Factorio Forums

What did you do?

• I downloaded the game from archive for linux and run the executable.

What happened?

• The game launched and runs fine but there in no sound or it seems to be hard-pointed to wrong device.

What did you expect to happen instead?

• Run it with sound on desired device.

Does it happen always, once, or sometimes?

• Always. (At least for the website version.)

It seems to me that the game is not routed correctly through PipeWire. At first I thought there is no sound at all, but after trying: I noticed the sound started coming from my headphones that lies on my desk and that I am not normally using. I have them even disabled in pulsemixer.
I do not see the game in pulsemixer nor I manage to find any way to point the game to output the sound from my speakers.
With all this I would blame it on bad configuration somewhere in my system but it is reproducible on SteamDeck.
On SteamDeck the game defaults to "Filter Chain Sink". When I change it to speakers it instantly switches back to "Filter Chain Sink".

Funnily enough, when I downgrade my steam version, the sound is fine as expected on both PC and SteamDeck. However I want to keep my steam version to be the newest one and separated. That's why I downloaded the game from the archive in the first place.
Steam must be launching it in different way. What does steam differently, and can I launch it the same way?

You are running Arch Rolling. This could be the reason for this problem. Try different distro.
I am playing on Debian and Fedora and never had any problems with sound. My system does not create Filter Chain Sink output device either.

Thanks for the tip but right now I don't have the means to try that.

Beside, I don't think it's a distro issue since the steam version is working fine, tush meaning it can run with no problems on my current setup.
I think the answer lies in the way steam launches the executable. I think that the steam sets some variables for the game to work correctly, which are unknown to me.
The newest stable version from the web is 2.0.43 right now, and it works fine. My guess is that the 0.16.51 is looking for something old and the steam helps correct its lookings, but I don't know what and how.

Right now I'm using really ugly workaround. I have copy of steam version of the newest one (2.0.43 right now) and copy of steam version 0.16.51 which is set to save its saves and configs to its own root directory. In steam the games beta is set to 0.16.51 so the game do not auto-update without my knowledge. Then I'm launching the game through two script that first creates/changes pointer "factorio" in Steam/steamapps/common to point either to the newest one or to the 0.16.51, and then it runs the executable.
I don't like it but for now it kinda does what I want.

You don't have means to reinstall Arch? I think you can. Installing any OS while preserving /home is very easy. I reinstalled Debian to Fedora on my main PC two weeks ago. No problem. Didn't lost anything.

Factorio is working well on Debian (Pulseaudio) and Fedora 42 (Pipewire), but not on your system. Maybe because of that output device, which doesn't produce any sound. That's why I said it could be distro issue - because it's working on other distros.
Have you tried other games (native Linux)?
Also, you can try creating new user in Arch, log in there and run Factorio again on clean profile.

I think 0.16.51 is before SDL, so it might be trying to use alsa.

pioruns wrote: Thu Apr 24, 2025 9:50 pm You don't have means to reinstall Arch? I think you can. Installing any OS while preserving /home is very easy. I reinstalled Debian to Fedora on my main PC two weeks ago. No problem. Didn't lost anything.

Well, everything can be easy once you know what you are doing.
As of now, I do not have available ready to be reimaged flash drive. Since I'm familiar only with installing/reinstalling from one storage device/partition to another, and since my PC has only one system that shares the same partition as home, I'm not doing it without proper backup since the only method I can think of right now is to do it from the same system that I need to reinstall.

I need to check my flash drives before I can reimage them. I'm not against it, one of the first things I was thinking of to troubleshoot it was to try it on fresh install as well, but I need to find time for that... And that was not yesterday, it is not today and I doubt it will be the next week. That's why I'm asking on this forum before doing something as big as reinstalling system just to troubleshoot outdated version of game.

pioruns wrote: Thu Apr 24, 2025 9:50 pm Have you tried other games (native Linux)?
Also, you can try creating new user in Arch, log in there and run Factorio again on clean profile.

