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I consider it an essential part of Dwaf Fortress, and can't play without it.

119 (18.4%)

I use it for pretty screenshots, but otherwise don't use it during play.

211 (32.7%)

I only try it occasionally.

174 (27%)

I have no idea why I'm even in this thread, I don't use it.

141 (21.9%)

Total Members Voted: 642

[Vox Imperatoris]

Can someone help me with a problem I'm having? Stonesense runs fine, but the text is all messed up, as you can see in this picture.

[Rose]

Can someone help me with a problem I'm having? Stonesense runs fine, but the text is all messed up, as you can see in this picture.

Did you resize the window while it was loading? that can cause things like that sometimes. Besides that, try switching between openGL and DirectX.

So, kind of a bump to my question.  Stonesense is blurry to the point of being unreadable, been messing with settings but nothing fixes it.  I can't really be the only one with this issue?

Could you attach a screenshot?

[Vox Imperatoris]

Can someone help me with a problem I'm having? Stonesense runs fine, but the text is all messed up, as you can see in this picture.

Did you resize the window while it was loading? that can cause things like that sometimes. Besides that, try switching between openGL and DirectX.

No, I did not resize the window. As for switching between openGL and DirectX, I'm not sure what you mean / how to do that.

[Rose]

read through the stonesense init.txt under DF/Stonesense

[Vox Imperatoris]

That worked!

Thanks.

[Xnidus]

Hi guys!

I don't play DF for a year ago... But recently I start with both vanilla "PeridexisErrant's Dwarf Fortress Starter Pack r64"  and the last Masterwork update. And... it is totally imposible for me see anything with Stonesense. Additionally, a lot of errors appears in the dfhack windows... 

For example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's very bad, doctor? And thanks!

[therahedwig]

Oh god, new DF has generated materials now: The stone-sense artist's 'nightmare'.

[dorf_the_dorf]

Hi, and sorry in advance for the newb question.  I've googled for a while and found no definitive solutions.

The problem:  I'm having no luck at running stonesense yet.  I'm using the DF starter pack, stonesense enabled, for DF version 0.34.11.

When I start it up, I get a few errors that I've seen mentioned and dismissed here (it wants java installed, and there's an error about dfterm3).  From what I've read, they're not the problem.

Then, I try to start up stonesense from the DF Hack console.  I tried the suggestion above regarding the init.ini, and while it does change the behavior slightly, none of the selections work.  In OPENGL, I get a window outline that draws for just the blink of an eye before disappearing and giving the log,

Stonesense launched
Using allegro version 5.0.9 r1
al_create_display failed

If I try the other settings (DIRECTX, ANY, SOFTWARE), they have a similar result, but the window outline lasts for a second or so, flickering quickly, before it vanishes.

I will note the following:  I am attempting to run this in a WinXP virtual machine (VMWare Workstation).  The host has a GeForce 7600.  I've tried to get the VM to use hardware acceleration of the card, but it doesn't seem to recognize it.  There's not even much talk of it on the net so it would seem claims that workstation supports hardware accel are a bit exaggerated.

So the first question is:  Does stonesense even require hardware acceleration?  My guess is no, because it has a SOFTWARE option in init.ini.  But if yes, then we've found the problem; GOTO END.

Which brings up the second question:  if SOFTWARE mode is supported for compatibility, then why doesn't even that start up, any guesses?  Could I need SP3?  (The VM is SP2).  Does it need Java or JDK installed?  .NET?  Anything else?  Could the resolution (currently set to 1152 x 864) be a problem (though I also tried 1280 x 800)?  Is it just not possible in a VM for some unknown reason?

Might it be a memory problem?  With DF running, I still have approx 500mb memory available.  I could increase it, if it would make a difference, but I'm doubting it after all the things I've tried.

Edit:  Oh!  And for the record I'm not using TwbT (I've read that it causes problems for Stonesense).

I'm running out of ideas and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this.  Stonesense looks really fantastic and I want to give it a go myself.

END: Thanks for reading!

