Launcher Fails to Launch (Sometimes!)

[Tanthos]

Both my dad and I have a really easy time getting MapTool to work. We use the launcher (B91) and play for hours. However, on occasion, the launcher will simply not work. Double-clicking on it does nothing more than briefly show an hourglass. There's no sign of it in Task Manager and nothing seems to get it to work. Occasionally it will work again if I restart the computer or close some programs (frequently, closing Google Chrome allows me to run the launcher).

I'd be surprised to find out that it's a RAM issue, because both of us are running 12 GB of RAM and we don't have much running besides MapTool. Anyone else have this kind of intermittent problem?

[aliasmask]

It does sound like a memory problem. Despite nice specs on your computer, if you don't have the 64bit java version and a good amount of maxmem allocated big maps can cause a launch failure depending on the order of operations when loading that stuff in to memory. I can't say that is your problem for sure, but it would be something to check.

[Tanthos]

Well, we don't really have problems while MapTool is open, it's only that sometimes it outright won't start the MapTool program.

[username]

It may also have to do with multiple java versions being installed or with Archivers (winrar, ...). The latter register ("Windows registry") themselves for jar files but some are unable to open them still, for reasons I do not understand. They just fail. When you say restarts help, that sometimes means some registry startup order changes or programs, when executed (google chrome) mess with the registry. Some browsers require a different java engine than what maptool likes. I am far from being an expert on this, so apart from pointing in this general direction, I can't help much.

My general recipe in these situations is: start a "cmd", and start the executable directly. If it's a jar file, you need to find the correct java version and drop the "javaw.exe" instead, so you have "c:\Programs...\javaw.exe c:\...\maplauncher.jar". Try run that and see what the output is. Unfortunately, this sometimes is not equivalent to "double-clicking" so you might get a different problem there

[Clyde]

Hi everyone,

I hint to my Launcher (once again) which still works perfectly since 3 versions of MapTool (and which I hereby offer again to be taken into the default installation as default launch method, since i am developing it any way and since it works reliable. A note at the admins here, if you take the Launcher into the package, don'T change the settings, they should be only adapted by the specific user, according to the computer settings. The ones i propagate are the ones that are reliable for most cases).

http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php ... 1&p=256071

With best regards,
Clyde.

[Clyde]

Addendum:
Well, it turned out now that I had to update the Launcher for Java 8, but I did that. For more information I refer to my thread.