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d20pro on Windows 8 not finding java

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by kaltorak18, Sep 7, 2013.

  1. kaltorak18

    kaltorak18 New Member

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    My friend has a Windows 8 laptop and we were trying to use it to be a player last night using a guest account. We installed Java 1.7 JRE and d20pro, and, after a reboot, d20pro still did not detect that java was installed. Java responded via command line so the path appeared correct, but d20pro still didn't sense it. I tried running the commands in the batch file that actually start the program and the splash screen would come up, but then it would complain that it wasn't being run as administrator. I don't know my friend's admin password so I didn't do the runas /user:administrator to start the batch file. But, just running the batch file from windows explorer reports that it can't find the d20pro.dat.

    Does anyone have an idea of what's going on? I haven't dealt with windows 8 yet and it sounds like there is a gotcha I'm not seeing. Any advise?

    Thanks!
     
  2. Entola

    Entola Member

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    I always hate these kind of replies, but it is helpful in knowing that it might now be a Win 8 exclusive problem. I have Win 8 and it runs fine. I do run it as administrator.
     
  3. nullcron

    nullcron New Member

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    My solution to this problem was to install java 6 32 bit and 64 bit.
     
  4. kaltorak18

    kaltorak18 New Member

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    For those who might have this same issue I found the solution to the problem on my new windows 7 computer. I need to verify with my friend if this will fix his windows 8 issue too. The problem here was twofold. First, my assumption that since java responded on the command line that it was in the path. Second, UAC.

    On my new computer, trying to run the d20pro.exe I'd get the message about java not being installed. Then, I tried running the win64 bat file and d20pro told me it didn't have the rights to write a file to the disk and to run as administrator. Having more time (not being in the middle of a game) I checked the path to see if the java bin was in there, nope. So, I added it and disabled UAC. Boom, works.

    Thanks! It was much easier to get once I wasn't in the middle of a game and could reproduce the issue on my own machine. I'll talk to my friend tomorrow and see if this fixes his issue too.
     
  5. Werekitty

    Werekitty New Member

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    Could you please, explain how to do this? I am a complete and utter noob at mucking about with Java or d20 Pro. Where do I find this stuff, and what do I do to fix d20 not detecting Java?
     
  6. ChrisRevocateur

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    The simplest solution is to, when installing d20Pro, change the install directory from the Programs folder to the root (C:\d20pro) This gets around a lot of the issues.
     
  7. Seeker17281

    Seeker17281 New Member

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    I'm very much like Werekitty, a noob when it comes to this code monkey stuff. It doesn't help that my system configuration is a little on the odd side as well. I have a SSD drive as my system drive where i put the minimal amount of content on it as possible, so just about every game or productivity software gets put on my huge data drive.

    I have Java installed and its up to date
    I have D20Pro installed on my E drive in a E:/d20pro
    I have Win7 Pro as my OS
    I use Chrome

    Can't think of any other details that might be useful, I have tried to copy the Java-Bin folder to D20pro but as you can imagine, that did squat :p Any help would be appreciated as I'm sitting on the fence about either D20pro or FG2 and am giving the demo a run to cement my decisions.
     
  8. ChrisRevocateur

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    Seeker, keep in mind that with the next version of d20Pro will come bundled with Java, so this issue will literally disappear next version.
    Also, not in the next update, but soon this year, d20Pro is updating its rules engine to be more capable of handling systems other than d20 (so if you like FG because of the system agnosticism and the various rules sets, d20Pro will have similar capabilities soon).

    I'm gonna hazard a guess that your Windows 7 machine is a 64 bit and not 32 bit (most, but not all default installations are 64 bit these days). Try going into the d20pro folder and launching d20Pro using the d20Pro-64.bat file instead. Oh, make sure you have the 64 bit version of Java installed for this as well.

    If that doesn't work, try uninstalling and reinstalling Java.

    If that doesn't work, try starting d20Pro as an administrator (right click and select "Run as Administrator"). This usually doesn't work, but it's a last resort.

    I'm sure there are other things you can try, but I'm not a Java expert, nor am I a member of the d20Pro team.
     
