Game build issue

  • #1, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 02:07 9 years ago
    I have a build issue with a particular game, which I have only had with this particular game (a 150+ room adventure, other 20+ room ones work fine).
    I author the game on my main desktop system, then build it & ship it out to two laptop & one desktop system for testing.
    On the main desktop, the built ".exe" works fine, but on the other systems the game starts & shows a black screen, with no sound & a default mouse (not one defined in the game).
    However, if I ship the source & supporting files over to any of the other systems & build the ".exe" from there, it then works fine on all other systems.
    If I ship the source & supporting files over & run the game from within VS Editor on any system it works fine as well, the issue only appears with the built ".exe" file.

    The messages log file is always empty, so I am struggling to work out what might cause this issue.
    Two of the four systems, including the one I author on, are running fresh installs of Windows 10, under a month old & with exactly the same maintenance levels.

    I'm getting round it by shipping my source over to a laptop via a shared network drive & building from there, but it's a right pain.

    In an attempt to get to the bottom of the issue, I have gradually removed scenes, etc, from my game & retested, until I am left with just the main menu & it still fails as above.

    Has anyone got any bright ideas as to how to trap the issue?



    Newbie

    79 Posts


  • #2, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 02:26 9 years ago
    It's worse than I though, I just shipped the full completed game over to a laptop & built the game from there for the first time (previous runs were with an older, unfinished game version).
    The ".exe" & supporting folder is shipped back to my desktop & I'm now getting a black screen when I run the ".exe".

    It looks like the completed game will only run on the system that is used to build the ".exe" file & gives a black screen on any other one.

    Newbie

    79 Posts

  • #3, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 02:51 9 years ago
    Here's download links to zip files of the source folder & the build ".exe" distribution folder.

    I would be interested to see if people get the same results as me... i.e. if you run the .exe you get a black screen, but if you do a build on the source, the resulting .exe works fine.

    Newbie

    79 Posts

  • #4, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 02:52 9 years ago
    And the source ....

    Newbie

    79 Posts

  • #5, by PaupasiaMonday, 11. January 2016, 03:39 9 years ago
    I'm not an expert but I've tried to play and I saw a black screen with the mouse only, like you. I have Win7. The log file is empty, did you checked the Log info in options?
    I think when you build a game you should put in Game properties the Company name and the Game name to avoid problems. But I don't think this is the real problem roll
    The source works in the editor, a question...why you set in the start actions some conditions false if you have already these conditions set to false in the main menu scene?

    Forum Fan

    165 Posts

  • #6, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 09:22 9 years ago
    Thanks for the reply & it's good to know it someone else gets the same symptoms.
    The conditions are defined in the main menu scene & take a default value. These value are then overridden in the start action.
    In the full, 150+ room version of the game there are many more conditions & variables defined in various scenes & menus. By setting their values in the start action I can effectively control them all from one point, instead of having to look in multiple location

    Newbie

    79 Posts

  • #7, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 09:23 9 years ago
    The log level is set to "info" by the way & if I deliberately introduce an error I do see it in the message log.

    Newbie

    79 Posts

  • #8, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 09:39 9 years ago
    I have now redone the test using an actual scene in case that particular menu is the issue. This scene has actions that display messages when you mouse over certain object areas.

    I now get a black screen, no music, but the messages are shown when I mouse over them & there is no background music playing.

    Newbie

    79 Posts

  • #9, by SimonSMonday, 11. January 2016, 11:23 9 years ago
    Hi Minibigs,
    I see what's going on:
    You need to put all additional vis-containers into the same path as the main container, otherwise you'll get absolute paths:
    11:21:21: Error: can't open file 'D:\minecraft tribute\objects.vo' (error 0: der Vorgang wurde erfolgreich beendet.)
11:21:21: Error: Failed to initialize the composed file 'D:\minecraft tribute\objects.vo'.
11:21:21: Error: can't open file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\scenes.vs' (error 0: der Vorgang wurde erfolgreich beendet.)
11:21:21: Error: Failed to initialize the composed file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\scenes.vs'.
11:21:21: Error: can't open file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\characters.vc' (error 0: der Vorgang wurde erfolgreich beendet.)
11:21:21: Error: Failed to initialize the composed file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\characters.vc'.
11:21:21: Error: can't open file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\interfaces.vi000' (error 0: der Vorgang wurde erfolgreich beendet.)
11:21:21: Error: Failed to initialize the composed file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\interfaces.vi000'.
11:21:21: Error: can't open file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\interfaces.vi001' (error 0: der Vorgang wurde erfolgreich beendet.)
11:21:21: Error: Failed to initialize the composed file 'D:\Visionaire Studio 4\projects\built\minecraft tribute\interfaces.vi001'.


    To get these errors start with:
    "minecraft tribute.exe" -ll info -lf messages.log -w

    Just make a bat in your folder with that contents.

    Thread Captain

    1593 Posts

  • #10, by minibigsMonday, 11. January 2016, 12:23 9 years ago
    Thanks Simon, that logging process will help me out a lot.

    Aha.. yes, relative paths ... I noticed earlier that the object container was in a different path, so corrected it & retried, all with full path specified & that obviously failed as well but I couldn't see any errors so couldn't resolve it.

    Now I can see what is happening it is fairly obvious, so problem resolved & many thanks for your quick & helpful resolution, keep up the good work!

    All my other games are mini games, 20 or less scenes & so I built them into one container & didn't have this problem.

    Newbie

    79 Posts

  • #11, by PaupasiaMonday, 11. January 2016, 17:11 9 years ago
    Glad to see SimonS solved the problem! Good luck with the games grin

    Forum Fan

    165 Posts