Cannot start the game

[Hellsinger]

Hello,

I'm having problems with launching the game. Settings - screen works ok, after pushing play - button blank screen flashes and .exe shuts down.

In the error log there are messages about missing/cannot open several .png files.

Win 7 64 bit / ATI Radeon 5880 / 16gb ram / i5

Tried:

- Run as admin
- 32 bit version
- Repair
- Different gfx-settings

to no avail.

Any suggestions on how to get the game working?

[Volki]

Is your machine plugged in?

[bilbous]

see if there are any other skins available, the one you are defaulting to may not be valid if you had a previous version installed

[LigH]

The log mentioning a few PNG files not being loadable is irrelevant. For several years now. The really relevant reasons why the application crashed are not logged there.

PlaneShift requires OpenGL as 3D graphics API. You should not rely on Microsoft graphic drivers installed by the Windows Installation DVD or Microsoft Update, they implement Direct3D but hardly OpenGL. Instead, install the most recent complete graphic drivers from the manufacturer of your graphic card or from AMD, the manufacturer of the ATI graphic chips.

Furthermore, it may help to disable "Full screen" mode, and select first an aspect ratio and then a resolution which is close to, but below your screen resolution. So you may be able to see better at which stage the initialization fails when the monitor does not need to switch to a full screen mode (which it might not even support if you accidently chose a wrong one).

[Hellsinger]

Thank you for your reply.

However, running 13.4 Catalyst, so gfx driver is fairly new and tried also lower resolutions than my default screen resolution (and higher also).

Haven't noticed any initialization messages (other than update... with --console).

[Minks]

It happened to me a few times that there was no skin selected in the launcher. Which of course rersults in instant crash. Did you check this?

[Hellsinger]

Tried with both Elves - and Minimatuux - skins.

[Pakarro]

Maybe you try to start from pslaunch? For me, this never worked. If this is so, run "psclient" instead.

Good luck!

[Sen]

Hi

First: I like that you did and mentioned your debugging steps.
To me, it also smells like a problem with the graphic driver. In pslaunch, I would turn everything off and set the dropdowns to medium.
As additional idea, doublecheck that openal is installed or deactivate the sound in pslaunch.

[Hellsinger]

Pslaunch and psclient or no sound and everything off / medium / lowest gfx - settings didn't help.

Is there a way to log the game start so I could have some hint on what crashes?

[bilbous]

I think there is a --verbose parameter you can pass on the command line. It goes along well with  --console.

[Hellsinger]

Any way to log the --verbose - results to .txt - file (tried with > - operator from command line)?

[bilbous]

There must be in windows, but I can't remember how, might be a good addition to the cfg file I did see an errorlog file in the base directory, perhaps that could shed some light.

[LigH]

The main problem with the Windows version is that a new console window is created which cannot be redirected.

You would have to resize this new console window to the maximum and choose a small font, so you can highlight most of the content by dragging the mouse over the output after enabling it in the system menu [Alt+Space], then copy the highlighted area by pressing Enter, and paste the copied content into a pastebin service in the web.

P.S.: I wonder if PlaneShift might have issues with a choice between CPU internal intel graphics and the additional ATI graphics; is that a possible reason of trouble with Core i5?

[bilbous]

you can use the > operator in windows 7 if you are already in a command line shell. You do not seem to need to use the --console parameter, it seems to be counter-productive now.

I used "C:\Program Files (x86)\PlaneShift\pslaunch.exe" --verbose > test.txt and it created a file nicely in my home directory. I could have invoked the command in some other directory if I had specified it explicitly or changed from the home directory before running the command.