TGB Pro 111 no longer starting
by Michael Goins · in Torque Game Builder · 08/27/2006 (6:56 am) · 26 replies
Gah! I have -no idea- what's going on. I have uninstalled, and re-installed in a different directory, with no change.
When I click on either the TGB desktop shortcut link, OR the actual TGB.EXE executable, the mouse disappears for a very-split second like it's going to start TGB, and the harddrive whirrs for the same amount of time, and.. nothing happens.
-Nothing-.
No error message, no file running in Task Manager (this is XP SP2), nothing.
The program was working fine two days ago. The only thing that's changed on my system is a recent install of Advanced Batch Converter, and Irfanview (which I needed for doing image prototyping for my TGB project). Uninstalling these has made no difference.
This is seriously aggravating and I'm hoping someone has a clue what might be going on, or point me to some log file that TGB makes on startup.
When I click on either the TGB desktop shortcut link, OR the actual TGB.EXE executable, the mouse disappears for a very-split second like it's going to start TGB, and the harddrive whirrs for the same amount of time, and.. nothing happens.
-Nothing-.
No error message, no file running in Task Manager (this is XP SP2), nothing.
The program was working fine two days ago. The only thing that's changed on my system is a recent install of Advanced Batch Converter, and Irfanview (which I needed for doing image prototyping for my TGB project). Uninstalling these has made no difference.
This is seriously aggravating and I'm hoping someone has a clue what might be going on, or point me to some log file that TGB makes on startup.
#22
Hm, it's a little wierd that there is no prefs.cs or prefs.cs.dso
If you look in TorqueGameBuidlerPro/games/common/main.cs, in function onStart, you'll see where it loads defaultPrefs.cs. Then right after that, if "prefs.cs" or "prefs.cs.dso" exist, it loads that. Both of those are loaded out of the "preferences" subdirectory in games/common.
The idea is that any prefs that change at runtime get saved to prefs.cs. Video settings, like whether you want windowed mode, D3D, OpenGL, etc., also get saved to prefs.cs. This happens in function onExit in the same main.cs script.
After running pretty much any TGB application, a prefs.cs file should be written out with pretty much every preference setting, whether it has changed or not.
If you run a TGB game and you still have no prefs.cs, then that is indeed a mystery.
Perhaps by way of some magic, your prefs.cs file is being written somewhere that you do not expect. Try running and quitting a TGB game, then search your whole hard drive for the most recent file called "prefs.cs". Make note of where that file is... and start noodling around in there with all of the suggestions above regarding forcing Intel settings, etc.
Scott
09/14/2006 (1:47 pm)
Michael -Hm, it's a little wierd that there is no prefs.cs or prefs.cs.dso
If you look in TorqueGameBuidlerPro/games/common/main.cs, in function onStart, you'll see where it loads defaultPrefs.cs. Then right after that, if "prefs.cs" or "prefs.cs.dso" exist, it loads that. Both of those are loaded out of the "preferences" subdirectory in games/common.
The idea is that any prefs that change at runtime get saved to prefs.cs. Video settings, like whether you want windowed mode, D3D, OpenGL, etc., also get saved to prefs.cs. This happens in function onExit in the same main.cs script.
After running pretty much any TGB application, a prefs.cs file should be written out with pretty much every preference setting, whether it has changed or not.
If you run a TGB game and you still have no prefs.cs, then that is indeed a mystery.
Perhaps by way of some magic, your prefs.cs file is being written somewhere that you do not expect. Try running and quitting a TGB game, then search your whole hard drive for the most recent file called "prefs.cs". Make note of where that file is... and start noodling around in there with all of the suggestions above regarding forcing Intel settings, etc.
Scott
#23
I've tried everything I can possibly think of to do, and the forum posters here have been great in offering suggestions.
Unfortunately, in the month and a half I've had this issue, I have had ZERO support from GarageGames. Matthew asked me that I email him; after a couple cursory responses, I heard nothing more. The support-mail feature is apparently STILL broken, almost a month after it was discovered; I'm forced to believe that, since a third (or fourth, I've lost track now) support request I sent in went unacknowledged.
When it was working, TGB was great, and I was really happy with it. But apparently if it breaks, you're on your own.
I won't be recommending any GarageGames products to anyone, ever, thanks to this incredibly poor experience.
10/07/2006 (11:45 pm)
Well, I give up.I've tried everything I can possibly think of to do, and the forum posters here have been great in offering suggestions.
Unfortunately, in the month and a half I've had this issue, I have had ZERO support from GarageGames. Matthew asked me that I email him; after a couple cursory responses, I heard nothing more. The support-mail feature is apparently STILL broken, almost a month after it was discovered; I'm forced to believe that, since a third (or fourth, I've lost track now) support request I sent in went unacknowledged.
When it was working, TGB was great, and I was really happy with it. But apparently if it breaks, you're on your own.
I won't be recommending any GarageGames products to anyone, ever, thanks to this incredibly poor experience.
#24
In all honesty it worked then after two program installs that shouldn't have effected it it didn't. I'd guess you might've gotten a virus or some sort of data corruption (not completely out of the ordinary) possibly in your driver files for your video card (or maybe even some sort of video card hardware failure or quirkiness.
