Game does not launch from a fresh install

[Cedarbox]

Mint, 18.3
Nvidia 970, driver 384.130

The game used to launch fine. I have not since had any driver or major OS updates, nor have I changed any hardware. Now, it'll show up in the taskbar, as if it's launching, and then close down.

I have validated files, done a fresh install, nothing helps.

[Mr. U]

Most likely corrupt savedata. Delete everything in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Monaco\SAVEDATA

Oh wait this is linux. uhhhhh

[e]

Installing monaco on a new linux computer and having same issue.
It worked on my other computer, but here it complains about an xml parse error or something.

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'rapidxml::parse_error'
  what():  expected element name

[e]

But in ...common/Monaco/* there aren't even any .xml files

[e]

Ok solved:

Mr U is correct that it's a bad savedata file.
Our savedata is not in .../common, it's in the equivalent of appdata, ~/.local/share/Pocketwatch\ Games/Monaco/SAVEDATA

There was a lone file in there Options2.xml
Delete or rename the file, Monaco will launch.

[e]

Unfortunately this means you'll have to delete that file every time you want to play Monaco...

[e]

#!/bin/bash
#/home/me/prepare_monaco.sh
rm $HOME/.local/share/Pocketwatch\ Games/Monaco/SAVEDATA/Options2.xml

[Yurikano]

It looks like Monaco on Linux now writes a damaged/unusable Options2.xml everytime it exits, with which it then can no longer start. Maybe developer can fix this?

[Onymous]

This issue still exists for me. The issue seems to be that when settings are saved, the Options2.xml file only includes the </OptionsData> closing tag, and not the rest of the options. Would a developer please respond?

Working off what sensei posted above, a nearly-empty file that's read-only is a workaround that doesn't require maintenance. For example, do this once so the game will run each time, though forgetting any options you set:

echo '<OptionsData />' > $HOME/.local/share/Pocketwatch\ Games/Monaco/SAVEDATA/Options2.xml
chmod 400 $HOME/.local/share/Pocketwatch\ Games/Monaco/SAVEDATA/Options2.xml

If you want to set options, you can use a more complete Options2.xml file. Looking through strings Monaco.bin.x86, I found what looked like the XML, and then guessed at some values to create a skeleton Options2.xml. You can put a copy of this in place of the other Options2.xml, and mark it read-only. You'll have to guess a little on what the settings mean, and edit them in the XML. That way, your settings will take. Of course this means you have to edit an XML file for any changes, but it works. A real fix to the broken XML output the game is doing right now would be better.

Here's my skeleton Options2.xml:

<OptionsData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<VolumeMusic>0.80</VolumeMusic>
<VolumeSFX>0.80</VolumeSFX>
<VolumeVoice>0.80</VolumeVoice>
<Fullscreen>true</Fullscreen>
<Resolution></Resolution>
<EditorLighting>true</EditorLighting>
<TitleSafeGame>1.00</TitleSafeGame>
<AlwaysShowMeta>false</AlwaysShowMeta>
<BlueprintBrightness>1.00</BlueprintBrightness>
<StartLevel>1</StartLevel>
<NetSmoothingTime>1.00</NetSmoothingTime>
<NetServerUpdateFrequency>1.00</NetServerUpdateFrequency>
<ActiveProfileName></ActiveProfileName>
<PlayOnline>true</PlayOnline>
<lastSelectedWorldID>1</lastSelectedWorldID>
<lastSelectedStageID>1</lastSelectedStageID>
<LightingQuality>high</LightingQuality>
<Colorblind>false</Colorblind>
<DrawForeground>true</DrawForeground>
<TutorialOnline>true</TutorialOnline>
<TutorialOffline>true</TutorialOffline>
<TutorialLobbyOnline>true</TutorialLobbyOnline>
<TutorialLobbyOffline>true</TutorialLobbyOffline>
<TutorialEditor>true</TutorialEditor>
<KeyboardIndex>1</KeyboardIndex>
<Voice>1</Voice>
<Bloom>true</Bloom>
<Shadows>true</Shadows>
<EditorSFX>true</EditorSFX>
<Rumble>true</Rumble>
<ShowHints>true</ShowHints>
<StartLevel />
<ActiveProfileName />
<SearchLAN></SearchLAN>
<Gamma></Gamma>
<SaveName></SaveName>
</OptionsData>

(Sorry, I don't know what values "Gamma" takes. I tried some common ones like 2.2 and 1.8, but nothing took.)

