Starbound Was Working Perflectly, 5 Days later I'm Getting the OpenGL Error?

[Malachite Mushroom]

Hi folks, I have a question which is something I hoped I'd never have to ask again.

On Sunday April 13th I played my current modded Starbound play through (I started it a few days prior). I had no problems, well, one of the extra planet mods I had said planet descriptions in Spanish which was funny, but aside from that there was nothing wrong with my play through. Just normal, weird Starbound things.

I hadn't touched Starbound for a few days till today (April 18th), I didn't get any new mods, I didn't even boot up Steam at all, but when I finally sat down to launch it I get this error:

"fatal exception caught: (rendererexception) OpenGL 2.0 not available!" followed by a long string of text which I don't think I can copy and paste, but would be happy to hand transcribe if need be.

I feel like I had this error years ago, when the game was still being updated, and I think it solved this error on it's own, but I don't know how to fix it myself. What confuses me is it WAS working just fine and I hadn't modified it in any way between my last session and today. Does anyone have any solutions on what's causing this? I tried verifying my game cache in hopes that would be the quick and easy solution but no such luck.

Looking online I'm only seeing people asking about this issue from 2020 and earlier and most solutions involve getting new drivers? Is that the only method of fixing this?

Any suggestions would be appreciated! In the mean time I gonna try restarting my computer and see if that fixes things.

Edit: Restarting did not work.

[Fractard]

Reinstall OpenGL, search on internet.

[Malachite Mushroom]

While looking online I found a discussion saying that OpenGL comes with most windows graphics cards automatically, I assume that is the case for me as well as I was able to play Starbound with no trouble before yesterday. I tried updating my graphics drivers automatically and the popup said that they were already up to date. Just tried Starbound again to see if it fixed itself and no such luck. I just wish I knew what changed since the last time I played it correctly.

[Malachite Mushroom]

Annnnd it's working now. Nothing got updated or anything. I just restarted my computer again and I guess the third time's the charm? My character is gone now despite the cloud being up to date, but I guess that's nothing some console commands can't fix.

[Fractard]

Yes OpenGL is preinstalled but you can get an install setup on its website.
There is no cloud, everything is stored on your HD, its why it is recommended to make regular backup. Check if your character files are still here.

If your character files still exist try to open it with Starcheat. If it fail it means it is corrupted. If it work you will be able to see your equipment and inventory, by using Spawnable Item Pack plus extensions, depending on your mods, you should be able to get your stuff back at least partly. Don't modify anything with Starcheat or do backup before (read below).

Second point, the game have its own backup system, though it saves often and the backup replaced each time so it have a limited interest but in your case you may be able to not start from starch. For each character, .player file, you have 3 backup named .player.bak1/2/3. To use those move away the .player file and remove .bak1 from the first backup name, start the game and see if it works. Rince and repeat with the others if needed.

If nothing works then you will have to fidle a bit. I already talked about Starcheat and SIP, that will allow you to recover what was on your character.
What is on your universe should be still here unless files get corrupted but you will have to get your bookmarks back. For this you need to decryt a working save file from your old character, this is another use of Starcheat but tell me first if you can open any .player file (original and renamed backup) with it. Note that you can get back codicies and recipes too.
If all your character files are broken you can still get back to previously explored area, planets files are name is their ingame coordinates (X_-Y_Z_body number), enter in admin mode and enter X and Y (no idea what Z is for). If you build a base somewhere it is probably the biggest file.
If your ship files are still here there is a little trick to transfer it to another character. Make a new character, save and quit, copy the file name of your new ship, delet the new ship file, rename your old character ship file as the new one.

I really doubt its a ship issue as your character would show up and the game reset the ship if it is corrupted, but still worth mentioning ship files have also 3 backup that can be used to go back to a previous state.

[Naii Starwing]

Been playing a different OpenGL game (SRB2Kart) and I'm suddenly getting crashes as well. Thank you. This will likely help me. It also highlights OpenGL as the problem.