Horizon Zero Dawn (GOG release) crashing periodically
letterlock Sep 3, 2021
My System Info

Linux Distribution: Ubuntu 21.04
Desktop Environment: Gnome 3.38.5
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
GPU Driver Version: 470.57.02

Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

If this is to do with Steam, please add your system read-out from Steam -> Help -> System Information (please put that into Pastebin/Gist as linked above!): N/A

If this is not Steam, you can still give us a system readout using inxi with "inxi -SbCGxx" in terminal (please put that into Pastebin/Gist as linked above!): Pastebin Link

You can note your issue below here

Hi all, hoping to get a little help with Horizon Zero Dawn. I have a bit of prior experience in Debuntu style distros, but I just decided to migrate my gaming rig recently as I love linux so much more than any other OS ecosystem.

The problem is that I have the GOG version of HZD from before I migrated, and the native installer for that version on Lutris doesn't work, the game would "launch" and then die instantly. After digging for an age, I found this test, that got things working pretty flawlessly by copying the 32 + 64 bit versions of "mfc140.dll" to HZD's prefix from another game's prefix that I had installed.

However, about 30 minutes into the game, I start getting these total lockups, that either eventually clear up, or crash the game, but there doesn't seem to be a relevant error message or crash report in the Lutris logs, nor does the game natively tell me that something went wrong. It simply hangs for 2-4 minutes, then grinds to a start again, or crashes completely.

In putting together this post, I noticed that "show crash dialogs" was toggled off in the game's lutris configuration. I've toggled it on and will play until I encounter an issue, which I will of course update this post with.


Note any particular steps to reproduce it below here

I'm not sure if it's a problem due to my system's hardware or if it is otherwise reproduceable by others, so I'll include my Lutris "configure" settings in this pastebin.

Thanks for any help, and apologies in advance if I'm a bit clueless about some things.

EDIT: So toggling "show crash dialogs" didn't produce anything. After toggling that option it was the usual lutris log output, which I've pasted here. After that didn't work I turned on debugging output and was met with this log instead, which is gobbledygook for me, but might help someone with a bit more experience.

Last edited by letterlock on 3 September 2021 at 12:02 pm UTC
This topic has an answer marked - jump to answer.
on_en_a_gros Sep 3, 2021
Hello not sure if it's relevant, but on protondb some user have memory leak issues running the game with Nvidia 470 drivers.
letterlock Sep 3, 2021
Quoting: on_en_a_grosHello not sure if it's relevant, but on protondb some user have memory leak issues running the game with Nvidia 470 drivers.

I'm not sure, it might be... What should I do to test that? Downgrade to a different version?
on_en_a_gros Sep 3, 2021
I'm really not a specialist, but I would first check my ram consumption, if the memory usage increase to the point to use the 16g I would eventually try another driver branch (460 if I remember correctly )
letterlock Sep 3, 2021
A couple of hours of uninterupted play later, and I think you found my solution! Seems the memory leak was happening so fast I could barely get in game most times.

Thank you so much for your help, I must have overlooked those problems because most proton users were reporting them for Steam, and most of my problems were in the original setup of the game, so I was tunnel-visioned on the GOG/other reports.

For any other newbies, the fix is (at least on Ubuntu and other similar distros) in the "Additional Drivers" settings menu, where you can downgrade to the last driver (currently 460) instead of the most recent (currently 470). I would imagine the fix would be the same on other distros, but I can't speak to that.
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