[therahedwig]

Well, I'm no expert, but DF is a 32bit program, so at maximum it can use around 3. something gig of ram.

Stonesense, well, some parts of it, can be very ram-eating, and with the dfhack plugin it shares the ram of df. Caldfir posted very early in the thread some memory cheaper alternatives for some of the creature graphics, you could try those.

Other than that, no clue.

[Octopusfluff]

I will note the following:  I am attempting to run this in a WinXP virtual machine (VMWare Workstation).  The host has a GeForce 7600.  I've tried to get the VM to use hardware acceleration of the card, but it doesn't seem to recognize it.  There's not even much talk of it on the net so it would seem claims that workstation supports hardware accel are a bit exaggerated.

The availability of this depends on the host OS and version of VMWare Workstation, and you do have to go through some particular steps to make it possible if it's a supported combination. (VMWare Tools, it was called last time I worked with it)

[dorf_the_dorf]

Thanks for the replies. 

I will try maxxing out the RAM available to the VM.

As to 3D accel in VM: I'm running the newest of workstation (have a license for work) and VMWare tools are in fact installed.  I found a mention online about needing to set certain values, and I did so, and even confirmed in the VMX that the settings are there (enabling 3D accel and devoting some hardware memory to it).  However, still no dice.  Within the VM I try to install my GeForce drivers, and it simply aborts the installer, saying no suitable hardware was found.  So in truth, it might actually work... IF the device driver installer could find the device.  It's driving me a bit nuts.

I can confirm that at least the DirectX diagnostic tools seem to work fine.  Which makes me wonder why I can't get Stonesense to work (even with DIRECTX (or any other) setting in the ini).


Edit:  Unfortunately, maxxing out the memory available (2G to the VM) didn't help.

[Octopusfluff]

As to 3D accel in VM: I'm running the newest of workstation (have a license for work) and VMWare tools are in fact installed.  I found a mention online about needing to set certain values, and I did so, and even confirmed in the VMX that the settings are there (enabling 3D accel and devoting some hardware memory to it).  However, still no dice.  Within the VM I try to install my GeForce drivers, and it simply aborts the installer, saying no suitable hardware was found.  So in truth, it might actually work... IF the device driver installer could find the device.  It's driving me a bit nuts.

You do NOT want to install geforce drivers within the VM; the vmware tools package provides the appropriate things to get the guest to make use of the host's hardware.

In general, outside of specific things like USB devices which have been mapped directly to the guest (and thus aren't "connected" to the host), you do not want to install drivers matching the host hardware. The whole point behind virtualization is that everything it thinks it sees is provided by the virtualization framework, rather than actually seeing the real hardware. And a lot of the time, the easiest way to do that is to present a generic set of 'devices' which don't necessarily match to any real-world hardware at all, nevermind matching the hardware sitting on your desk.

I want to mention again the degree to which 3d acceleration can work is mostly related to the _HOST_ OS. You haven't said if you're running windows, linux, mac, solaris ( ), you've only mentioned you're running XP in the guest. Is the host Windows? If so, XP, Vista, 7, 8, etc? Or is it something else?


As an aside on a previous user's comments, any 32-bit windows process which isn't Large Address Aware is limited to ~ 2 gigs, due to how win32 maps the address space. By default, DF isn't one of these, and as mentioned elsewhere, DF and dfhack are running in the same process space, so they have to share that 2 gigs.


Have you tried running some other lightweight 3d-rendering app, just to get another point of reference?

[dorf_the_dorf]

Sorry; you're right in that I didn't mention the host OS.  It is WinXP SP3.  I'm guessing from what I've read that that might be the problem.  It sounds like people are able to get a WinXP guest to use a GeForce, provided the host is NOT windows.  Is that correct?

I'll try to figure out some other 3D app.  So far, I've only tried the dxdiag tools.

[palu]

Oh god, new DF has generated materials now: The stone-sense artist's 'nightmare'.

And random items too.

[Rose]

It gets worse.

There's a ton of changes that will make a stonesense release quite late, and likely will involve me re-writing a large portion of how it works.