Game won't start at all on macOS High Sierra 10.13.3, nothing seems to be logged

[itsuno]

Hello, David!

I am eager to play this game, but it won't start at all. I am running High Sierra 10.13.3 on MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB).

It shows a window "preparing to launch I Can't Escape: Darkness" for a split second, and then nothing.

I've seen a previous message about Linux and deleting the vec2 rot function from matrix2d.h, but there is no such function in the matrix2d.h file of my version (or in any other .h files). File integrity checks come out fine.

I've found ICEDarkness exec file, and running it shows me this in the Terminal:

Last login: Sun Feb 18 16:45:33 on ttys000
MacBook-Pro-1:~ a1$ /Users/a1/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I\ Can\'t\ Escape\ Darkness/ICEDarkness ; exit;
dyld: Library not loaded: @loader_path/libSDL2.dylib
  Referenced from: /Users/a1/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I Can't Escape Darkness/ICEDarkness
  Reason: no suitable image found.  Did find:
	/Users/a1/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I Can't Escape Darkness/libSDL2.dylib: code signature invalid for '/Users/a1/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I Can't Escape Darkness/libSDL2.dylib'

	/Users/a1/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I Can't Escape Darkness/libSDL2.dylib: stat() failed with errno=1
	/Users/a1/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I Can't Escape Darkness/libSDL2.dylib: code signature invalid for '/Users/a1/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I Can't Escape Darkness/libSDL2.dylib'

	/Users/a1/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/I Can't Escape Darkness/libSDL2.dylib: stat() failed with errno=1
Abort trap: 6
logout
Saving session...
...copying shared history...
...saving history...truncating history files...
...completed.

[Process completed]

Any idea what might be happening here? Is High Sierra's new file system the matter?

Thanks for any hint on this.

[David Maletz]

It looks like the libSDL2.dylib included with the game is incompatible with your operating system. There's a new version of libSDL2 out that hopefully fixes the problems - you can download it here: https://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL2-2.0.7.dmg

[itsuno]

David, thanks a lot for your answer!

I've put the SDL2.framework from the .dmg in /Library/Frameworks/ and <my username>/Library/Frameworks/, as per readme file, and even into Steam/Contents/MacOS/Frameworks/, but the results are the same (same log message if I run ICEDarkness exec).

There is no libSDL2.dylib file in the .dmg, only SDL2.framework. Am I missing something?

[David Maletz]

Technically, installing the framework should work, but maybe it gives priority to the SDL2.dylib in the game directory - you can try deleting that version and see if it finds the framework. If not the dylib is inside the SDL2.framework (this is a folder you can open by Ctrl+click), it's located at SDL2.framework/Versions/A/SDL2, and copying that and renaming it to libSDL2.dylib in the game folder should work.

[David Maletz]

I can't even install high sierra on my test machine (it's a late 2008 macbook), so if you're still having trouble, I'll have to borrow someone else's computer to see why it's not working.

[itsuno]

David, thank you, tried both. The only difference weirdly seems to be that launching the game from Steam shows the 'Preparing...' dialog a little longer, for like 3 sec, but then nothing. Launching from the exec file results in the same error log immediately, like before.

Appreciate if you happen to find the solution, but I understand that this seems to be a high sierra thing, not an issue with your code.

[itsuno]

Hey, David, just wondering if you will get a chance to check this high sierra compatibility issue?

Thanks!

[David Maletz]

I can't get my hands on a High Sierra test machine, so I don't know if it'll work, but I did find this libSDL2 dylib that apparently fixes the problem for High Sierra: https://github.com/mrhelmut/MonoGame.Dependencies/blob/afa8d04093cedc70727d00f6f13892485e0efc33/SDL/MacOS/Universal/libSDL2-2.0.0.dylib

Click download (next to History on the right), then paste that next to ICEDarkness, replacing the existing libSDL2.dylib (you'll have to rename it to get rid of the version number). Then, try running the game and let me know if it works!

[itsuno]

Yes! Finally, it works.

Thank you very much, really appreciate your help!

[David Maletz]

Awesome, I'm glad that works! I'll push that dylib to the public mac branch so that other players on high sierra don't have this problem :).

[itsuno]

Thanks again, and for caring about mac players! :)