now the bad news...
Recently received my Steam Deck and when I saw XWA on sale for $4 I jumped on that offer too.
Did not find any good setup instructions for getting the upgrade packs installed on my Steam Deck but I have managed to do it. I can share the info I've pulled together as a tutorial for others who want to do this on their Steam Deck or on a Linux desktop running Steam. I ended up doing a Steam XWA install up on my PC as well to see if the issue was due to Steam Deck hardware or not but I had the exact same crash on the PC.
The mission I'm talking about specifically - Prologue: Family Business - Emon's lesson: Weapons
First mission had a couple visual glitches I happily ignored as I chased off the Viraxo but trying to start the next mission crashed back to desktop just as I was about to enter the hangar.
After many reinstall attempts on the Deck I decided to test using my Ubuntu PC which has a working wine version of XWAU that's a bit old at this point but does still work. Steam was already installed so I added XWA to the PC's Steam library and proceeded to apply all the upgrades.
I am only installing:
- XWAU2020.exe
- TFTC_1.3.exe
- TFTC_1.3.2.exe
After a good hour or so of setup on the PC I experienced the exact same crash entering the hangar before mission 2. Unfortunately that box is off right now but I assume there is crash data I can share once I can get my hands on it.
If the game crashes please include the crash data. This can be found in the Event Viewer in Windows under the Application Section. Hopefully it's a similar operation under wine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In an attempt to workaround the problem I fired up the game using the Cheater pilot, went to single player in the flight simulator and was able to load mission #3 without any problems.
At this point I uninstalled and completely removed the XWA Steam install from my PC. Added the base XWA game back to PC Steam. Loaded the game, completed mission #2 and quit.
Moved back to my Steam Deck and was able to jump to mission #3 and inventory a whole bunch of cargo without any problems and look fantastic while I was doing it.
Not sure if other missions are going act up as well since I'm just getting started with XWAU on Steam but did want to report this issue and share the somewhat successful Steam Deck setup info.
The Steam install info I will polish up a bit and add here before I go anywhere near the tutorials section.
Steam deck:
Which version of the game are you running - Steam
where is the game installed to? - /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/Star Wars X-Wing Alliance
Which OS are you running - SteamOS (Arch based by the look of things)
What (if any) additional installers do you have in place? If you remember please check the order in which they were installed. I did the 1-2-3 above in that order
Have you made sure to install the latest hooks with the Hook Setup Tool - I have not
If the game crashes please include the crash data. - will get this asap
PC
Which version of the game are you running - Steam
where is the game installed to? - /home/me/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/Star Wars X-Wing Alliance
Which OS are you running - Ubuntu LTS (jammy - 22.04)
What (if any) additional installers do you have in place? If you remember please check the order in which they were installed. I did the 1-2-3 above in that order
Have you made sure to install the latest hooks with the Hook Setup Tool - also no
If the game crashes please include the crash data. - will get this asap