ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Discussion Thread

Dear users of the Circle of Eight Modpack,
starting with version 7.9.0, our modpack comes with a brand new version of ToEE Front-End X, rewritten from scratch for stability and feature enhancements. Please read the included documentation and FAQ to get up to speed with the latest changes and peculiarities and learn about the common problems and their solutions.

In short, the new ToEE Front-End X is a cross-platform Java application. You no longer need .NET Framework to run TFE-X. Instead, you need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your system. The minimal version ToEE Front-End X is compatible with is v1.7.0, also known as Java 7. Both the standard Oracle package and the open source OpenJDK are fully supported. If you are on Microsoft Windows, you can download Java here. If you are on Linux, your distro repository should contain a version of Java (e.g. OpenJDK) that you can use.

The new ToEE Front-End X is a drop-in replacement of the previous version of TFE-X and is fully compatible with it. Thus, you do not need to reinstall the game to make use of the new modpack and the new front-end. Your TFE-X preferences should also be kept intact after you apply the update.

The new ToEE Front-End X is fully cross-platform and can work on any operating system supporting Java 6 or newer, including all versions of Microsoft Windows starting with Windows XP, various flavors of the Linux operating system, and Apple's Mac OS X.

IMPORTANT: The latest versions of the Circle of Eight Modpack (v8.0.0 and newer) require Java 7 to activate correctly. If you're receiving an "Invalid CEN Header" error when trying to activate the Co8 Modpack v8, please update your Java to the latest official version and then try again.

The most important points to remember when working with the new front-end are:
1. Always launch the front-end as administrator on Microsoft Windows systems newer than Windows XP (e.g. Windows Vista, 7, 8). This does not apply to Windows XP, Linux, and Mac OS X systems. On the contrary, avoid running the front-end with root privileges on Linux and Mac OS X systems, that is unsafe and will ruin your file access privileges in the game folder!
2. Always use the platform-specific launcher to start ToEE Front-End X - that is, use the executable (TFE-X.exe) on Windows systems and the shell script (TFE-X.sh) on Unix/Linux systems. Avoid launching the JAR file directly (TFE-X.jar) unless you have no other option and your system can neither work with the Windows executable nor with the Unix/Linux bash script.
3. Always start the game through ToEE Front-End X, avoid launching the game directly using the game executable (toee.exe) to ensure the correct initialization of the game with all desired options chosen in the front-end.
4. If you are on any operating system other than Microsoft Windows, ensure that Wine is installed to be able to actually launch the game. If you have trouble launching the game, check the Wine application database (appdb.winehq.com) to ensure that your version of Wine is compatible with Temple of Elemental Evil (all the latest builds at the moment of this writing are).
5. If you are on Microsoft Windows and are using anti-virus or anti-spyware software that is actively scanning your system, please ensure that both toee.exe and temple.dll are whitelisted and do not get quarantined while ToEE Front-End X is trying to set up or launch the game. Some anti-malware software is known to identify the game executable(s) as false positive trojan horses and thus block them, quarantine them, or remove them from your system. It most commonly happens with toee.exe, and only in extremely rare cases with temple.dll.

We hope that you will find your experience with the new ToEE Front-End X pleasant.

If you do run into issues, and consulting the documentation and FAQ does not solve your problem, please post your issue here according to the bug submitting guidelines described in the ToEE Front-End X documentation. We will do our best to help you. Also, any positive feedback and constructive criticism you may be willing to provide are highly welcome.

You can download the latest version of ToEE Front-End X here. Stable builds are recommended for general use and should not cause any critical errors that can't be repaired. Experimental builds should be approached with caution and used for testing purposes, they contain bleeding edge modifications that improve the software but that are not yet well-tested and may contain bugs of different severity.

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LATEST STABLE BUILD: v4.7
LATEST EXPERIMENTAL BUILD: None

Please note: In order to update your TFE-X, all you need to do is unpack the files from the update archive into your ToEE folder, overwriting the old files. There is no need to reinstall the game or reactivate the current module.
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Best regards,
- The Circle of Eight team.

 

Bumping ...

 

@ BenWH: Interestingly, I have Java 6 and Java 7 installed side by side and I don't have any issues with that on both Windows and Linux. I guess this issue you're having has to do with something else. Also, the second issue you mentioned is likely to be some kind of a hardware/software compatibility problem but is unlikely to be related to the way the front-end operates - from the TFE-X side there is no difference between the first and all the subsequent launches. Moreover, the initialization of the game is the same as it used to be in TFE-X v3.0e (this is, in fact, confirmed by the fact that you had this issue prior to Co8 v7.9 as well).

1440x900 is an unsupported resolution. It is known to be problematic in the past and, as such, did not make it into the official list of supported widescreen resolutions for ToEE. Some people have reported successfully running and playing the game in 1920x1080, but some people reported issues and the successful game runs were not based on complete playthroughs, merely on successes in launching the game. Not sure about 1440x900, I thought it was unsupported too but it turns out I confused it for some other similar-sounding resolution that CTDed. It's weird you're crashing in 1440x900, but it might be some kind of a driver/videocard compatibility problem... still, it's not a TFE-X issue, the front-end merely sets the game initialization options, it's the game engine that actually does the rendering.

