Spiral Knights - Unable to start client [Resolved]

Unable to start client [Resolved]

11 replies [Last post]

Thu, 05/26/2011 - 11:05

Niramu

Legacy Username

I have previously run Spirlal Knights in an Arch Linux setting using openjdk6 and the icedtea web browser plugin. I recently re-installed my operating system without GNOME, and have not been able to play since.

The problem seems to have something to do with the GUI routines. A few windows of various sizes will appear, followed by a blank screen (which I suspect is SK trying to use a full-screen fallback that I would LOVE to disable), and finally a small window telling me that it failed to load and that I should seek support. My computer is running

Intel Pentium Dual-Core 3.2 GHz
On-board NVIDIA graphics card (not strictly the problem, remember I HAVE played on this compy before)
2GiB RAM
Flat-screen monitor capable of 1600x900 max resolution

I have tried using openjdk6, the jre from the Arch repo at OSU's Open Source Lab, and the official binaries from Sun/Oracle's Java page. None have worked. My graphics driver is Nouveau, with DRI enabled.
$ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes

Any suggestions?

EDIT:
Resolved it. Turns out it was a problem with Arch's libgl package. Corrected by installing the proprietary nvidia package. I feel dirty, but it works for now. I'll look into making a corrected binary later.

EDIT 1:
Looks like the problem is in the upstream binary, and there isn't a stable way to patch it just yet. Sorry, Archers, looks like it's proprietary software for the time being.

Thu, 05/26/2011 - 21:28

Niramu

Legacy Username

Update

I have since installed GNOME, re-installed both Spiral Knights and JAVA, and installed a large array of fonts. Still not working. Interestingly, the downloader (which runs successfully) uses an italic serif font which looks different than it used to. Can someone please at least tell me which font it is *supposed* to be?

Thu, 05/26/2011 - 23:35

Dogrock

I'm fairly certain the game

I'm fairly certain the game uses Arial and Arial Black fonts.

Fri, 05/27/2011 - 08:23

Niramu

Legacy Username

Thanks.

I have the font installed, then. Is there an error log or something I can dump to give more information and possibly get this closer to resolved? I really like the game and want to get back to it...

Fri, 05/27/2011 - 08:57

Terthadestroyer

Playing on the MAC

AFTER THE UPDATE YESTERDAY I HAVENT BEEN ABLE TO START THE GAME.. ON YOUR HOME PAGE IT SAYS LAUNCHING BUT NOTHING IS HAPPENING. CLICKING THE DESKTOP ICON DOES NOTHING ALSO.. THE OS ATTEMPTS TO START THE PROGRAM BUT IT CRASHES I GUESS AND RETURNS ME TO THE FINDER.. PLEASE HELP

Fri, 05/27/2011 - 09:09

Niramu

Legacy Username

Inappropriate.

Selvester3, please start your own thread. This is a thread about Linux, not OSX. Please read the FAQ first for common fixes and what information to include in a post.

EDIT:
Read the error message a little more closely. Looks like it's a problem initializing the display. Any advice?

Fri, 05/27/2011 - 09:59

Lufte

Could you paste the error

Could you paste the error message?

Fri, 05/27/2011 - 11:50

Niramu

Legacy Username

Error message, copy-pasted

We were unable to initialize the game's graphical display. Please take the following steps to ensure compatibility:
Visit the technical support forum for up-to-date information and suggestions.
Make sure your system satisfies the game's minimum requirements.
Update your video drivers.
Ensure that hardware video acceleration is fully enabled.

Fri, 05/27/2011 - 13:50

Dogrock

The "unable to initialize the

The "unable to initialize the game's graphical display" is typically an error churned out by a display driver problem or an unsupported chip set. Of course you've managed to play before no problem so the latter can be ruled out.

Fri, 05/27/2011 - 21:28

Niramu

Legacy Username

Swtiched to nv driver and still no luck.

Yeah. I've been looking into the driver thing, and I'm suspecting it's just not working with mesa correctly. I'll try doing some heavy-duty uninstall/reinstall, maybe see if a kernel update will work.

Sat, 05/28/2011 - 10:20

#10

Lufte

So? How did you work it out?

Sat, 05/28/2011 - 14:32

#11

Niramu

Legacy Username

See first post

It was a problem with the libgl library, which is part of the mesa direct rendering system in Linux. For some reason it's giving false positives for direct rendering tests. If you want to switch from the nouveau driver to the proprietary nvidia driver, you have to do some things first:
# Make sure that there aren't any dri libraries installed. export REMOVES=pacman -Ss .*-dri$ | grep installed # Strip out the repo name, version number and the [installed] flag export REMOVES=`sed -e '{s/extra\///; s/[0-9][.][0-9][0-9][.][0-9]-[0-9]//; s/\[installed\]//}' -` # Remove nouveau and any dri libraries that will depend specifically on libgl sudo pacman -Runsc $REMOVES xf86-video-nouveau # Install nvidia and nvidia-utils sudo pacman -S nvidia # Now, you'll have to make sure that any /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nouveau file is commented out. I'm not going to write a script that plays with your # conf files.
should work as a simple bash script. As far as using it goes, use at your own risk.

As an alternative, still remove all the dri modules, but you can keep nouveau installed and use it from time to time if you want. Just blacklist it in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf by adding
blacklist nouveau
and make sure to comment out the 20-*.conf file that you don't want to use at boot. It'll require a reboot every time you want to switch drivers, but nobody said Linux is easy. :3

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Unable to start client [Resolved]