Launcher corrupted

[starbinder]

When trying to access the game using the Tequila Launcher, it says that it cannot locate the game data files and may be corrupted, and that they need to be repaired.

[Glacier Peak]

7 minutes ago, starbinder said:

When trying to access the game using the Tequila Launcher, it says that it cannot locate the game data files and may be corrupted, and that they need to be repaired.

This is not a bug. Recommend you stop using Tequila and instead download the Official Homecoming Launcher. See below for instructions.

 

Installing City of Heroes on Windows

1. Download the Homecoming Launcher.
2. Follow the setup instructions and choose an installation directory.

 

Note: If you have an existing City of Heroes installation (from Tequila or another legacy launcher), you must install the game to a new directory. The launcher will copy over most files (both game data and saved settings, costumes, etc) from an existing Tequila install if one exists.

 

On 7/14/2024 at 10:01 PM, Number Six said:

tl;dr: Don't use Tequila or similar.

 

The game used to save settings in the Windows registry, which is less than ideal for several reasons. This was redone years ago as part of the new file layout project, and moved into JSON configuration files that live within the new settings\[profile] directory structure. But to not break everybody's install, the old manifest-based launchers pass the -uselegacylayout flag that causes the game to use the old layout, and continue to use the registry for settings.

 

When the HC launcher was introduced, it provided an opportunity to migrate to the new layout; and its installer is capable of helping copy data into the new structure. Installs done by the HC launcher no longer used the legacy mode and all of their settings live entirely in the JSON files.

 

Fast forward to today. Some newer features like the power tray changes in Page 7 don't bother to implement the extra layer that copies settings back to the registry in legacy mode. No real reason to since the vast majority of players have migrated and we officially no longer support the old launchers (though do still update the manifests to make it easier for people who haven't migrated yet).

 

The end result is that if you're still using one of those, certain settings won't be saved because they have no code to write them to the registry, and in legacy mode there are no JSON files present to save to.

 

Edited July 23 by Glacier Peak

[starbinder]

Thank you for that.

[QuazarStar]

I'm using Island Rum on MacOS (Big Sur) and getting the same error, I wasn't able to use the official launcher because the game files download took 4 hours and the slowness made the launcher think it had failed, resulting in the download never "completing" and the game launch failing. Any suggestions?

Edited July 24 by QuazarStar
clarification on wording

[Glacier Peak]

4 minutes ago, QuazarStar said:

I'm using Island Rum on MacOS (Big Sur) and getting the same error, I wasn't able to use the official launcher because the game files download took 4 hours and the slowness made the launcher think it had failed, resulting in the download never "completing" and the game launch failing. Any suggestions?

4 hours to download 9 GBs??? Hopefully this doesn't come across as rude, but you should get better internet - that would be what I would recommend.

[QuazarStar]

I have high speed internet but my ISP (UPC-Sunrise) has an occasional random bias against smaller websites specifically on my home connection, which I think what is happening here. It's been an issue for over a decade and they're not showing any signs of fixing it unfortunately 😕

 

Reinstalling Island Rum and all files would probably take about an hour though, I just don't want to lose any of my save data, is any of it stored locally?

 

UPDATE: I looked into the program files and saw there's a lot of the stuff I've manually saved (costumes etc.) but I'm not sure what else I need to rip out to shove back into a reinstall... that's probably the easiest solution, right? Just delete and reinstall Island Rum/CoH and put back all the files I need to restore my characters etc.?

Edited July 24 by QuazarStar

[Number Six]

Usually that message shows up as the result of an improperly installed mod or because a "data" folder somehow got created in the wrong place. If you know your way around file systems, here are the things to check for:

 

Find wherever the cityofheroes.exe you're running is. In the HC launcher it's either under bin\win64\live\ or bin\win32\live\. For the older launchers it's under hc-bin64\ or hc-bin32\

 

Double check that folder and make sure there aren't any subfolders at all, especially not one named "data". That confuses the install detection logic and makes it look for the data files in the wrong place. The only things that should be in there are .exe and .dll files.

 

You could also try deleting the whole 'bin\*\live' or 'hc-bin64' + 'hc-bin32' directories and letting the launcher redownload it as there are no user-customizable files under those.

[QuazarStar]

1 hour ago, Number Six said:

Usually that message shows up as the result of an improperly installed mod or because a "data" folder somehow got created in the wrong place. If you know your way around file systems, here are the things to check for:

 

Find wherever the cityofheroes.exe you're running is. In the HC launcher it's either under bin\win64\live\ or bin\win32\live\. For the older launchers it's under hc-bin64\ or hc-bin32\

 

Double check that folder and make sure there aren't any subfolders at all, especially not one named "data". That confuses the install detection logic and makes it look for the data files in the wrong place. The only things that should be in there are .exe and .dll files.

 

You could also try deleting the whole 'bin\*\live' or 'hc-bin64' + 'hc-bin32' directories and letting the launcher redownload it as there are no user-customizable files under those.

 

Ahh I was so hoping this would work, after I selected "Re-scan" in IslandRum launcher window it regenerated the folders and everything, but it still says it cannot locate the game data files and may be corrupted. 😞 I tried deleting version.ini as well in case that was doing something weird and same result.

I did notice something odd in the islandrum.sh file: there's a random backslash at the end of the target launch directory. I don't know much about this stuff but mac doesn't use backslashes, could this be a typo/weird conflict? I haven't looked at this file while the game was working so I don't know if it was always that way, unfortunately. I tried editing it but it just got rewritten by the launcher :I

 

tysm for the suggestion though!

 

 

Edited July 24 by QuazarStar
clarification

[DEMarq]

On 7/23/2024 at 2:35 PM, Glacier Peak said:

This is not a bug. Recommend you stop using Tequila and instead download the Official Homecoming Launcher. See below for instructions.

 

Installing City of Heroes on Windows

1. Download the Homecoming Launcher.
2. Follow the setup instructions and choose an installation directory.

 

Note: If you have an existing City of Heroes installation (from Tequila or another legacy launcher), you must install the game to a new directory. The launcher will copy over most files (both game data and saved settings, costumes, etc) from an existing Tequila install if one exists.

 

 

   Silly question, sorry.  

  Once I download the new launcher, is it okay to erase the Tequila one?

[Glacier Peak]

50 minutes ago, DEMarq said:

   Silly question, sorry.  

  Once I download the new launcher, is it okay to erase the Tequila one?

I'm not one to recommend erasing stuff unless storage space is an issue. When I switched to the Homecoming Launcher, I feel like it copied everything I had in my Tequila folder. You could double check that yourself by comparing the two installation folders.

[QuazarStar]

UPDATE for anyone in future reading this who encountered the same issue as me:

this was entirely fixed by the very kind and clever dev releasing an updated version of the LaunchCat mac homecoming launcher (different from the one linked in the Getting Started guide as of writing this). The download took basically 60 seconds and used the same folder that IslandRum had created so all my characters etc. were intact, absolutely flawless so far, goodbye corrupted IslandRum

 

Version used here:

 

Edited July 25 by QuazarStar