-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 4
Old V1 notes
The crux of the issue is that SpaceChem uses SDL_image 1.2.12.
On El Capitan, this messes up images for some reason, and that causes SpaceChem's font loader to fail because the images it's getting are quite messed up.
You know how you have to install Mono yourself? (Even the official Steam version without these fixes makes you do it.)
I've gotten reports that everything falls to pieces under Mono 4.4 for some reason. If you're experiencing issues like in issue #2, try downgrading Mono. 4.3 should work.
Do you trust me? Great, grab the .zip file from https://github.com/leafi/fix-spacechem-os-x/releases/tag/v1.1 , unzip, and double-click the fix-spacechem.command file. I hope you installed SpaceChem in the default Steam library.
Ugh, this is a bit involved.
Go to the folder (steamapps)/common/SpaceChem/SpaceChem.app/Contents/Frameworks.
Copy SDL_mixer.framework and SDL.framework, and paste them in /Library/Frameworks. Our replacement SDL_image will get upset if it can't see them there.
Optional: Delete SDL_image.framework and the other SDL frameworks from SpaceChem's Frameworks folder. Mono seems to prefer loading the /Library/Frameworks ones anyway.
Optional: Open Tao.Sdl.dll.config and fix up the paths. In practice this doesn't seem to matter.
Download and open https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/release/SDL_image-1.2.10.dmg . Copy and paste SDL_image.framework to /Library/Frameworks.
Now, try launching the game through Steam again. With luck that'll be it.
(i.e. that damn Zachtronics web page keeps opening up when you try to launch OR the launch silently fails)
Firstly: Make sure you've installed mono from http://mono-project.com/. We are going to need it.
If you're like me, you have mono anyway, and it's 64-bit not 32-bit. (Do mono --version in a terminal.)
So: Where is the right Mono?
Try /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Commands/mono --version and /usr/local/bin/mono --version. Which one says Architecture: x86?
(If mono --version actually said Architecture: x86, type which mono and write down the path!)
Now, we need to edit the launcher. Go edit (steamapps)/common/SpaceChem/SpaceChem.app/Contents/MacOS/SpaceChem in a text editor.
Delete the stuff that automatically searches for Mono, lines 35 through 43. As the launcher script isn't working for you, it must either be not finding any Mono or must be finding the wrong one.
Go near the bottom, to what was line 64 (os.execlp('mono', app_name, app_name + '.exe')).
Change that to:
os.execlp('/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Commands/mono', app_name, app_name + '.exe')
OR
os.execlp('/usr/local/bin/mono', app_name, app_name + '.exe')
Save and try and start SpaceChem again through Steam.
I hope! If the game actually starts, however briefly, then you may find yourself at least with a crash log in ~/.local/share/zachtronic industries/spacechem/crashes. Unzip the crash file (rename to .zip if you want) and have a look at exception.txt.
I can try to dig through the executable if needs be, and figure out what's up.
If you're still having trouble launching or you're having another problem, navigate in a terminal to (steamapps)/common/spacechem/SpaceChem.app/Contents/Resources.
(e.g. /Users/leaf/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/SpaceChem/SpaceChem.app/Contents/Resources)
Create a text file called steam_appid.txt inside this Resources directory and put the number 92800 in it. It'll ask you for this file otherwise, as we're not going to launch through Steam here.
Do mono --version in the command line. You should expect to see output like this:
centaur:Contents leaf$ mono --version
Mono JIT compiler version 4.2.2 (explicit/996df3c Wed Jan 20 00:19:48 EST 2016)
Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
TLS: normal
SIGSEGV: altstack
Notification: kqueue
Architecture: x86
Disabled: none
Misc: softdebug
LLVM: yes(3.6.0svn-mono-(detached/a173357)
GC: sgen
If you're seeing Architecture: amd64, that's a problem. SpaceChem is 32-bit only; trying to launch it from 64-bit Mono will cause the load of some shipped native libraries to fail.
The fix is thankfully simple. Go to http://mono-framework.com/ and download the Mac OS X build.
Then substitute /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Commands/mono in place of mono for these commands.
Just do mono SpaceChem.exe, substituting with the long path above if necessary.
If/when it crashes, open a new terminal and (as the instructions say!) go to ~/.local/share/zachtronics industries/spacechem/crashes.
Type e.g. unzip 001.zipcrash. Overwrite existing files if necessary.
Then, cat exception.txt.
-
Wrong mono, obviously.
-
Complaining about no font glyph breaks? That's why you need to downgrade to SDL_image 1.2.10!
-
Can't load SDL_image? The replacement SDL_image seems to want to live in /Library/Frameworks/ rather than in SpaceChem's Frameworks directory, and it looks for its dependencies (other SDL) in /Library/Frameworks too. Mono can't distinguish between a dependency not being found and a dependency's dependency not being found.
-
It launches, but there's no icon in the dock and mouse focus is pretty broken? Yeah, that's why SpaceChem is packed in this weird .app format in the first place, and why launching it like this is bad. Once you've fixed everything else, just launch through Steam like you should, and everything will be fine.
-
Others? Contact me in some way. Give me the exception. I'll try my best to help.
Possibly uninstall Mono. It shouldn't intefere with anything else - Mono installs versions side-by-side, it doesn't uninstall older ones - but you know your system better than me.
Go to /Library/Frameworks, and delete SDL, SDL_image and SDL_mixer completely. Well-behaved SDL applications ship their own copy of SDL inside themselves. We put them there as a hack.
Finally, go into the Steam client, then to your Library, find SpaceChem, right-click it, click Properties, click the Local Files tab, and click Verify Integrity of Game Cache. This will undo all the hacks we did to SpaceChem itself, whether the script did them or you did them.