#25 Doom Legacy 1.47.2 launch failure - doomargs.tmp not found

[Tom Makowski]

Good day all!

I installed Doom Legacy 1.47.2 and went through the setup process. When I try to launch singleplayer, multiplayer, or just click "Launch" nothing happens. The stderr file has the following...

Error:
Response file doomargs.tmp not found !
Shutting down joysticks.
Joystick subsystem closed cleanly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can't wait to get back into Doom Legacy!

[Tom Makowski]

Update!

I found there was a support request for this same issue already, so I was able to fix this error.

However I am now running into a new error...

RequestFullGraphics...
Draw 8bpp using palette, SDL must convert to 8 bpp video modes
No usable fullscreen video modes.
Error: RequestFullGraphics Abort

I got this error on several different resolutions. Thoughts?

[Wesley Johnson]

I cannot get that launcher to work either, but I only have an XP to test with (I develop using Linux). I got the same error as you. However, the people that put the Windows package together say it is old software, but it works fine.

I read the support request from jive about doomargs.tmp not found. It gets rid of the error message, but not the problem.

From my experiments, if you get that error then the Launcher is not writing the doomargs.tmp file. That means that the settings from the Launcher will NOT be getting to doomlegacy.
If you set the file by hand, then doomlegacy will only ever get what you put by hand into the doomargs.tmp file.

If you are getting the doomargs.tmp not found error, you should abandon the old external Launcher and start doomlegacy directly from a shortcut.
You can edit the shortcut, have one that starts doomlegacy with "-opengl" for example.
I recommend starting doomlegacy without any command line arguments, so that it starts the built-in launcher, which is not as pretty as the old external Launcher, but is functional.
It also handles the new settings that the old external Launcher does not know about.
However, you have to read docs/legacy.html command line switches to use it.

[Wesley Johnson]

No usable fullscreen video modes :
The software went through all the video modes it got from your video card and could not find any that it could use. It usually wants to start with "800x600". Are you getting the 800x600 screen ?
Then will switch to the full graphics (RequestFullGraphics), which usually depends on what mode you had saved in your config. You might have a bad mode saved in your doomlegacy config file, from some previous hardware perhaps.

I suggest you read the doc/legacy.html section about video mode command line switches.
Those are the tools we will have to use.

You will need to start doomlegacy, by itself, without the Launcher, and with verbose error messages. So find the command line console on your machine.

If you start doomlegacy alone, without any command line switches, it will enter the built-in launcher, which also has a line to enter switches

I suggest starting with:

"> doomlegacy -native -v2 -game doom2"

This will dump quite a bit of information. Most of it is also dumped into stdout and stderr files, so save those.
You may be able to solve this yourself when you see the output.

[Wesley Johnson]

That external Launcher is old code from the Windows 3.1 era. You would think it should be started from a shortcut that is properly setup with a run-time directory, but that did not help.
I have gotten the Launcher to hang if I try to run it in any compatibility mode, so it is not that either.

The old Launcher will put the doomargs.tmp file in the directory where it gets the IWAD. It then
passes a parameter to doomlegacy that does not include a directory. Unless the IWAD is in the same directory as the doomlegacy binary, this will not work.