Crash Issue [SOLVED]

[Vincent]

Just picked up the game, as it looks great, and I love OS simulators.

However, the first thing I did after loading the game, was click the "Dum-Dum" icon, which crashed the game displaying the error message "Error: Failed to load video - unsupported codec in main.agc at line 15328"

Any ideas how I can fix this?
Thanks.

I loaded the game back up, and the other two icons seem to work thus far, but the Dum-Dum icon crashes the game.

EDIT:
The issue looks like it is due to my PC not able to run .mp4 files.
I downloaded an mp4 player (VLC Media Player), and set VLC to run mp4's by default, but the game is still crashing with the error message.
Attempting to download the Windows Media codec pack now.

EDIT:
Yay!
The codec pack fixed the issue, the dum-dum icon is working.

Hopefully this post will help anybody who has a similar issue.

[TheDeparture]

Hi Vincent, I just saw your comment. Thank you so much for discovering & troubleshooting that! I hadn't considered that could be an issue, but it absolutely makes sense. I'll see i about replacing the videos with something safer like WMVs as soon as I can.

[TheDeparture]

Done! Released an update this morning replacing all the MP4s with WMVs. This should be more compatible with all Windows users. Thank you again!

[thecodewitch]

Unfortunately, I've encountered what looks like an identical issue.

When I click the "dum-dum" icon, I get an instant crash.
I'm running the game on Linux via Steam Play.

[TheDeparture]

I switched to WMVs for the video files because MP4s were crashing some Windows computers, but I guess Linux would prefer the MP4s.

I'll see about adding both versions & having the game choose one depending upon the OS. It would make the install file bigger, but would have more cross compatibility, including with the Steam Deck. I'll look into it.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

[thecodewitch]

FYI, after the September 24 update, starting "DUM-DUM" doesn't crash, but it shows what looks like a test pattern instead of the video.

[TheDeparture]

I've uploaded a test fix to the beta channel. Can you see if this solves the problem?

To join the beta channel, right-click on Dum-Dum in Steam and select "Properties." Choose "Betas" in the left column, then "beta-beta" from the dropdown selector. Then you can launch the game again.

When it first launches, do NOT click on Dum-Dum. Instead, open the "Files" folder, go to the "System Files" directory, and choose "Basic Box." Now type the following command into Basic Box:

VIDEODEV MP4

It should tell you that it's successfully switched to using MP4 files instead of WMV. Note: you should only need to run this command once! The game will save your preference & you shouldn't encounter the problem again moving forward.

Did that work?

[thecodewitch]

I tried:
VIDEODEV MP4
A message appeared confirming the switch from WMV to MP4
The dum-dum application still shows the same test pattern instead of the video.

I then tried:
VIDEODEV WMV
A message appeared confirming the switch from MP4 to WMV
The dum-dum application still shows the same test pattern instead of the video.

All the other game assets are fine, I've used all the HOGO OS applications. I could save and load animations, and saw them being written under AppData in the wine prefix folder.

Thank you very much for your efforts, its great that you're using your embedded language like this to diagnose problems! I use the same trick when I include a Lua listener in my software :)

[TheDeparture]

I have an idea about what happened. It should be solved by clearing all of the game progress data. If you haven't gotten very far into the game & don't mind losing any game/app/high-score progress, the easiest option should be to uninstall & reinstall it.

Alternately, you can delete the game progress files manually. It appears that Proton saves them within the game's install location, in a "compatdata" subfolder. If you can find a "Dum-Dum/media" folder in there, just delete everything inside.

After doing either of these methods, you should be able to use Basic Box as above. Does that do the trick?

FWIW, I'm hoping to create a more elegant Linux/Proton-friendly solution in the future!

[TheDeparture]

Oh, I just re-read your post...since you're using WINE and already found the AppData folder, that's where you would delete everything. Or if you want to save your progress in a specific game/app, try deleting everything except whichever save file's name seems to be associated with it (e.g. animations.hog for Animations, piano.hog for Piano compositions, etc).

[thecodewitch]

BTW, I've been playing the game on a windows machine, I absolutely love it! :)

I've found a fix for Linux using the Proton GE build! I downloaded Proton-6.18-GE-1 from https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases/download/6.18-GE-1/Proton-6.18-GE-1.tar.gz

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d
cd ~/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d/
tar xzf ~/downloads/Proton-6.18-GE-1.tar.gz

Then in Dum-Dum -> Properties -> Compatibility, I checked the option to use a specific compatibility tool, and selected Proton 6.18 GE from the dropdown.

Now the video plays. Thanks again for taking the time to respond and help.

[TheDeparture]

Oh, excellent! That's great to know! Thanks!

[TheDeparture]

@thecodewitch - Can I ask you a question: when you use Proton, are you accessing the original WMV files? Or are you using the MP4 files through the beta version I uploaded?

If the WMV files play fine through Proton, I'm thinking of taking the MP4 files back out to save install space. But I won't do that if it'll break your game on Linux! :)

[Kira Nerys]

Has anyone managed to get this games videos working on the newer proton versions on Linux?
Was working on ge-proton-6.21, but was crashing when it ran out of videomemory.
Switching between mp4 and wmv dosent work.
The games engine seems to built with appgamekit, witch does support building for linux.
Is now currently the only game in my steam libary, i cant play on linux.