- Agetian

 

Hey Ag, I think 1440x900 actually is supported (both by Widescreen Gaming Forum and we have it in TFE-X). Like you though, I think I have an older version of Java as well as the new and it works fine.

 

@ Gaear: Hmm, nevermind, I guess I confused it with some other similar resolution then. Anyhow, it's still not a TFE-X issue, because TFE-X merely sets the .ini options, it's the game engine that does the rendering... it could be some kind of a driver/video card compatibility issue then.

- Agetian

 

@ georgelappies: Please refer to the ToEE Front-End X FAQ for some suggestions about why the game may not start automatically for you. To cut a long story short, the most common culprits are the absence of +x permissions on toee.exe and something wrong with the way Wine is installed, such as (potentially) the fact that launching the executable file directly like TFE-X is trying to do does not forward automatically to Wine via a file type association but does not report a critical failure back to JRE either. I haven't tested TFE-X on OpenSUSE myself so I can't tell you which issue it is (or if maybe it's some unknown issue yet), but I'd definitely try the following:

1) Try setting the execute permissions on toee.exe and try launching the game from the front-end.
2) If it still doesn't work, look into a way of setting up file associations for Wine so that calling an .exe file directly launches Wine with the relevant parameter. Now, this technically shouldn't matter because TFE-X tries to make a direct call to Wine if it fails with the call to an .exe file, but under certain circumstances TFE-X can fail to detect that its first attempt failed (which is confirmed by your log file), in which case it believes the game had started while in reality it didn't (nothing can be done with this last part, sadly, if JRE sees the result of a certain action as success, it sees it as success).

I may come up with an experimental TFE-X build to help you alleviate this issue, I will make a post here to let you know when I do.

By the way, the point you're referring to (point number 3) is indeed correct. In addition to passing parameters to the game executable TFE-X also cleans the game cache on every startup, which helps fix some serious issues which may only become apparent further down the road. It's a good idea to try and fix whatever is up with TFE-X not launching ToEE for you - the alternative is not only to pass the parameters to toee.exe, but also to clean up the cache every time (which isn't hard, you just need to clean the directory modules/ToEE/maps on every startup - if worst comes to worst you may want to write a bash script for that).

Please let me know if anything helps. If it doesn't, see if you can at least determine the reason of failure. Can you start an executable file directly on your system (e.g. is a call ./toee.exe valid?) or do you need to make a call to Wine (wine ./toee.exe) to run the game? If this is why it fails, I'll work on an update to TFE-X that will prefer a direct call to Wine as the primary method of launching the game on non-Microsoft systems (so, it'll detect that you're on Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, or another system that requires Wine, and then try to go for a direct Wine call first).

- Agetian

 

@ georgelappies: Thank you for your input. Here's an experimental build for you that tries the alternative execution route (via a direct call to wine) instead of the old execution way ("by file association first, via a direct call last"). Please test it and see if it helps launch the game via the front-end for you. If it does, I'll work on a full-fledged implementation of this algorithm with the associated update, if it doesn't, I'll keep thinking about how I can best fix it.

P.S. It seems OpenSUSE does things a bit differently compared to the systems I've tested on (Ubuntu, Mint, Arch), at least for some reason it won't let you execute the .exe file directly via console... do you have an idea how it might be possible to set up an association like that which works in CLI and not in the desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME? (I wonder what makes Ubuntu/Mint be able to respond correctly to .exe calls in bash and OpenSUSE be unable to do so).

EDIT: Experimental build removed. Please download the v4.0.1 Beta experimental build (or the latest stable or experimental build which is newer than v4.0.1) from the first post of this thread.

- Agetian

 

@ georgelappies: Hmm that is very weird... can you please post the log of the new one? I'll keep thinking and will post an update as soon as I come to some definite conclusion. Interestingly enough, both the original build and the experimental build work fine for me on Ubuntu, Mint, and Arch. Kind of makes me curious and makes me want to install OpenSUSE in VirtualBox to play with it. What version of OpenSUSE are you using? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit? Is Wine you're using 32-bit or 64-bit? What is your version of Wine? Also, did you install Wine from the repository or built it from the source?

- Agetian

 

@ georgelappies: Ok, here's one more attempt at fixing your issue. Can you please test this build and see if it helps? This one is very straightforward in calling wine explicitly with parameters, from the standpoint of the OS there should be no difference between this method of calling the executable and hand-typing "wine ./toee.exe <parameters>" in CLI. As such, I'd be seriously surprised if this build doesn't launch the game for you either - if it doesn't, the only way for me to fix whatever's up would be to install OpenSUSE and see what's going on for myself... Please let me know how it goes.

EDIT: Experimental build removed. Please download the v4.0.1 Beta experimental build (or the latest stable or experimental build which is newer than v4.0.1) from the first post of this thread.

- Agetian

 

@ georgelappies: Sounds good, let me know how it goes! It's my pleasure to help!

- Agetian