  9. Seeker17281

    Seeker17281 New Member

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    Thank you for responding Chris, makes the cricket sound go away. :D I think including Java is a great idea, as I've run into other utilities that rely on it and its always a pita to set up to run. Personally I am puzzled by many developers assuming other party software is installed and that their product hinges on said software being up to date on the customer's rig. IMHO the only such assumption that should be made is that a client has a OS, everything else should be part of the software including compatibility with key browsers. Its a common mistake of independent software developers because they tend to assume that everyone thinks like they do and has the same command of "the basics". Its the same sort of thinking when a Dr tells you what's wrong using "basic dr pseudo-latin talk" and expects you to regard it as anything other than gibberish.

    I ran across mention of that in D20Pro's blog, which is one of the reasons I was interested in running the demo. Right now my group is in PF/Fantasy mode, but our other game of choice is Mutants&Masterminds, which is why FG took the lead initially as it supported MM as a data pack. Unfortunately their documentation is a serious chore to figure out and drains away too much time to become conversant with it.

    Detailing things below in case someone with more knowledge or part of the team bothers to take a look at this. D20Pro is installed on a seperate drive in it's own directory, the system drive is a SSD that I keep the bare minimum on, and install the vast majority of other programs on my other 3 drives (2 work related and 1 for games).

    win7 = 64bit Yes absolutely.

    Java 64 & 32 bit installed on the SSD C drive. I uninstalled them both and reinstalled them with the latest version.
    D20Pro installed on E drive in its own directory.

    Tried running as Admin, result was crash. Set my UAC to zero, still crashed. Edited the .exe to run as Admin, still crashed.

    d20Pro-64.bat Tried that too. When I ran the BAT file it routinely crashes, default BAT looks like this:

    So I did some digging and found this D20pro forum post. I tried everything suggested in that thread with my BAT currently looking like this:
    Still no joy and that was after dozens of variations of where to put those damn quotes. I was about to say screw it, this is way more hassle than its worth when I acted on a curiosity impulse. I have 3 pc rigs set up in my homeoffice and wondered what would happen if I installed it on my slower machine where I don't separate the OS system drive from a data drive, but has instead a standard 2TB HD doing it all. Its a win7-64 bit system, slower CPU/Vidcard, less ram. After making sure my java apps were current on that machine, I downloaded the D20pro demo to that machine and put the program in a directory outside of c:/programs, dropping it into its own folder as was often suggested in other threads.

    Using the D20pro.exe shortcut it loaded up without any issue at all. Most would consider this great, problem solved, but not me. Cheif reason being that rig is there for other purposes and its not the one I would intend to run D20Pro from in the first place. Nor will I install D20Pro on the SSD of my main rig.

    The only issue that I can tell is at work here is that I dared to install it on a drive other than a default C drive. There is not a single program (other than D20Pro) where this is a issue, my Steam games all run from my E drive, and that's including Skyrim which with mods installed required 3 other assistance programs similar to Java located on the C drive, and the game itself along with its 32 gigs worth of mods running from the E drive. Now its entirely possible my ignorance is a giant balloon in front of my face, but its fairly common practice to install programs on drives other than system drives, if this is the assumption baked into the program it's rather silly. If anyone cares to straighten me out feel free to, but right now for this issue alone D20Pro is taking some serious strikes against it if the mere act of installing it on a drive other than C causes it to crash. :roll:
     
  10. Seeker17281

    Seeker17281 New Member

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    Update:

    A software engineer friend of mine came over who does a lot of client troubleshooting (sadly not a gamer) and I ran this puzzle by him. After several minutes he opened up my advanced system settings, went into the enviornmental properties and changed the variable under the _JAVA_Options from -Xmx512 to -Xmx512M, he explained that my stack heap was too small and the only way he knew that was due to several attempts to run it from a .bat file and it would just close with no error message to go by. The EXE just kept saying there was no java variable. How that value got set is a mystrey to me and when I asked him how that was possible he said "Maybe you farted near your computer and it decided to get even, there's really no telling, its just one of those things you learn to look for when handling Java".