Yes, multiple games, this is the first time I run into something like that. Maybe second if you count Don't Starve, but to fix that I needed to create fake binary of pulseaudio in /usr/bin/ (maybe this can be the problem).
As for the user, I'll may be able to try it tomorrow since in one hour I have to be on my way to work. I'll get back to you once I try it.

Bilka wrote: Thu Apr 24, 2025 10:21 pm I think 0.16.51 is before SDL, so it might be trying to use alsa.

I'll look into it tomorrow. Thanks for the tip.

Ok, I narrowed it down to pipewire-alsa package.

What have I tried:

1. Create new user.
2. Fresh install of Arch linux.
3. Fresh install of Fedora linux.

The new user behaves the same. Same results with no sound.

Then I installed new Arch linux from scratch. It had not any of my configurations, everything is fresh new.
At first, I tried to launch the game with only alsa installed. No pipewire, no pulseaudio. It worked as expected.
Then I installed pipewire pipewire-alsa pipewire-pulse and the problem came back. I also noticed in pulsemixer that the games output shows as "PipeWire ALSA [factorio: ALSA Playback". If I play Youtube video and if the game is running at the same time the sound becomes corrupted noise. If I close the game the Youtube video sounds as expected.
I double checked my main system and I noticed that I didn't have installed pipewire-alsa, that's why I could hear at some point the games sound coming from my headphones, because alsa defaults to them. After correcting it and installing pipewire-alsa it behaves the same as on the testing install.

After that I installed Fedora linux because it comes with pipewire out of the box.
After the install I upgraded the system and restarted: After it booted I run the game and it behaves the same. No sound, in sound controls I see the game as "PipeWire ALSA [factorio: ALSA Playback" and if the game is running with Youtube video at the same time it corrupts the sound.

So my conclusion is that the games sound becomes somewhat broken if routed through pipewire.
Still, it is weird to me that Steam can somehow make the game work correctly.
I also noticed that if run from Steam the name in pulsemixer is only "factorio: ALSA Playback".
I don't know what different game I could try that also uses only alsa to narrow it/troubleshoot it even more.

For my personal use, I could uninstall the pipewire-alsa package and configure alsa correctly, but I already have my script workaround and I do not have any other alsa only program to test more (at least I do not know of) so I will stick to the script.

Also I find weird that you manage to get sound of 0.16.51 on Fedora, pioruns. Are you sure you were running 0.16.51 the web version?
Maybe it can be difference in hardware but I did test different output devices so I presume not.

Thanks for very extensive testing.
I am not running 0.16.51 version, no. I could have mentioned that earlier. May I ask why you run such old version from 2018 (7 years old at this point)? viewtopic.php?t=61009 Is it because you want it in sync with Steam Deck or something? I am lost. Sorry if my posts are irrelevant to your case.

0.16.51 was the first version I ever played (or some flavor of 0.16.xx) and never finished it. I think I never got past plastic processing.
After finishing few times the new Space Age dlc I wanted to reexperience 0.16.51. What was it like when times were much more simpler (or harder, depends how you look at it), when the game was not so polished and when everything looked and sound differently. I kinda like the old looks and colors more, but that just may very be nostalgia!

The reason why I wanted it to be separated from Steam are two main things.

1. Trusting issue. I do not trust Steam that it will handle saves and configs correctly when switching versions. I wanted it so each version has its own .factorio folder if that makes sense.
2. I want the newest version to be ready to play if needed. Since Steam makes hosting and joining so easy, I wanted my Steam version to be set to the newest one if any of my friends would want to play.

Another reason is that whenever switching the game version on Steam, it must be each time redownloaded.

I learned much later that the configs and saves can be changed to save to its game root directory after comparing the two versions (Steam and web), hence the script workaround.

The SteamDeck was just to test it/narrow it a bit more if it would behave the same on different device.

For the syncing, I can handle it by myself by different means, but in the first place I needed the separated ".factorio" directories. Which I thought I would achieve by downloading the 0.16.51 from the web, which it did, but the game had no sound.