Just because you have a problem doesn't mean we will know the answer to it, especially if it's highly possible that the problem may not be in our program since it did indeed run on your machine and this situation is unprecidented in the 2+ years I've been working with Torque based engines.
Instead of giving you bs I simply didn't reply (further)... honestly I'm not sure which is worse though on a personal level I'd hope you could realize that I do have other responsibilities, including my personal life, which I often dedicate much of my personal time to forum posts and answering e-mails and helping with problems. Some times in the mass of it and in the busy aspect of what I work on if I can't find a solution it will slip my mind and I may forget to respond saying that I haven't found a solution. Honestly you wouldn't be better off for it, though considering I was spending my personal time reveiwing your issue I don't feel some of your comments are justified. Again this may be an issue that wasn't caused by our tools and in such a situation we can't magically fix issues that happen on your computer.
I really do feel bad that you've had these issues and if you still seek assistance I would ask you to send all the information you've compiled from then until now, including all tests you've done, things you've tried and I can try and assist you further... In fact I'm willing to dedicate some time on my Sunday (which is dominated by work stuff part of the time as well) to assist you and maybe inquire help from others in the office that are more familiar with the hardware end of video cards and ways to confirm or deny if that might be an issue.
Again I'm sorry that you feel this way and just because we couldn't solve your problem (that may have nothing to do with our tech) doesn't mean you "have had ZERO support"... honestly I've spent personal time helping you so I'm sorry if I find that a bit offensive on my end though I can relate to your end of the situation as well. It is nice knowing that people are indeed looking into your issues and I am sorry that I didn't respond further to at least acknowledge that I had examined the information but found no conclusion at the time.
10/08/2006 (12:37 am)
I'm sorry you feel this way... I'm also sorry I haven't had additional time to assist. Please don't take it personally but I dedicate more than 60-70 hours weekly to my work at GG between work and home (I know there are those at GG that dedicate even more) and we get paid salary so it's completely out of our own volition and dedication to our users and what we do. I really did look over the info you sent me and the info in this thread back when you sent it, I didn't say more because I didn't figure out what the problem was.In all honesty it worked then after two program installs that shouldn't have effected it it didn't. I'd guess you might've gotten a virus or some sort of data corruption (not completely out of the ordinary) possibly in your driver files for your video card (or maybe even some sort of video card hardware failure or quirkiness.
Just because you have a problem doesn't mean we will know the answer to it, especially if it's highly possible that the problem may not be in our program since it did indeed run on your machine and this situation is unprecidented in the 2+ years I've been working with Torque based engines.
Instead of giving you bs I simply didn't reply (further)... honestly I'm not sure which is worse though on a personal level I'd hope you could realize that I do have other responsibilities, including my personal life, which I often dedicate much of my personal time to forum posts and answering e-mails and helping with problems. Some times in the mass of it and in the busy aspect of what I work on if I can't find a solution it will slip my mind and I may forget to respond saying that I haven't found a solution. Honestly you wouldn't be better off for it, though considering I was spending my personal time reveiwing your issue I don't feel some of your comments are justified. Again this may be an issue that wasn't caused by our tools and in such a situation we can't magically fix issues that happen on your computer.
I really do feel bad that you've had these issues and if you still seek assistance I would ask you to send all the information you've compiled from then until now, including all tests you've done, things you've tried and I can try and assist you further... In fact I'm willing to dedicate some time on my Sunday (which is dominated by work stuff part of the time as well) to assist you and maybe inquire help from others in the office that are more familiar with the hardware end of video cards and ways to confirm or deny if that might be an issue.
Again I'm sorry that you feel this way and just because we couldn't solve your problem (that may have nothing to do with our tech) doesn't mean you "have had ZERO support"... honestly I've spent personal time helping you so I'm sorry if I find that a bit offensive on my end though I can relate to your end of the situation as well. It is nice knowing that people are indeed looking into your issues and I am sorry that I didn't respond further to at least acknowledge that I had examined the information but found no conclusion at the time.
#25
10/09/2006 (1:18 am)
I'm relatively new to TGB but ran across a similar problem where TGB would try to startup and just vanish without a trace like Micheal described. I ended up using the "cleandso.bat" in the games directory and it cleared up my problem. Your problem might be totally unrelated but you might give it a shot. 
#26
10/09/2006 (5:34 am)
I had this problem very briefly yesterday, as well. Running cleardso.bat solved my problem, also. 
Torque Owner Michael Goins
Huh, interesting. I don't even HAVE prefs.cs/dso. I figured you were just using shorthand for the defaultPrefs, but.. that's weird. All I've got is defaultPrefs.cs and .cs.dso.
I'd tried just flipping those settings before in the defaultPrefs and it hadn't seem to do anything; it still didn't do anything, but at least this time console.log reflected the changes and says D3D rendering and fullscreen (before it would still tell me it was OpenGL and windowed).
I DO have the source but part of the reason I picked up TGB was an interest in mucking around at the script level. I don't have any kind of compiler on here and don't know what's around that's free. I figured I'd start looking at source modifications somewhere down the road after I was more comfortable with the script, but.. sigh. =P