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[c plus one]

Hello

I am encountering a persistent error within the Mac version of the latest Starsector: 0.6.2a-RC3. It causes a crash to desktop within 5 seconds or less of booting-up the game.

I'm trying to run a fresh copy of the game on an equally fresh, fully-updated install of Mac OSX 10.9.1 Mavericks. It's my first brush with the cool new 64-bit version of the game on Mac. My hardware is a MacBookPro8,2 that's good for Mavericks.

But when it comes to the location and the exact nature of the current problem ( a text character is missing someplace that it won't tell me ), the game's error popup is unhelpful. It does not tell me enough about what really broke, why it broke, and how I can fix it.

I had no mods enabled. The sole change I had made to the game was to try activating Dev Mode.

If there is a way to activate verbose error logs for the Mac version of 0.6.2a-RC3, I'd have some chance to figure out why Starsector keeps blowing-up on the launch pad. I can get terminal logging to run in realtime ( very useful! ) on the 32-bit version of Mac SS, but I have no clue how to do it on the new 64-bit game. How would I go about accessing that feature??? T.I.A.

[Alex]

Hi - you should be able to run the game from Terminal using the starsector_mac.sh script, inside Starsector.app/Contents/MacOS. That'll get you the console log, and hopefully more info about what's going on.

I had no mods enabled. The sole change I had made to the game was to try activating Dev Mode.

Did it run before that change? If it did, then it's most likely a typo somewhere in settings.json - based on your description of the error message, it sounds like it could be complaining about something like that.

[c plus one]

Thanks for the fast reply sir. Appreciated!

Hi - you should be able to run the game from Terminal using the starsector_mac.sh script, inside Starsector.app/Contents/MacOS. That'll get you the console log, and hopefully more info about what's going on.

I had quickly located that script prior to starting this thread, but it's a real mystery - when I click on that, the script displays its contents in a text editor, but does not boot-up the game. I'm at a loss to understand why.

I had no mods enabled. The sole change I had made to the game was to try activating Dev Mode.

Did it run before that change? If it did, then it's most likely a typo somewhere in settings.json - based on your description of the error message, it sounds like it could be complaining about something like that.

yes, the game did run prior to my attempt to set Dev Mode to "true". It was just fine.

i'm beginning to wonder if, as you speculated, my copy of settings.json came with a typo in it, or if the document is partially or wholly somehow not saved in a text format that the game can deal with. Here's why Im leaning that way:

1) I had first opened it, set Dev mode to "true", and saved the file with OSX's TextEdit program.

2) after the game subsequently crashed, I reopened the file with SublimeEdit 2.0.2 ( very solid program; not crapware ) but saw that in some instances, strings within settings.json looked like the leading quotation marks were the normal, straight kind ( " ), but the closing quotes were slanted quote marks ( “ - Alt+Open Bracket on Mac ). Would that be a problem?

3) I tried replacing the mismatched quote characters that i saw and re-saving the file, but I wonder if that was either ineffective, of if it damaged my faulty settings.json further. (i'm no expert)

[Alex]

I had quickly located that script prior to starting this thread, but it's a real mystery - when I click on that, the script displays its contents in a text editor, but does not boot-up the game. I'm at a loss to understand why.

You want to run it from the command line, from Terminal.

Spoiler

I had no mods enabled. The sole change I had made to the game was to try activating Dev Mode.

Did it run before that change? If it did, then it's most likely a typo somewhere in settings.json - based on your description of the error message, it sounds like it could be complaining about something like that.

yes, the game did run prior to my attempt to set Dev Mode to "true". It was just fine.

i'm beginning to wonder if, as you speculated, my copy of settings.json came with a typo in it, or if the document is partially or wholly somehow not saved in a text format that the game can deal with. Here's why Im leaning that way:

1) I had first opened it, set Dev mode to "true", and saved the file with OSX's TextEdit program.

