Installed fine, but clicking icon to start game does nothing

[theWinterLion]

Hello everyone.  I've been a long-time fan of X-COM but haven't played it for years and was pleased to stumble across your game yesterday at work.  I now have it installed on my computer, but when I click the ufo file, nothing happens.    No hour glass, nothing.

I'm running the Ubuntu Gutsy with an ATI card (the non-free driver) and Compiz.

Any clues why this might be happening?  Any help is appreciated.  I'm a total noob at Linux, having just gone "Free" 2 weeks ago, so I'm probably just making rookie errors.  No suggestion is too insignificant!

Kind regards,

[geever]

I guess some required modules missing (libcurl,libsdl*,linpng). You can check the .ufoai/<version>/base/ufoconsole.log under your home directory. Or open a console/terminal and run ufo by hand. Then messages will be written out there.

 regards
geever

[theWinterLion]

Thanks for the reply.

In my folder <username>/ufoai/base/ there is no file called ufoconsole.log.  Notice too that there is no <version> directory between ufoai and base.  I don't know if this is bad or not.

Kind regards,

[geever]

The directory ufoai is your game directory, am I right? When starting the game first it (should) create(s) a .ufoai directory for user preferences and savegames. In linux the files/dirs starting with a dot are hidden so you should check with a capable file manager (like midnight commander).

  regards
geever

[geever]

Ok, just checked Gnome's file manager can also show hidden files (I don't know which wm ubuntu uses), you just have to enable it in view menu.

IMO the best is to try running the game from console, maybe there you can see more than in the log.

geever

[theWinterLion]

Thanks for the reply.

I told it to show hidden files, but still no evidence of a log file.  I'm quite certain it doesn't start the program at all.  Any reason it wouldn't even start the program?

[Doctor J]

I told it to show hidden files, but still no evidence of a log file.  I'm quite certain it doesn't start the program at all.  Any reason it wouldn't even start the program?

There are lots of reasons, which is why we can't give you better help until you give us better information.  You don't say which session manager you're using, so i'll assume it's Gnome.  Go to the menu Applications -> Accessories and start Terminal.  In there, type

Code: [Select]

cd ~/ufoai
./ufo
Note the directory to 'cd' will change depending upon where you actually have the program.  When the program is attempting to start it will spit out a screen or two of initialization information.  If the problem isn't obvious, then paste that back to us.

[theWinterLion]

Thanks for your reply.

I apologize for the lack of complete information.  I am happy to provide anything you tell me, but I confess I lack the Linux experience to know what to report back.  I thank you for your patience.

I am indeed using Gnome.

I typed what you wrote into the terminal and it said this:

./ufo: error while loading shared libraries: libcurl.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[geever]

My guess was right you should install the curl package. I don't know which package manager ubuntu (and you) use (I have debian) but if apt then you should run this from a root* terminal:

Code: [Select]

apt-get install curl
*root is the system administrator user. You can get root privileges by typing su on the terminal and it's password when asked.

  regards
geever

[shevegen]

theWinterLion seems you finally come to the core of the problem

whenever you have missing .so files then either you dont have the package available or something of that package is missing (many distributions are notorious for splitting up packages for no reason at all in today's life)

i am sure you will be able to tackle them one after the other now, and make sure to state how you found the game, too!

[theWinterLion]

Ah yes, that seems to have done the trick.  I used the following guide extensively as well:

http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=31776.0

My thanks to all who assisted me.  I look forward to playing the game.