Crashing at Launch

[E_T_SMith]

Though I haven't been interacting with the community, I've been regularly playing Armagetron solo for a couple years now (one might say obsessively). However, I recently did a system update and now I can't get past the game's startup screen without it crashing. I've deleted and reinstalled the package several times, but the problem persists.

Armagetron version is 0.2.9.1.0-4

Here's all my system stats. Hitherto, this has been more than adequate to run the game:

Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.6
Kernel Version: 6.4.6-1-MANJARO (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz
Memory: 15.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: OptiPlex 9020
System Version: 01

This screen is as far as I can get. A moment after hitting any key to contine, the program shuts down.

[Z-Man]

Hmm, the intel driver had some problems in the past (and I mean 15 years ago...).
Do you maybe have a coredump or can produce one? I think on Manjaro (which I'm running, too), they should land in /var/lib/systemd/coredump/ by default.
We probably need the exact binary to make use of a core dump, so: What was your installation source? From the version number, I guess the official Manjaro package https://software.manjaro.org/package/armagetronad ?

[Z-Man]

What do you know, that build crashes for me too when I enter a local game. With a coredump where I expected. Different desktop environment, different GPU.
OH. It crashes loading a sound file, in the library we use. The change triggering the crash was probably the introduction of this:
https://software.manjaro.org/package/sdl12-compat
SDL 1.2, used by armagetronad 0.2.X, now is mapped to SDL 2.0. Not a terrible idea, actually, native SDL 1.2 started to accumulate compatibility problems. I'll probably have to dig into it a bit, ideally create an upstream fix.

Workaround: Use the flatpak build (https://flathub.org/apps/org.armagetron ... onAdvanced), that brings its own SDL. The 0install and appimage builds do that, too, but they use the system libraries if available, so they crash, too.

Or switch to trunk builds, they use SDL 2.0 directly.

[Z-Man]

Another workaround for users of 0install and AppImage: Launch over the command line, setting the variable LD_DEBUG_APP to true, so for example

Code: Select all

LD_DEBUG_APP=true 0launch 'https://0install.armagetronad.org/armagetronad.xml'

Bug filed with fix suggestion: https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl12-compat/issues/310
It will probably be a while before this gets deployed, and Mac Homebrew builds are affected, too. Steam Linux builds as well, if you activated the Steam Runtime in the settings:

(Which normally, you would not do unless the regular mode gives you problems)

So I added simple workaround code to 0.2.9, and fixed the pipelines which broke mostly because Steam changed the login procedure. Builds with the workaround are:
Release Candidate close to 0.2.9.1.0: https://download.armagetronad.org/blog/ ... _rc_z2406/
Alpha from ongoing 0.2.9.2: https://download.armagetronad.org/blog/ ... pha_z2760/
(The pages do not note they include the fix because I had forgotten to close it)

For those using automatic updaters, the new builds are in the RC and ALPHA channels. For Steam, that is "staging" and "alpha". Please test! Even if you are not affected by the crash, or on Windows in the first place. it would be reassuring to know that this does not break anything for the rest of you.

[Monkey]

So I'm filing this bug report for another user, "magi" aka "cake". For about a month now his Arma client crashes on startup, as soon as he presses a key. Here is his info:

OS: Windows 10
Armagetronad version: 0.4.0_alpha_z5807
GPU: Nvidia 3060ti 8gb

If you need any more info then say so and I will speak to him about it. Note that another user was complaining about something similar. Note that he has win10 updated and he has tried both the most recent GPU driver and an older one that he has reverted back to.

[Z-Man]

I neither have a Windows 10 installation available nor a workjing Nvidia GPU, and it does not crash for me on Windows 11/AMD. The first thing I need them to do is to find out which 0.4 build of Armagetronad is first affected, the full list of builds is here:
https://download.armagetronad.org/allbuilds
Or already filtered for 0.4 builds here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/armage ... hots/2024/
It's really important to find the first affected build. So the next older build must be unaffected. Then I can look at the code changes between the two and start speculating.
Of course, if they now suddently all crash, that's bad news.

[Monkey]

After a lot of tests, I think he has some kind of GPU or GPU driver error. It may be some code in Armagetronad but it's looking less and less likely. Even older clients are crashing for him now, and we've tried changing settings and all sorts. Thanks though.