the controller settings, the power settings, and everything else (if I understand what you are reporting correctly).

Regarding the pre-shared caching, heroic shows a warning in the logs when it's disabled and UMU is used to let the user know

HeroicGamesLauncher/src/backend/logger/logger.ts

Line 711 in f1fe209

if (await shouldToggleShaderPreCacheOn(info, gameSettings)) {
(showing a popup would be better, but not sure if it's possible since UMU handles the screens at that point)

Here's a video of the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouwR1Y0OxyE

The problem happens around 1:50.

Notice the Steam Deck's UI disappears when I start to select controller settings, and I can't bring it back up (the steam menu or the other menu). Also, I can only get back to the Steam Deck's UI briefly,by bringing up the virtual keyboard, but if I go back to controller settings or any other menu it disappears again.

I'm on SteamOS Preview if that matters. (but I don't think it does, as this doesn't happen with UMU disabled)

[arielj]

I was able to reproduce the issue with the UI elements and the umu team already found a fix for it Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher#474

I don't think disabling umu by default is a good idea since GE-Proton is the recommended compat layer to use and UMU makes it work correctly outside steam, disabling it by default can create more issues than the ones you mention here.

Once a new version of umu is released the deck's UI issue should be gone

Regarding the shader pre-caching, it's a known thing and heroic tries to show that to the user so they know what to do in those cases. I understand it's something umu also doesn't want to depend on but it's the only why currently to get the steam app id from the environment, but hopefully it changes in the future to not depend on the pre-caching.

[pizzadude]

Thank you for your quick reply.