Don’t Starve
It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I wanted to play Don’t Starve. This actually ended up meaning about 3 hours of intermittent troubleshooting and 1 hour of games, because Linux.
Get the files
I bought Don’t Starve from the Humble Bundle store, although there are other methods of obtaining it which strike a different balance between cost and convenience.
The downloaded file is dontstarve_x64_july21.tar.gz.
This Just Works
$ yaourt -S libcurl-compat
$ tar -xvf dontstarve_x64_july21.tar.gz
$ cd dontstarve/bin
$ LD_PRELOAD=libcurl.so.3 ./dontstarve
Below the fold is the troubleshooting process I went through to make it look so easy. Hopefully it’ll be of assistance to those searching for the errors that I ran into!
This part has SEO for all the intermediate errors
Try to run the script
$ cd dontstarve
$ ./dontstarve.sh
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
Fontconfig error: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 70: non-double matrix element
Fontconfig error: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 70: non-double matrix element
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf", line 78: saw unknown, expected number
(updater:2135): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderFc', script='latin'
(updater:2135): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderFc', script='common'
./dontstarve.sh: line 2: unexpected EOF while looking for matching ``'
./dontstarve.sh: line 4: syntax error: unexpected end of file
Look what doesn’t like me! The fonts are sad. Spoiler: You don’t actually need those fonts at all.
Much Frustration
It turns out that the ./dontstarve.sh in the root of the unzipped dontstarve directory is solely an updater, which is totally irrelevant if you just want to play whatever version of the game they happened to ship you. It launches an updater that requests a game key and has hideously broken fonts and generally sprouts new errors like a Hydra every time you think you’re making progress.
Try running the correct dontstarve executable
The correct script to run actually lives in bin/dontstarve.sh, but if you try to run it from outside that directory, it can’t find other files:
$ bin/dontstarve.sh
$ bin/dontstarve.sh: line 3: ./dontstarve: No such file or directory
Cute. So instead:
$ cd bin
$ ./dontstarve.sh
./dontstarve: /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4: version `CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found (required by ./dontstarve)
OR:
$ bin/dontstarve # Spoiler, this will still be broken later
bin/dontstarve: /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4: version `CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found (required by bin/dontstarve)
Fixing the libcurl error
Get libcurl-compat from the AUR:
$ yaourt -S libcurl-compat
At the end of its installation process, it’ll give you a helpful little warning about preloading the library:
Sometimes you have to preload library!
e.g. if you see this message:
/usr/lib/libcurl.so.4: version `CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found'
Do this:
LD_PRELOAD=libcurl.so.3 youprogname
Run dontstarve with the right libcurl
$ LD_PRELOAD=libcurl.so.3 bin/dontstarve
Hello Segfaults
And then we get a nice reproduceable segfault, ending in:
ERROR: Missing Shader 'shaders/font.ksh'.
Assert failure '0' at ../source/renderlib/OpenGL/HWEffect.cpp(86)
Assert failure 'BREAKPT:' at ../source/renderlib/OpenGL/HWEffect.cpp(86)
Assert failure 'datasize + mReadHead <= mBufferLength' at ../source/util/reader.h(28)
Assert failure 'BREAKPT:' at ../source/util/reader.h(28)
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
This is NOT the cue to go shave a graphics card yak, despite what Googling the error would lead one to believe. This is the cue to:
$ cd bin
$ LD_PRELOAD=libcurl.so.3 ./dontstarve
If it’s stupid, but it works, it ain’t stupid. Running the executable from the right directory makes the game work on an X230 and on an X1 Carbon, so in my (un)professional opinion, it’s got nothing to do with special fancy graphics drivers.
It works!
Scroll way back up to the top for the short version. Have fun, and Don’t Starve!
P.S.
I tried this with the x32 version. It goes all:
~/Downloads/dontstarve/bin $ LD_PRELOAD=libcurl.so.3 ./dontstarve
bash: ./dontstarve: No such file or directory
The script and executable have the same permissions when unzipped from the 32- or 64-bit tarballs... Just, the 32-bit one doesn’t work. There’s probably a good reason for this, possibly related to the fact that I’m running on a 64-bit system, but since the x64 variant of the game runs just fine I didn’t dig into the x32‘s malfunctions any deeper.