Some songs are not being loaded when Steam Deck is in "Gaming Mode"?

[nosebeggar]

I have the weirdest problem, I tried with the AppImage version as well as the Flatpak. We noticed today that some songs are missing, and later on I realized that a lot of songs are missing. I'm using USD on Steam Deck and this only happens when the Steam Deck is in "Gaming Mode", meaning "Not-Desktop-Mode". In Desktop Mode all songs load just fine. There are no errors in the errorlog corresponding to this, I have attached it below.

The weird thing is all files are imported from the same folder, the permissions and owners are all the same. I have synced the songs via Syncthing to my deck, so they should all work the same as on my PC, where I can confirm, they work. New songs added work right away.

Error.log

I'm flabbergasted as to how to troubleshoot this. Any hints appreciated.

[barbeque-squared]

If the permissions (as reported by ls -lha or equivalent on the Steam Deck itself) are the same, maybe this has something to do with syncing when in Gaming Mode vs syncing when in Desktop Mode? Other than that I have no idea, I don't have one.

On an unrelated note, am I correct in saying you ran USDX (once in the menus) for about half a minute to generate that Error.log? Because I see it's spamming over 33.000 lines of joystick stuff which probably isn't great for performance while also (as far as I can see) not being useful.

[nosebeggar]

Hi, thanks for the quick answer.

No, the syncing is done by a systemd service in the background. The files come in in any mode, but that is beside the point. There are about 100 songs missing when starting in gaming mode, but always the same amount. Those files work just fine when started in desktop mode and its the same application, using the same config, same launch arguments (none), same data folders. That is why I am confused as hell.

Regarding the joystick logs: yes, they are extremely irritating. In gaming mode I use a PS4 controller via Bluetooth for song selection, but the logging is really ridiculous.

Is there any way to make logging more verbose? A launch option maybe? Something strange is going on here

[barbeque-squared]

Sorry for the late reply. There's not an option yet to make this more verbose. Or actually, there is a Game -> Debug option, but it currently only shows/hides some fps counter. I don't see why that can't also control whether we log/not log the debug lines.

We would then also have to do some effort into actually debug-logging things like "I'm going to try folder X now" or "I found file Y", but it would be very useful because it's probably the most user-friendly way to get more information.

This isn't the most difficult change to make but I need to go through the open PR's first. But it's on my list and I'll @ you here once I've done something about it. I hope that's okay and you don't mind switching to desktop mode for the time being.

[nosebeggar]

Sorry for the late reply. There's not an option yet to make this more verbose. Or actually, there is a Game -> Debug option, but it currently only shows/hides some fps counter. I don't see why that can't also control whether we log/not log the debug lines.

We would then also have to do some effort into actually debug-logging things like "I'm going to try folder X now" or "I found file Y", but it would be very useful because it's probably the most user-friendly way to get more information.

This isn't the most difficult change to make but I need to go through the open PR's first. But it's on my list and I'll @ you here once I've done something about it. I hope that's okay and you don't mind switching to desktop mode for the time being.

That'd be great, I'll use my laptop for the time being, but when this is in the game I'll definitely troubleshoot and report back. I'm very interested in getting this working.

Do you flag this as a feature request or something so you don't forget it?

Thanks a lot for your reply and time!

[barbeque-squared]

@nosebeggar
The newest release 2025.8.0 contains some extra debug logging, but you have to turn it on manually:

1. Get 2025.8.0
2. Go to Options -> Game and set Debug to On
3. Close and restart the game (the song scanning happens at startup, Debug already needs to be on)
4. Find Error.log and Ctrl^F for a foldername of a song you expected it to load but it doesn't for some reason. If it doesn't find anything then search for the parent folder until it starts finding things.

It might be useful to Ctrl^F for a song you know loads first, so you have a better idea of what the log messages look like.

The order might be different between Gaming Mode and Desktop Mode, so comparing might be a bit difficult, I don't know. Basically if your folder structure is like this: mysongfolder/subfolder/songfolder/thesong.txt:

1. Does it even log Found file mysongfolder/subfolder/songfolder/thesong.txt anywhere?
2. If not, what is the deepest level it logs Recursing: for? e.g Recursing: mysongfolder/subfolder/songfolder or Recursing: mysongfolder/subfolder or Recursing: mysongfolder and so on.

