sis chip white screen, then failure to initialize

[incandenza]

I really wanted to play this as I remember it fondly from my C64 years as a kid.  First I was having problems with a white screen, though the audio and game seemed to be working fine beneath.  Then I updated my driver (which is still ancient), erased the game, reinstalled (or just downloaded and unzipped), and I can't even load the game now.  I'm getting a "failure to initialize J (i think 4 more capital letters) error."  I know the game has been updated and my computer is kind of crappy but why doesn't this relatively basic game want to run?  Anyway, thanks for the effort, hope to join if i can ever manage to upgrade my comp.

[incandenza]

no its what he said LWJGL

[Peter]

Your video card must support OpenGL to run Planet Mule. Several people have reported issues with old SiS cards which have broken or no support for OpenGL. The only way to run the game is to find working drivers, but if there are none available you'll unfortunately have to run it on a different machine.

[piete]

I just wrote a long message, pressed the wrong button and am writing this again in notepad...

So the second time only the essentials:

www.slax.org -> build slax, search java (jre1.6.0_18), add to build, build slax again, see the missing dependencies below, add at least Xorg, then download iso or tar, burn cd or prepare usb stick (with the batch file included), boot slax, download Planetmule for linux and play (if everything goes right).

Please tell us if you succeeded or not.

[incandenza]

hi, thanks for your responses.  so, is the pocket linux a possible workaround?  i'm not quite as savvy as some of you...

[incandenza]

oh and just in case is sis m650, i dont know if there are any drivers that would work.  the sis site is not terribly user friendly and their newest driver appears to be from 2006.  to be honest im just glad i didnt screw something up with the reinstall.

[piete]

Try the linux out, you can't lose anything in it (only a CD/DVD if you don't have a rewritable at the most). Linux's graphical interface (Xorg) has drivers for most existing graphic cards. For example, I have a laptop that I can't run Planetmule on Windows 2000 (I know, it's obsolete...) but on linux the game runs perfectly.

If you need any help, just ask me, sorry if the instructions were a bit "concise", but I lost my nerve losing the message I was typing earlier. But the Slax site is quite user-friendly.

[Blitzen]

I also have an SiS chipset (including sound but not video) - the game is constantly spiking between 1 fps and 30...

I have only played 1 game so far and I hosted it, no one else noticed the slow down except when I took my turn.  I will try my next game with Sound Off and post back.

For the record my PC is capable of running Left for Dead 2 and other intensive 3d games without issue.

Thanks for this game guys, amazing stuff!

Blitzen - owner of several C64 dedicated Mule machines.

[Blitzen]

As someone else stated turning off sound and then starting a game fixes the issue.

After re-enabling sound, closing and restarting the game the extremely slow fps issue is gone.

HOWEVER, the next day the problem reappeared, it fixed itself when I disabled sound in the game after the next development started BUT then started again about 10 mins after I reenabled sound again... going to try with my PC now.

[Peter]

incandenza: Have you got the game to start now or are you still having problems?

Blitzen: We're working to fix the sound issue in the next version.