Problem with DBUS

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mrcoar
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Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2018 2:25 am

Problem with DBUS

Post by mrcoar »

Greetings:
I am using Ubuntu 18.04 and installed Rocks'n'Diamonds from repository.
When i try to execute the game from the menu, it says that it closed unexpectedly. But when I try to execute it from the Terminal, it gives me the following message:

dbus[27272]: arguments to dbus_message_new_method_call() were incorrect, assertion "path != NULL" failed in file ../../../dbus/dbus-message.c line 1362.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.

I uninstalled it and installed the 4.1.1 version from the source code obtained from the Rocks'n'Diamonds official page. But i got the same issue.

I searched through Internet for a solution with no avail.
Is there a way I can fix this problem?
I'd feel very obligated for the answer.

By the way, I like R'n'D a lot.
Regards.
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Holger
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Re: Problem with DBUS

Post by Holger »

Hello mrcoar, welcome to the forum! :-)

Regarding the problem you described, I have no idea at all what might cause this -- R'n'D does not actively use that D-Bus library in any way (in fact, I just had to ask Google what the heck this might be). :-o

The only thing I could think of is that R'n'D uses a pre-installed version of the SDL library that was compiled with something that might interact with that library.

Unfortunately, I do not have an Ubuntu 18.04 system around for testing it by myself, but I would try the following:

- try to use the pre-compiled R'n'D binary contained in the current R'n'D 4.1.1.0 package from www.artsoft.org.
- try to compile from source, using the pre-installed SDL libraries
- try to compile from source, using self-compiled SDL libraries

When using self-compiled SDL libraries, you would need SDL, SDL_image, SDL_mixer and SDL_net (using version 2.x of these libraries, not the outdated 1.2 versions), which should all be compilable by simply extracting the archives and doing "./configure && make &6 sudo make install".

Please let me know if anything of the above approaches work for you.
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Holger
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Re: Problem with DBUS

Post by Holger »

A little more googling revealed the following resources:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=882607
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1775067
https://www.gog.com/forum/xenonauts/ubu ... r_solution

Apparently I was right with my suspicion regarding the SDL library. :-/

It seems like SDL 2.0.6 makes some trouble with Ubuntu 18.04, if I understand it right. So installing the latest version of the SDL library might help here.
mrcoar
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2018 2:25 am

Re: Problem with DBUS

Post by mrcoar »

Thanks for the reply, Holger.
I installed the latest version of each package from the official source code (SDL 2.0.9, SDL image 2.0.4, SDL mixer 2.0.4 and SDL net 2.0.1)
I recompiled the R'n'D source code by Makefile, but when i try to execute it, it gives me this message:

rocksndiamonds: warning: IMG_Load() failed: Unsupported image format
rocksndiamonds: fatal error: IMG_Load() failed: Unsupported image format
rocksndiamonds: aborting

I don't know if I did something wrong. I searched this message in Internet, but only found 1 solution for MAC on this very page.

Thanks in advance
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Holger
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Re: Problem with DBUS

Post by Holger »

This error message comes from SDL_image, complaining that it cannot load PNG images.

This is most likely caused by a missing PNG library (libpng) on your system. The solution should be to install the PNG library and header files from the systems package manager (should be something like "apt install libpngX libpngX-dev", where "X" should be some version number), then re-compile SDL_image (including "./configure", which can now see the PNG support).

This should do the trick.
mrcoar
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Joined: Mon Nov 05, 2018 2:25 am

Re: Problem with DBUS

Post by mrcoar »

Thanks a lot!!
Now is running fine. I'm using the version 4.1.1 downloaded from source (the version from Ubuntu repositories still doesn't work due to the DBUS error explained in the beggining).
There is only one detail: There is no background music.
When i play any stage, the following error messages (and such) are obtained from terminal:

rocksndiamonds: warning: cannot read music file './music/mus_classic/mod.cream_of_the_earth': Unrecognized audio format
rocksndiamonds: warning: cannot read music file './music/mus_classic/mod.apoplexy': Unrecognized audio format
rocksndiamonds: warning: cannot read music file './music/mus_classic/mod.chiptune': Unrecognized audio format

Is there an audio library i must install?
Best regards.
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Holger
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Re: Problem with DBUS

Post by Holger »

Great to hear that R'n'D is now running fine on your system!

I hope that the SDL2 libraries will soon be updated on Ubuntu to versions that do not have these strange DBUS problems, but I'm afraid that this won't happen very soon. :-/
There is only one detail: There is no background music.
...
Unrecognized audio format
...
Is there an audio library i must install?
Yes -- the problem is that vanilla SDL_mixer can only play WAV files. But it contains some additional libraries to also play MOD, MP3 and MIDI files!

So, when compiling SDL_mixer, make sure that you have enabled support for at least "libmodplug" for MOD music support (which seems to be preferable over "libmikmod", which is also included) and "smpeg" for MP3 support.

To do this, invoke SDL_mixer's configuration script as follows:

Code: Select all

./configure --enable-music-mod --enable-music-midi --enable-music-mp3
For MIDI support (most prominent R'n'D level set with MIDI music is "BD2K3"), you will also need Timidity, which you should either be able to install from your package manager or by googling "timidity linux" and downloading a quite old, but working set of MIDI sample files, which is required for playing MIDI files on Linux (Windows and Mac do not seem to need this for playing MIDI, although MIDI support in Windows is really bad these days).

This should do it! :)
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