ToEE Front-End X 4.0 Discussion Thread

I have to admit I'm stumped as well, I have no idea what can be the cause of that because I can't reproduce it on any OS I have, including the Windows 7 you're running. Here's one more thing I'm curious about: if you now upgrade to TFE-X v4.1 (once you have Co8 7.8.0 up), can you try reactivating ToEE vanilla and then Co8 7.8.0 again with the new front-end and tell me if you get any errors with that? I want to understand if it's just the 7.9.0 package that's troubling you or if TFE-X misbehaves for you in general.

Another possible factor: is there any active virus scanners / anti-malware stuff running on your PC that can interfere?

- Agetian

 

@ sirchet: Something fishy is going on on your machine for sure... :\ I mean, there should indeed be the ToEE icon and the text in the top border as well in both v4.0 and v4.1. The fact that you're not seeing those indicates some major issues with file access / Java runtime environment on your PC. Indeed, v7.8.0 is using the previous build of TFE-X which runs on .NET, not on JRE. I can't say what exactly is up with JRE on your end but it might be that Java is either incorrectly installed or broken or something is preventing it from working correctly. At any rate, the new TFE-X should not look "generic" as in "no icon, no program name + issues when activating the module" (when you first brought up "generic", I was puzzled by what you mean but I didn't expect it would be anything like what you're mentioning). If you're getting issues of that magnitude, it's definitely something up on your PC that is beyond a simple administrative access problem.

You mentioned you updated to Java 7 but your log file indicates that TFE-X is running on JRE v1.6.0_20, which is a rather old patchlevel of Java 6?... Can you please ensure that TFE-X is running on the latest Java runtime available to you and that the permissions on both the JRE itself and TFE-X are not tampered with in any fashion? (+ check those active scanners too, please). If need be, uninstall all versions of JRE on your PC, including that old 1.6.0_20 one, and install the latest one from the official Oracle website.

- Agetian

 

sirchet, hadn't you already had 7.9/TFE-X 4 up and running at one point?

 

@ sirchet: Whatever troubles you is definitely local to your system, there's little I can do for now except give some more advice - I mean, neither I nor any of the testers on the board or my friends have encountered a glitch like that and I was unable to trigger it deliberately even though I tried a lot of things on the same operating system as you're running. Please let us know how it goes. By the way, either you also have 6.20 (in addition to 6.32 you had before) or you're mistaken that the version you've had was patchlevel 32 - the JRE you tried TFE-X on reported itself as 6.20, not 6.32, which means that, well, whatever was detected as the default JRE at the time of starting TFE-X was Java 6 patchlevel 20, not 32... That's what sounds strange to me. If TFE-X still refuses to run well for you now that you've removed one of the Java installations, please do try to remove every single one using the Windows Control Panel, as well as search for the remnants of possibly broken older installations (6.20?) that may still somehow stay on your PC, at least in part. Then reinstall the latest JRE from the Oracle website (it's actually your choice of Java 6 or Java 7, TFE-X should run without a hitch on both of them, but make sure it's the latest supported version from the website) and see if it makes the experience better for you. Good luck!

P.S. And yes, you can have several Java installations side by side, it should *not* be an issue under normal circumstances - for instance, my Linux box is running JDK 6 and JDK 7 side by side so that I can compile TFE-X for JRE 6 and instantly see it in action on both Java 6 and Java 7. I've never experienced any problem with any Java applications (TFE-X included) under a setup like that. Running into issues with that (like you mentioned) indicates that something is broken somewhere in the Java chain.

P.P.S. Here's a screenshot of TFE-X v4.1 running perfectly on Windows 7 64-bit with Co8 v7.9.0 installed and several "activate vanilla - activate Co8 - activate vanilla" routines performed on it to see if it's going to show any errors (which it didn't). This screenshot can be used as a reference for "what TFE-X v4 should look like when it feels healthy". If you're seeing something else on your end, something's up with Java (*or* with something else that tampers with Java, which can be anything from rigid/paranoid access control settings that don't let Java do its work all the way to viruses and other malware that interferes with its normal work).

- Agetian

 

@ sirchet: The CTD issue is highly unlikely to be a part of something TFE-X would be responsible for - once the game has started, TFE-X has already finished its operation and has no control over what's happening... Once again, if I were able to reproduce it I would have looked into it, but it's not happening to me either... :\ Can you please send me a link to the thread? I'll take a look. Still, the ToEE process startup routine itself is the same as in TFE-X v3.0 series, so I don't know what can possibly go wrong (and if it goes wrong, how come it's not happening to everyone since the game is started the same way for everybody :\ ).

- Agetian

 

That's what bugs me most - the problem is not universal. And yet sirchet's system (for example) goes from no problems to problems, or from preferring movies disabled to movies enabled, or vice versa, etc. wtf? _O:

Interestingly, I should note that with TFE-X 4 (I mention that not to point fingers, only that it was a change), I can't launch ToEE in windowed mode with an 800x600 resolution. 800x600 is a very basic and vanilla resolution that is (not surprisingly) among those supported by my video adapter.

I've never had a video resolution problem with ToEE before, although I have never experimented with any of the more exotic resolutions.

 

@ Gaear: The only resolution-related change in TFE-X 4 compared to TFE-X 3 is the windowed mode hack implemented by Aji'Tae. Knowing how sensitive ToEE may be to changes in its internal workings, it wouldn't surprise me if the mentioned hack causes some issues under certain peculiar circumstances. Then again, I may be wrong. At any rate, I will post an experimental build soon which will disable changes related to Aji'Tae's hack - I would like to hear some input from everyone about how this will affect their experience with the game and the front-end (whether it stops crashes or not).

