Latest BT Unity Patch (10/30) breaks ModTek load even on latest release (M2 Mac)

[steve-croy]

ModTek stopped loading on BT start after the 10/30 BT Unity Security patch on MacOS on an M2. It's probably a Unity Doorstop loading thing? Downloaded the latest ModTek release from 4 days ago and installed it. No change.

No logs generated, since BT is skipping modtek+doorstop completely now.

It was all working as of last night, so it was definitely due to the patch.

[abower-digimarc]

I'm seeing the same thing.

On my mac, the old run.sh file I could execute directly. The new one, if I execute directly gives this message before it exits:

arch: No command to execute

I believe it's coming from this block:

else # on Apple Silicon, run the game in x86_64 mode and pass in all required env variables set -- arch -x86_64 \ -e DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="${doorstop_library_path}" \ -e DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES="${doorstop_insert_libraries}" "$@" fi

The whole line logged looks like this:

uname -m

• '[' arm64 = x86_64 ']'
• set -- arch -x86_64 -e 'DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Users/adambower/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/BATTLETECH/BattleTech.app/Contents/Resources' -e DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=libdoorstop.dylib
• arch -x86_64 -e 'DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Users/adambower/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/BATTLETECH/BattleTech.app/Contents/Resources' -e DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=libdoorstop.dylib
  arch: No command to execute

It then prints arch usage, and exits. Maybe it's as simple as updating syntax here?

[steve-croy]

Line 108 is missing a \ . Adding that in allows the game to run with arch, since without that character "arch" was not getting passed the executable.

There's still the problem that ModTek isn't actually loading. Not sure how to validate whether doorstop is running properly.

[CptMoore]

UnityDoorstop has "debug" libs that are distributed with modtek, if you replace the normal ones with the debug ones, a doorstop log file should automatically be created as soon as UnityDoorstop runs. It is important for UnityDoorstop to find and execute the ModTek.Preloader.dll, that should appear in the logs.

Thx for testing the Apple Silicon part, that was new due to other Reports (#242) of Apple Silicon not working at all. I've fix the script typo. Unfortunate to hear it did not fix your issue.

[steve-croy]

Thanks, I copied those over. output_log.txt is not being generated. Is there another log file I should look for? I'm not sure if there's anything relevant in the unity Player.log.

When I run ./run.sh manually, I see the Battletech executable start to run, then it closes and Steam restarts BT. When I run directly from Steam, that doesn't happen.

[CptMoore]

There should be a file doorstop_%lx.log where that %lx is a number.

Running via steam, you have to setup the run.sh in a complicated way. Maybe you can setup an intermediate script that outputs all stdout and stderr in a file and then calls the actual run.sh

[steve-croy]

Here's what I got.

steam_command_output.txt

[CptMoore]

dont know what is happening, i just updated run.sh on the main branch but mainly to improve steam support.

i did change it to use just the one instead of 2 env vars for macOS hooking, but dont know if that will help.

[steve-croy]

It does not help. I've done a ton of logging on this (ex. LLDB), and it looks like injection must be getting blocked and the process is getting killed at launch. I'm guessing that the unity security patch did some hardening that the current injection method conflicts with given how MacOS treats arch x86_64 with a more hardened approach in general. I wonder if I should grab the old modtekinjector.exe and use wine on that to see if that works?

[steve-croy]

Ok, using wine to run the old injection-style version of modtek (v0.8.0) worked. Some mods didn't load: BT Performance Fix VMMWSGC and Custom Filters., but it got BEX 2.0 to load.

[CptMoore]

The old injector is not compatible with how modern modtek and mods work. But if you anyway use wine, maybe the game works using the windows start?

[steve-croy]

The game won't run under wine via run.sh—the executable starts, then Steam opens, cancels it, and reloads without run.sh (despite it being in the properties in Steam—I think it's just blocking doorstop).

[CptMoore]

wine does not hook via run.sh, you need to set up wine to load winhttp.dll

winhttp.dll from UnityDoorstop is loaded by setting the override to native, builtin

[Solarward]

I have the same issue on a MacBook Air 2017 with the Steam version of the game. The problem appeared after the previous update - ModTek stopped loading, and only the vanilla version runs.

I’ve tried three different versions of ModTek, checked quarantine and file paths, but when launching through run.sh in terminal, the game starts loading, then minimizes and gets canceled, after which Steam relaunches the vanilla version. Temporary ModTek files are not created.

On the BEX discord, one user with the same problem mentioned that it seems to be an issue with Doorstop, since it also doesn’t load (the log doesn’t get created).

[Solarward]

@CptMoore I understand that modding is an unpaid hobby and I have no right to push, but perhaps you’ve had a chance to look into the issue?

[CptMoore]

ModTek uses UnityDoorstop for hooking Unity games. That tool is supported by the BepInEx modding community. They have only some mac games that show issues with lost hooking support, most still work. Why that is they don't know either last I checked their discord.

One idea they had was a bout code signing disabling the hooking mechanism, and maybe the game updates introduced code signing. The idea is to remove the signature.

E.g. run codesign --remove-signature ./ in the game folder. Needs to be re-ran any time the game updates if it's the problem, unless there's another workaround to that which I'm not aware of

see https://discord.com/channels/623153565053222947/624275540844478474/1436299310185582723 before and after for more info

Tbh, it probably is easier to just run the Windows version of the game and hook through the dll mechanisms there. Just make sure dll override is enabled as per install instructions.

Btw, if you can't solve it I am afraid nobody will, all bug discussions in various discord channels all were abandoned.