    So for anyone else out there, hope that might be of use, and on to the demo for me.
     
  11. ChrisRevocateur

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    Actually developers do this because bundling the runtime with the application, especially an extremely common runtime environment like Java, ends up eating up more and more space. If every application did this, personally I'd have 4 or 5 installations of Java on my machine, when I only NEED one. The decision of the d20Pro team to bundle Java has come only after so many problems with native installations of Java and d20Pro continued to cause such problems.
    Actually, as Mutants & Masterminds is a d20 system, d20Pro currently handles M&M pretty much as well as it handles D&D/PF. Making a rules set in the current version of d20Pro is also rather easy. Skills and Feats are just two text files that are essentially lists, and classes are added in a text file that is pretty easy to figure out. Heck, there might be someone that's already built a data set for M&M for d20Pro, I don't play it, so I don't know.
    As you seem to have figured out, it has nothing to do with being installed on your e: drive.
    Honestly, I don't know why I forgot this when I was listing solutions to try. When you install d20Pro, during the install it asks you what you want to set the heap size to for d20Pro, but the dropdown is set to default to the smallest heap. Not the best set-up, but that might be why the heap was set so small. If/when you install the upgrade, just make sure the dropdown selections you make are set to the highest setting.
     
  12. Seeker17281

    Seeker17281 New Member

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    Understood, and you make a good point about multiple installations, but I think given the history of difficulties related to this its a positive action plan.

    While the feats and skills would be relatively simple to do, I'm uncertain how combat would play out. MM bases it's damage on degree of failure vs a type of save, and has a wearing down mechanic based upon advancing those conditions as your saves get progressively worse. Further it has a DR like function alongside a AC function, with the powers being potentially extremely complex depending on how creative a player gets in constructing them. A lot of those complications find their way into combat, it might work out just find, but at this point I can't say because I'm still a utter newbie with the toolset.

    No worries, you did try to help and that was appreciated. It in fact led directly to his being able to reach that conclusion so quickly as I showed him your post and its recommendations. The odd thing was when I first installed D20pro I remember quite clearly it asking me for the stack heap size, and I selected the maximum it allowed, I even remember thinking that given I have 24gig of RAM that its a pity I couldn't assign more to the program (not sure if that would amount to anything or not). My only guess is that when I uninstalled Java the first couple of times (I installed it a total of 3 times) that somewhere along the line, a default was selected that reversed what I had set for D20pro's options. I'm just guessing mind you, but that was the only thing I could come up with. I even debated this with the friend who assisted me, because he said it was a silly level of memory to allocate to anything these days, but as said he isn't too keen on java to begin with and has a bias about it.

    At any rate, thanks again for the help when it was given, it was appreciated and like I said, it did help my buddy quickly diagnose the problem. So all in all, good stuff :D
     
  13. ChrisRevocateur

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    You're probably right about how the heap size got reset with the reinstallations of Java. Makes total sense at least.

    Your friend is right to have a bias against Java honestly. It's not very secure, and as you've experienced, can run into problems running correctly. The only reason I have it is because I have quite a few programs that use it.

    Luckily the d20Pro people are planning on eradicating Java dependency by 2016, from what I understand, so I wouldn't let the fact that it uses Java now to base your final decision.

    Oh, and about M&M, yeah, the "HP" system wouldn't be handled automatically for that then, but some abilities representing the level of "hurt" could be created to simulate this with how things currently are in d20Pro.

    I just wanna say, I went through the same decision you're going through right now, and I went with d20Pro because it's cheaper, and it has better built in support for d20 based games, which is pretty much all I play these days. FG is good, but rules support isn't as in-depth, and it's a little complicated getting a rules engine to work.
     
  14. darnythian

    darnythian New Member

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  15. darnythian

    darnythian New Member

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    Found that THIS works:

    When that happens, the easiest solution that has been tested on both Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8 is:


    Open the Control Panel:

    Search Environment Variables

    In System Variables, click Add

    New Variable Name: _JAVA_OPTIONS
    New Variable Value: -Xmx512M

    Click OK
     

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