[Linux] Vulkan renderer not showing menus/HUD correctly

[PhysixCat]

System info:
- OS: Debian Sid (GNU/Linux) amd64, kernel 5.7.0-2
- GPU: NVIDIA GTX 760
- CPU: i5 4440
- nvidia-driver: 450.57-2
- gzdoom: g4.4.2

If I use the Vulkan renderer, menus/in-game HUD don't appear as you would expect them on the screen. Instead most of the time they are invisible, and for very brief moments they flicker in and out of view. This affects all the ESC menu stuff, the console, and the player HUD. It is possible to load maps and play the game, everything works fine except for the HUD being invisible most of the time (even if you mess with the screenblocks value).

If I go back to the OpenGL renderer, everything works as normal.

This problem seemed to appear after an update of some nvidia vulkan packages from Debian Sid, but Vulkan seems to work fine in every other application so far. Haven't found any bug reports on their end, so I thought I'd bring it up here.

[PhysixCat]

Hello - just wondering, are there any linux users that can replicate this, or is it squarely a 'me' problem? I realize in all likelihood it's the updated vulkan package, but I'd like to understand why it's having this specific issue with GZDoom's vulkan renderer. Haven't had any other problems with other vulkan applications since the update in question.

Edit: It might be worth noting - if playing a WAD with a TITLEPIC (example, DOOM2), the titlepic will not appear and instead the screen will be completely black with no menu visible (but you can still interact with it). if playing a WAD with a TITLEMAP, such as Paradise for example, the titlemap will render correctly but there will still not be a menu visible.

[Rachael]

The only thing I can suggest is trying another distro, temporarily, if you have the space for one. Try Ubuntu or Mint.

[PhysixCat]

Thank you for the suggestion. Something that may be relevant to mention is that Mint is derived from Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is derived from Debian Sid. So it does worry me a bit that eventually this vulkan package will make it downstream to both of those, and the same problem will crop up with users of those. So while I could simply downgrade the package (or even switch distros, like you suggested) to fix the problem, I'm afraid that would be just postponing the problem solving for later. I would file a bug report over to the package maintainers, but I don't really know what's wrong in the first place (why other programs don't have issues, but GZD's renderer acts like that). Would you have suggestions on how I could investigate that? I didn't catch any error messages on GZD's startup console output

The problem may fix itself in a future version of the package if I don't report anything, but I'd like to increase the chances of that happening

[Rachael]

In that case, what I would do is file a report directly with Debian. They should contact, or at least give you a means to contact the maintainers of the Vulkan package that seems to be faulty.

For what it's worth, GZDoom has been used, multiple times, to report issues with vendors' drivers, particularly ATI.

[PhysixCat]

Just an update - I have found that the culprit is probably somewhere in version 450.57-2 of the debian sid nvidia drivers. Reverting back to the immediate previous one in sid (440.100-2) solves the issue. I will have to do more digging to do my bug reporting with the package maintainers, but I wanted to get this out there for reference.

[PhysixCat]

Upgraded to newest version (450.66-1) and the problem seems to be gone. Thread can be safely closed

[Rachael]

Good to know thanks