2) after the game subsequently crashed, I reopened the file with SublimeEdit 2.0.2 ( very solid program; not crapware ) but saw that in some instances, strings within settings.json looked like the leading quotation marks were the normal, straight kind ( " ), but the closing quotes were slanted quote marks ( “ - Alt+Open Bracket on Mac ). Would that be a problem?

3) I tried replacing the mismatched quote characters that i saw and re-saving the file, but I wonder if that was either ineffective, of if it damaged my faulty settings.json further. (i'm no expert)

[close]

Thanks for the details. Right - I'd suggest just re-downloading the game, trying to fix it up may not be practical. TextEdit *should* be ok for editing settings.json, from what I know, but if you're seeing slanted quote marks, that's definitely a big problem that would cause the game to not load.

[c plus one]

I had quickly located that script prior to starting this thread, but it's a real mystery - when I click on that, the script displays its contents in a text editor, but does not boot-up the game. I'm at a loss to understand why.

You want to run it from the command line, from Terminal.

Would you coach me on how to do that correctly, please? I'm rather new to the Terminal and definitely don't want to screw that up.

Spoiler

I had no mods enabled. The sole change I had made to the game was to try activating Dev Mode.

Did it run before that change? If it did, then it's most likely a typo somewhere in settings.json - based on your description of the error message, it sounds like it could be complaining about something like that.

yes, the game did run prior to my attempt to set Dev Mode to "true". It was just fine.

i'm beginning to wonder if, as you speculated, my copy of settings.json came with a typo in it, or if the document is partially or wholly somehow not saved in a text format that the game can deal with. Here's why Im leaning that way:

1) I had first opened it, set Dev mode to "true", and saved the file with OSX's TextEdit program.

2) after the game subsequently crashed, I reopened the file with SublimeEdit 2.0.2 ( very solid program; not crapware ) but saw that in some instances, strings within settings.json looked like the leading quotation marks were the normal, straight kind ( " ), but the closing quotes were slanted quote marks ( “ - Alt+Open Bracket on Mac ). Would that be a problem?

3) I tried replacing the mismatched quote characters that i saw and re-saving the file, but I wonder if that was either ineffective, of if it damaged my faulty settings.json further. (i'm no expert)

[close]

Thanks for the details. Right - I'd suggest just re-downloading the game, trying to fix it up may not be practical. TextEdit *should* be ok for editing settings.json, from what I know, but if you're seeing slanted quote marks, that's definitely a big problem that would cause the game to not load.

You're welcome. roger that; i'll re-download, re-install and see how it goes. Will report back with any further problems in SS on Mavericks. thanks again for your help!

[Alex]

I had quickly located that script prior to starting this thread, but it's a real mystery - when I click on that, the script displays its contents in a text editor, but does not boot-up the game. I'm at a loss to understand why.

You want to run it from the command line, from Terminal.

Would you coach me on how to do that correctly, please? I'm rather new to the Terminal and definitely don't want to screw that up.

Hmm. If you're altogether new to the command line, it's a lot to explain all at once - I'd suggest reading up on it a bit. This looks like a pretty place to start, at a glance.

But, basically, what you want to do is issue commands to
1) change the "current directory" to Starsector.app/Contents/MacOS
2) run the starsector_mac.sh file

The commands will look something like:
cd <something that changes depending on where you put the game>/Starsector.app/Contents/MacOS
followed by:
./starsector_mac.sh
to actually run it.

[Zaphide]

There is a slightly easier way

If you right click on starsector_mac.sh and 'Get Info' (or Command + i) you can change the application it opens with. Change it to Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities). Then, when you double click starsector_mac.sh it will launch Terminal, and then run starsector_mac.sh automagically

You can then make an alias (right click -> Make Alias) of starsector_mac.sh and just put that wherever you normally run the game from. Then, just use that alias instead of the StarSector app and it will always open with a terminal window that holds the log output, saves you having to 'Show Contents' all the time