(alternatively you can post an Error.log with debug from both Desktop Mode and Gaming Mode, and depending on how easy they compare, a song that works in Desktop but not in Gaming so I have something to search for)

[complexlogic]

Do the song files that fail to load contain non-ANSI characters in the path?

One thing to note when looking is the difference between the typewriter apostrophe ' and the typographer apostrophe ’. USDB uses the latter, and it is not an ANSI character. So, if you've sourced the file from USDB, and the title or artist contains an apostrophe, the path likely contains non-ANSI characters.

[s09bQ5]

Is this problem maybe a variant of #424?

[nosebeggar]

@nosebeggar The newest release 2025.8.0 contains some extra debug logging, but you have to turn it on manually:

1. Get 2025.8.0

2. Go to Options -> Game and set Debug to On

3. **Close and restart** the game (the song scanning happens at startup, Debug already needs to be on)

4. Find `Error.log` and Ctrl^F for a foldername of a song you expected it to load but it doesn't for some reason. If it doesn't find anything then search for the parent folder until it starts finding things.

It might be useful to Ctrl^F for a song you know loads first, so you have a better idea of what the log messages look like.

The order might be different between Gaming Mode and Desktop Mode, so comparing might be a bit difficult, I don't know. Basically if your folder structure is like this: mysongfolder/subfolder/songfolder/thesong.txt:

1. Does it even log `Found file mysongfolder/subfolder/songfolder/thesong.txt` anywhere?

2. If not, what is the deepest level it logs `Recursing:` for? e.g `Recursing: mysongfolder/subfolder/songfolder` or `Recursing: mysongfolder/subfolder` or `Recursing: mysongfolder` and so on.

(alternatively you can post an Error.log with debug from both Desktop Mode and Gaming Mode, and depending on how easy they compare, a song that works in Desktop but not in Gaming so I have something to search for)

You can see the difference at 0:21 and 0:54 - the amount of songs not loaded is immense:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8f80729a-41fe-4d12-8fd3-73a444986cec

Here are the logfiles for those scenarios:
runthroughlauncher-Error.log
runthroughsteam-Error.log

Interestingly enough a missing song like "Shakira, can't remember to forget you" is found in both logs.

Is this problem maybe a variant of #424?

This might very well be, but I don't see what fixed it for him, can you point me at what to try?

[complexlogic]

Looks like a Unicode issue, as I suspected. USDX is using the ANSI charset and can't properly handle paths with non-ANSI characters.

I had a similar problem on one of my Linux PCs. I don't launch from Steam, but I believe this stems from some locale configuration issue. I could never exactly figure out the root cause, my locale is configured correctly as far as I can tell. But forcing the locale with LC_ALL works around the issue. So I launch USDX like this:

LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 ultrastardx

Obviously, change the locale in the above command as necessary.

[nosebeggar]

Looks like a Unicode issue, as I suspected. USDX is using the ANSI charset and can't properly handle paths with non-ANSI characters.

I had a similar problem on one of my Linux PCs. I don't launch from Steam, but I believe this stems from some locale configuration issue. I could never exactly figure out the root cause, my locale is configured correctly as far as I can tell. But forcing the locale with LC_ALL works around the issue. So I launch USDX like this:

LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 ultrastardx

Obviously, change the locale in the above command as necessary.

This actually worked, for anyone stumbling upon this:

Point the target to /usr/bin/env and the launch options like this: LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=ultrastardx eu.usdx.UltraStarDeluxe

I'm leaving this topic open, because this is rather a workaround than a solution. Maybe a developer can weigh in as to why this is necessary?

[barbeque-squared]

Yeah it finds the folder (with question marks replacing some of the characters) but then can't descend into it (because the folder with the question marks doesn't exist). It has something to do with the locale. It actually sounds pretty much like the Linux version of #837 (comment)

USDX does a lot with ANSI string/UTF string hell, and I know I've commented somewhere that at some point we should probably just replace all of it with plain string because "newer" Pascals support this just fine.

Is there some LC_ (or related) thing+value I can set on my Linux machine that forces it into the broken state like this issue? Because I need to have a way to sort-of fake it having a broken locale in order to fix it... Alternatively I guess I can try to get some kind of Steam launcher on my computer and see if that breaks it...

[complexlogic]

Is there some LC_ (or related) thing+value I can set on my Linux machine that forces it into the broken state like this issue?

Try LC_ALL=C