[Solved] Descent 1 Not Starting

[Dak'kon]

Hello everyone,

long time lurker, now first time poster

I received my pandora last week and so far I got most of my 2D games (AMIGA, SNES etc.) and applications up and running. Yesterday, I tried my first 3D game, Decent (d1x), which unfortunately does not start at all.
A look at the generated "gameslog.txt" reveals that the game (I quote) "can't initialize graphics".
Now, what does that mean? Do I need a special 3D graphics driver? Or is there something else which I'm doing wrong?
I've not touched the "decent.cfg" or any other file and I'm quite sure all necessary files are in the appdata\d1x\ folder.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot!

Dak'kon

 

[EvilDragon]

What firmware version do you have installed?
Any Hotfix?

If you have Mupen64 installed: If you run a game (like Mario64), does it display graphics?

If it doesn't, then your 3D driver doesn't work.
HF4 uses a new kernel with new driver modules - so if you use HF4 with an old kernel or vice versa (new kernel with old OS), it won't work.

 

[Dak'kon]

Hello ED, thanks for your quick reply.

Hotfix 3 is installed. Following your suggestion I've tried Mupen64 and indeed, Mario64 is not showing up. The display goes completely black with a blinking cursor at the top left (just as a terminal). However, the sound is working ("It's a me, Mario") so I suppose it's running.

Shall I reflash the NAND with a older Firmware or is there another possibility to get the graphics driver running?

Dak'kon

 

[torpor]

Usually when graphics don't work (as they always should) on Pandora its a mis-match between the kernel version and the filesystem version. So, a re-flash should solve this problem, as well as applying the hotfix (don't forget codec pack too) to get to the latest version ..

 

[EvilDragon]

Yep, it seems you have the latest kernel but HF3, which uses older modules.

You can either flash an older kernel or install HF4 Beta 2.

 

[Dak'kon]

Thanks both ED and torper,

maybe it is just not my day today. I downloaded the most recent HF (HF4 beta2) and executed the .pnd. At a first glance it went smoothly, no errors were displayed and I was asked to reboot....
Due to whatever reasons the boot loader now claims "failed to load kernel" and that I need to reflash the firmware.

Since computer aren't influenced by factors such as bad luck, I must have done something wrong. But ok, now I'll try to reflash the firmware and see how this will turn out

Thanks again for your help!

 

[WizardStan]

Since computer aren't influenced by factors such as bad luck

Sure they are. You download the hot fix and, as luck would have it, one of the blocks it tries to write that PND to is not 100%. It's good enough that no warning flags have gone up that it's bad, but when it is read back on this occasion, one of the 0s has become a 1, the byte now has different meaning, and when written to the NAND your kernel refuses to load.
There are actually a surprisingly large number of ways that computers can randomly fail without human interaction. Packets are lost, file systems get corrupted, butterflies flap their wings packing air into a lens that focuses cosmic radiation to a single point and flipping various bits.
The more complex a system is, the more likely something is to go wrong.

 

[Dak'kon]

Phew, it has been a long day.

But finally, after reflashing the firmware (and not encountering more challenges) I got my Pandora booting and running again.

And......now I can play some Descent, it really works! Thanks to all for your help and keep your fingers crossed ;-)

Dak'kon

 

[adtbm]

@Dak'kon: What version of Descent1 are you running (Disc or CD) and what files did you copy into the (Appdata/d1x/data/)
because i also don't get Descent1 to run ?!?

I have just reflashed my pandora with "Pandora-Flashkit-2010-07-Zaxxon.Zip" and used the latest "HotFix4-Zaxxon-B3.pnd"
also i have installed the codec Pack. I think the latest flashkit includes everything up to Hotfix3 inclusive, or ?

Any Hint is highly appreciated.

Thanx

UPDATE: Es funktioniert jetzt, nachdem ich noch einmal geflasht habe, Hotfix4B3 und Codecpack aufgespielt habe und ich habe ins(D1x/data)Verzeichnis nur die .hog und .pig Datei kopiert.
Ach wie schoen, Descent laesst sich wirklich decent spielen. WOOT