Knowledgebase Article 71

What to do if ASC/Linux doesn't start

This file describes how to solve potential problems when running the Linux version of Advanced Strategic Command. For information about compiling and installing the Linux version of ASC, refer to the Linux compilation guide.

There is no music playing

The music must be downloaded separately and placed in a 'music' subdirectory, see the installation instructions.

The music is correctly installed, but still doesn't play

SDL_mixer can be configured and build with or without mp3 music. To test if it can play mp3 music, run
ldd asc
and look for libsmpeg. If it is missing, you have to rebuild SDL_mixer (not ASC!) with sound:

configure --enable-music-mp3 make make install

SDL_mixer requires the SMPEG library to decode MP3 files.

How do I disable / enable debug symbols

This is determined by the environment variable CXXFLAGS. Prior to runnine configure you can specify: export CXXFLAGS="-O0 -g" (for a debug build with symbols)
or export CXXFLAGS="-O2" (for a release build without symbols)

ASC complains it can't load libSDL-1.1.so.0

This happens if you haven't got version 1.1.0 or later of SDL installed on your system. Get it from www.libsdl.org

unpack it, and cd into it. configure ; make then become root and make install.

ASC complains it can't load libSDL_image-1.0.so.0

This happens if you haven't got version 1.1.0 or later of SDL installed on your system. Get it from :

http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/index.html

unpack it, and cd into it. configure ; make then become root and make install.

I have installed SDL / SDL_image, but ASC still can't load libSDL-1.1.so.0 or libSDL_image-1.0.so.0

You probably don't have /usr/local/lib in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH or /etc/ld.so.conf. The quick solution is to incant: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH or for csh derivatives: setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH a more permanent alternative is to add the line: /usr/local/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf (you must be root to do this).

ASC still can't find some library

Compile ASC from source. It's easy, more robust and has much better diagnostics! Some instructions (which should usually not be necessary) are here.

ASC complains that it can't find SDL_EnableKeyRepeat

You're running an old version of SDL. See fixes above.

ASC doesn't run and/or it crashes my X server.

try running it with the --window flag on the command line.

ASC still crashes on startup

Please read KB article 63

ASC runs in fullscreen, but there is a big black border arount the area of the screen

You must add the resolution that ASC tries to run in (default is 800*600 at the time of writing) to your xf86config. Your Linux distribution may have a more comfortable way to do this. On SuSE Linux for example, this can be done with SAX on the "extended desktop settings" (is this translation from the german SAX the one that is actually used?) page.

Alternatively, you can run ASC in window mode ( --window on the command line), or change the resolution it uses ( -x and -y command line options) Type ASC --help for a summary of the command line parameters

ASC crashes and does not restore the original screen resolution

To avoid this problem, you can run ASC in windowed mode:

asc -w

or run it in your default resolution, for example

asc -x 1152 -y 864

If the resolution has already been changed by ASC crashing, there is a simple way to restore it to your original settings. Start ASC in your preferred resolution, like

asc -x 1152 -y 864

and let it crash again. If it fails to crash, kill it :->

Last change: Mon, 2004-05-31 13:36

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