EDIT: Just tested 800x600 windowed on my system and it seemed alright... Weird :\ Anyhoo, that testing build is on the way

- Agetian

 

TESTING RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT: Ok, the only functional change between TFE-X 4 and the previous front-ends that is related to how ToEE changes the resolution was the implementation of Aji'Tae's windowed mode reshack (which may have, either deliberately or inadvertently, affected some inner workings of resolution change in general). As such, I want to exclude the possibility that it's being the culprit that is causing various video-related issues such as the game crashing on startup (e.g. sirchet's issue) or a certain windowed resolution not working (e.g. Gaear's issue). This test build disables Aji'Tae's windowed mode reshack in all its forms. As such, you will only see a 800x600 window no matter what resolution you choose (if you run the game in windowed mode, that is). I'm interested in whether this change helps remedy the video-related issues some of you are having. Your feedback is welcome.

This testing build is only meant for those few people who run into video-related issues. It's not even an official experimental build yet and it doesn't feature any other functional changes from the stock v4.1. If you do not have any issues like mentioned above, you should NOT use this build for any purpose.

- Agetian

 

Cool, I'll try it out tonight.

 

Okay, something fishy's going on. I tested all the resolutions available in TFE-X, via TFE-X, in both windowed mode and not, with the release version of TFE-X first, just to be sure ... and of course this being ToEE, nothing is sure.

In windowed mode, all resolutions now launched fine. In full screen mode, the first two custom resolutions failed (1280x720 and 1280x768). My monitor does not support those resolutions, so that is probably not terribly surprising, although I don't think I've ever tried them in the past so I can't say for sure if that's any different than it's ever been.

My graphics card is set to no scaling so as to avoid the movie problems with scaling. This also made it so that in full screen mode, the game just displayed itself in letterbox mode anyway (the same size, effectively, as windowed mode).

I'm curious why the unsupported resolutions would work in windowed mode. (I'm not a monitor/display guru so I don't know - maybe this is perfectly reasonable.)

I'm positive that the game failed at 800x600 before, because I was trying to replicate the concerns over the inventory UI getting in the way of character portraits in that resolution from another thread. At that time, full screen mode worked at 800x600.*

Anyway, not sure what I should do now as far as testing the experimental build goes ... please advise.

*Actually as I think of it now, the opposite was true - windowed worked and full screen failed at 800x600. Sorry about that.

 

@ Gaear: ToEE was always very picky about how (and if) it worked with certain resolutions. I was never able to launch the game in each and every mode from our roster, to be honest - at least a couple modes failed. In fact, on my current box, a very weird thing is going on (but it has also happened with the previous TFE-X and with at least two or three previous modpacks, potentially more) - 1280x800 works on my Windows system but CTDs immediately on my Linux systems (both of them), while 1280x960 works fine on Linux but CTDs immediately on Windows. 800x600 is fine on my computer on both Windows and Linux in both fullscreen and windowed modes.

It's no surprise that ToEE is able to run in a wider selection of modes when windowed than it can when asked to run fullscreen. Windowed modes do not require video card mode setting - you can simply set the window to whatever your heart desires and, unless there is something weird in the way the game scales the UI that is unable to adapt to your choice, the game will run fine. Fullscreen is a whole different story - the game has to use its graphics library of choice (DirectX in case of ToEE) to switch the desktop resolution to a certain setting which must be supported both by the videocard and the monitor. However, physical compatibility is only the beginning of the story - the game has to interact with the relevant functions and, through them, with the hardware in a correct way in order to be able to "tell" the operating system, and, thus, the videocard and the monitor, what exactly it wants in "proper words". Remember, ToEE is an old game, it was written back in 2003 (and started at least a year earlier) when DX 9.0c cards were still a novelty. There were no Windows 7 and 8, there was no such thing as DirectX 11, and, of course, back then no one tried to run the game on Linux or Mac. Also, monitors of that age were not widescreen (if there were any widescreen monitors back then, they were a big novelty... I'm not sure if they actually existed in 2002-2003). The 1920x1080 resolution which is mainstream these days on both monitors and TVs could only be dreamed of in 2003.

So, as of right now, the game has to rely heavily on compatibility between all the new hardware and software that it's being launched on and the hardware and software it was originally written to run on. It has to rely on the fact that, for instance, from the point of view of the drivers, frameworks (such as DirectX), operating systems, and hardware all of this is running on, switching to 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 is essentially no different than switching to 800x600 or 1024x768. The game utilizes the same old routines to try to switch to video modes it was never designed to switch to. Moreover, it also has to assume that switching to 800x600 on a modern DirectX 11 card such as GeForce GTX760 is the same as switching to 800x600 on an old DX9 card such as GeForce 6. After all, no one has actually updated or rewritten the part of the DLL that handles the resolution change and whatnot in order for it to become "modernized". As such, it's no surprise the game tends to misbehave in different ways on different systems - a seemingly unimportant difference in hardware or OS configuration may make all the difference in the world for ToEE as far as what it can do with the said hardware or the said OS.

With all that in mind, I'm not sure how exactly to test, to be honest - I guess, merely take a look if the experimental build makes any difference for you in 800x600 in both windowed and fullscreen or not... To be honest, I doubt it, but with ToEE, you never know.

@ sirchet: Honestly I don't think it's an issue but please do experiment with other resolutions to see if they play any better for you. And yes, just drop the experimental build on top of a TFE-X v4.1 installation (remember to install v4.1 first if you haven't done so yet or if you have overwritten it with the old front-end).

- Agetian