[FIX] [Steam + Linux] Crash at startup

After downloading and extracting Rome at War 2.4, I am met with a crash after launching the game.  Right when it would normally go from 'Processing INI Files' to 'Loading Textures'

This thread is going to chronicle my troubleshooting journey as I attempt to remedy this error, or end with me throwing my hands up and asking for help.

SOLVED:  See end of post for solution.

I've extracted RaW 2.4 to the correct location at ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/MountBlade Warband/Modules
I've tried to apply the Low Resolution Textures patch, but it effected no change.

Other solutions I've look at include:

Changing the 'render_buffer_size' from 15 to 512 in rgl_config
Trying to load textures on demand, deleting rgl_config entirely so that the game would generate a new one
And altering video settings in the config tool found at ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/MountBlade Warband/mbw_config_linux

I've tried to look for an error log of some sort, but the closest I can find seems to be rgl_log.txt.  Here is the error it throws up, and the log ends:


That file is present in /RaW 2.4/Resource/ as 'Roman_Walls.brf'.

After renaming it 'roman_walls.brf' the mod launches successfully.

Okay, hope this comes in handy to somebody other than myself.

Nice. Do you have black textures on some stuff too ?

Indeed I do!

Its affecting both Rome at War and Tocan's Calradia.  In both cases, some custom textures (but not all?) appear as simply black.  In Rome at War this is especially common with items such as weapons and armor, though in Tocan's it seems to be mostly flags and custom faces.  I haven't been able to find a solution as of yet.

The general consensus at the MB:W Steam forum is that mods are just incompatible with Linux.

Hmm could you name some of black texture names?

Those are a few I found in Sicily.

well with those names it is hard to say something
but my first shoot would be that linux dont supports DXT5 textures or something like that
a lot of armors boots using dxt5 for smoothed alpha transparent channels
so if i am right that would mean that those textures should be resaved as dxt1 to be supported by linux

but i cant be sure without knowing exact texture names
cause game item names are not the same as mesh names i named

I think you are right about the DXT5. I've checked some in openBRF and it was the only difference between normal and black textures. If there only was a program for batch converting them 

well i remember i once used one software in windows wich can do similar things
i am just not sure or it would support dds compressed files
for a small test try to convert one of dxt5 textures to dxt1

also try to look perhaps google have answer how to solve dxt5 problems in linux

I just converted two banner packs belonging to a different mod from DXT3 to DXT1 but they still show as black while in game. Maybe the texture format needs to be modified in brf too ?

texture flags probably shouldnt affect anything
but perhaps matterial flags could
in simple way matterial flag for the things with had no transparency should be 720 (for items)
and for baners i see 1000100 (but with baners seems shader might have problem it is called tex_mul_color_mul_factor_alpha)
with might have problems as itself

so perhaps easyer would be start from items
in baisic way texture sizes are 2x biger when it is saved with dxt5 so it is not to hard to find those textures

Ok. I've made a breakthrough 

I just tried to convert gallic_boots.dds and gallic_boots2.dds from DXT1 to DXT1, and now my boots show up textured in game.

was it really dxt1 before converting?

Yeah. I checked in the brf.

well then perhaps try to do one more test and resave from dxt5 to dxt5

I didn't find a black dxt5 yet, but dxt1 gallic_swords.dds is black too so i tried to convert it again and it worked. My gallic spatha is now textured.

I just did a script to mass convert everything  ~0.8sec to convert a single texture, it will take a while. Let's see what happens if i overwrite the whole texture directory 

well lets wait for the results

Yeah it works, no more black items but i've lost alpha on trees, grass, horizont and the RaW logo. Probably need to exclude these files from being converted.

Restored everything that had "tree" or "grass" in filename from backup and most is fixed. Some op_... files for horizont too, now fixed. Certain grass and trees still with no alpha. I guess they are named differently. Sky looks normal as well.

Restored bushes.dds from backup too. This seems to have been the last thing with alpha. So the game looks perfect now.