[0.17.9] [Linux] keyboard input freeze on game start

[drmason13]

I have an occasional issue when starting, or loading a game. Factorio appears to run perfectly fine but doesn't respond to any keyboard input.
It responds to mouse input, I can click on the map and drag the map view around. Often, clicking on the ground will cause a "map ping" to appear, but I'm unaware of the shortcut to do so, it just happens on normal clicks. I'll try to get a screenshot the next time it happens.

I can interact with the operating system using things like alt tab and ctrl-alt delete but factorio doesn't respond to any keyboard input at all, including escape.
It has been an occasional issue since 0.17.0 which I have previously worked around by restarting - usually it "just works" the second try, but this is becoming a pain

I am running on linux, ubuntu 18.04. Here's a pastebin link of factorio current.log: https://pastebin.com/gtp6UqMe
There appears to be no error from Factorio at all however:

Code: Select all

  10.255 Loading map /home/masond/.factorio/saves/0.17.zip: 22856630 bytes.
  10.290 Loading Level.dat: 50707012 bytes.
  10.297 Info Scenario.cpp:147: Map version 0.17.9-1
  11.415 Loading script.dat: 328 bytes.
  11.417 Checksum for script /home/masond/.factorio/temp/currently-playing/control.lua: 1848333929
  56.523 Info SteamContext.cpp:602: Steam connection lost.
  59.471 Quitting: user-quit.

I spend about 40 secs clicking around and button mashing trying to get out of Factorio without the need to hard reset my laptop - ctrl-alt delete doesn't pop up in front of Factorio like it might on windows. This time I was able to get out to the factorio menu and exit "gracefully", not sure how though I'm afraid!

If this is just a quirk of my setup then so be it, but curious if there is any advice to mitigate the issue.

[drmason13]

Loading Factorio again now for a second attempt (as usual) but trying to be more observant.
First thing I noticed: Clicking "Play" at the main menu switched focus back out to this browser, minimising Factorio.

But this time it worked, again, as usual. I hope you can shed some light on this but I'm happy to keep persevering for the time being.
There are likely more pressing issues to fix first!

[drmason13]

Just quickly, a factorio current.log for the successful load: https://pastebin.com/Nvbq8DQs
As far as I can tell it's exactly the same minus the exiting steam part

[TruePikachu]

What keyboard layout do you use, and have you remapped any keys? Map pings are done by shift-clicking, so it's possible there is some weird modifier key state in effect.

[Oxyd]

Does this still happen in 0.17.15 or later? It might be related to this bug, or it might not.

[drmason13]

I've just tried on 0.17.16 and this is still happening.
I've just tried twice to load a game and had the freeze occur.

[drmason13]

What keyboard layout do you use, and have you remapped any keys? Map pings are done by shift-clicking, so it's possible there is some weird modifier key state in effect.

QWERTY. I have remapped some factorio hotkeys but nothing at a keyboard / OS level. Good thought though thank you.

[drmason13]

Okay, have manged to load the game successfully.

Can't be sure of this (would need to repeat the steps) but I have a theory.

Each time I started the game and had this freeze issue there was the changelog popup when first starting the game.
When force quitting the game with repeated ctrl-alt-delete enters, prompting an OS shutdown.
Something must not "click" in factorio, so the pop up showed again the second time I tried it.

The third time I opened factorio and immediately exited without loading a game, this "clicked" something in factorio and when opening a 4th time the changelog popup window didn't appear. This time the game loaded fine.

This could easily be a coincidence, but it does tally with how I've experienced the issue less recently (as updates become less frequent). When I reported the bug updates were coming almost daily.

What triggers the changelog to appear? If there's some filesystem change I could make to simulate an update I'd like to test that and see if the issue occurs as a result.

[drmason13]

I found

Code: Select all

  "last-played-version":
  {
    "game_version": "0.17.16",
    "build_version": 43906,
    "build_mode": "steam",
    "platform": "linux64"
  }

but setting game_version to 0.17.14 didn't cause the changelog popup window to reappear :/ will keep an eye out during the next update. Right now it's time to play some factorio!

[drmason13]

Sorry for spamming, I'm back again with an update.

I noticed that loading a 0.17.16 autosave worked fine, but loading a 0.17.14 save froze again.
I'm still plagued with the notion that version bumps might be to blame.

The thing is that the 0.16 autosave was made by staying in the 0.17.14 save a little while. So clearly I can load it, but only sometimes?

I'm quite curious about this so I did some tests. Just loading the game, maybe having to restart my laptop, otherwise exit to desktop and start factorio again.
Here are the results:

0.17.14
success: 3
fail: 2

0.17.16
success: 6
fail: 3

order
success 14
success 16
fail 14
fail 16
success 16 *MoP
fail 16
success 16
success 16
success 1
fail 16 * Reboot, steam network won't connect
success 16
success 14
fail 14
success 14

*MoP: Factorio minimised itself when I clicked "Play" on the first menu
* Reboot, steam network won't connect: Rebooted before this attempt just to see if it made a difference(?). After the reboot steam was unable to properly connect to the steam network. I think I ran steam in offline mode.

I've done enough to convince myself there's no rhyme or reason to it. It just sometimes happens.

[Oxyd]

If this is just a quirk of my setup then so be it, but curious if there is any advice to mitigate the issue.

So let's talk about your setup. Are you using the default Ubuntu desktop or some other desktop environment or window manager? Do you use any special keyboard setup like an IME (such as typing booster or a CJK input method)?

Also could you try with the non-Steam version of the game, just to rule out Steam overlay causing this?

[drmason13]

I am running Ubuntu mate distro, and the mate desktop.
My window manager is Metacity (Marco).

I'm using the laptop keyboard with no modifications. My laptop is an Entroware Aether https://www.entroware.com/store/aether. I should try with an external keyboard!

I downloaded 0.17.17 and started a new game, freeplay (I thought I'd test that before moving/copying saves over).

On the 3rd time (maybe 4th?) I got the freeze.

Then tried the same with a USB keyboard and the first time it froze. Neither keyboard worked.

[Oxyd]

Sorry for taking so long, but I just can't reproduce this issue at all. I've tried reproducing it in the MATE desktop, both Steam and non-Steam, new releases and old, but not even a hint of keyboard problems.

So I have no idea what could be wrong here. Sorry about that.