[Cedarbox]

Just checking in to say that the issue apparently solved itself. I don't know what happened.

[Nullsy]

I just installed and tried to play for the first time today, and experienced this exact problem. The issue was never fixed.

[[RHFE] robocoop]

Thanks for the read-only workaround. It came in really handy for me.

I just want to attach my Options2.xml. I reverse-engineered the problem and wrote about it in another thread. I also obtained the exact Options2.xml that Monaco would have written for me if this bug were patched.

There are a few useful additions to the skeleton that Onymous found above, such as default keybindings and save file name.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<OptionsData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
	<VolumeMusic>0.80</VolumeMusic>
	<VolumeSFX>0.80</VolumeSFX>
	<VolumeVoice>0.80</VolumeVoice>
	<Voice>1</Voice>
	<Fullscreen>true</Fullscreen>
	<Resolution>0</Resolution>
	<Bloom>true</Bloom>
	<Shadows>true</Shadows>
	<EditorLighting>true</EditorLighting>
	<AlwaysShowMeta>false</AlwaysShowMeta>
	<EditorSFX>true</EditorSFX>
	<Rumble>true</Rumble>
	<ShowHints>true</ShowHints>
	<TitleSafeGame>1.00</TitleSafeGame>
	<BlueprintBrightness>0.60</BlueprintBrightness>
	<StartLevel>165381676</StartLevel>
	<NetSmoothingTime>1.00</NetSmoothingTime>
	<NetServerUpdateFrequency>1.00</NetServerUpdateFrequency>
	<ActiveProfileName>Anonymous</ActiveProfileName>
	<SearchLAN>false</SearchLAN>
	<PlayOnline>true</PlayOnline>
	<lastSelectedWorldID>1</lastSelectedWorldID>
	<lastSelectedStageID>1</lastSelectedStageID>
	<Gamma>1.0</Gamma>
	<LightingQuality>true</LightingQuality>
	<Colorblind>false</Colorblind>
	<DrawForeground>true</DrawForeground>
	<TutorialOnline>true</TutorialOnline>
	<TutorialOffline>true</TutorialOffline>
	<TutorialLobbyOnline>true</TutorialLobbyOnline>
	<TutorialLobbyOffline>true</TutorialLobbyOffline>
	<TutorialEditor>true</TutorialEditor>
	<SaveName>SaveData.bin</SaveName>
	<KeyboardIndex>1</KeyboardIndex>
	<Bind_19>20</Bind_19>
	<Bind_34>42</Bind_34>
	<Bind_36>17</Bind_36>
	<Bind_37>31</Bind_37>
	<Bind_38>30</Bind_38>
	<Bind_39>32</Bind_39>
	<Bind_64>57</Bind_64>
	<Bind_68>29</Bind_68>
	<Bind_80>18</Bind_80>
	<Bind_84>47</Bind_84>
</OptionsData>

[Awegwen]

Thanks to all who have shared a solution. Any idea what the settings should be for screen resolutions?

[artemohanjanyan]

Same problem here, I'd like to launch game in windowed mode and can't figure out what to write in <Resolution> tag. Perhaps someone can change it to something non-default and send their Options2.tag.

[Onymous]

The <Resolution> gets set to a decimal value, when writing the XML options. They appear to be selected from a list. It's not clear to me what happens when the options are read in from XML, if the value is not on the list.

Debugging shows available options for the value:

• 0 for the default
  
• 720 for 1280x720
  
• 768 for 1024x768
  
• 900 for 1200x900
  
• 9001 for for 1440x900
  
• 1024 for 1280x1024
  
• 1080 for 1920x1080
  
• 1052 (yes, one zero five two) for 2048x1152
  
• 1200 for 1920x1200

For example, the line to use for the default is:

<Resolution>0</Resolution>

And for 1440x900:

<Resolution>9001</Resolution>

[Onymous]

As for the gamma (which confused me before), debugging gets values from 1.1 (darkest) to 0.6 (brightest). It only has one digit before the decimal, and one digit after. It defaults to 1.0, as in robocoop's example. There are eleven possible selections on the configuration screen in the game, but only six values written out to the XML.