ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I am about 90% sure this also happened in 1.0.4, but I'm not positive (if so, it was rare enough that it didn't really register as a ToME problem, whereas it now happens every time).

As a relevant (probably) side note, I'm running Ubuntu 12.04LTS. I killed gnome-screensaver and installed x, because I like pretty flying toasters (and I'm that old).

When I am playing a character who actually survives long enough for me to hit the threshold I have set in x for the screensaver to activate, the screen blanks, I get the "no signal" message as if gnome-screensaver were still installed, and the monitor goes to sleep. No combination of mouse and keyboard will restore the monitor; I have to hard-boot the system.

Another relevant (probably) side note: Brightness and Lock settings are "turn screen off when inactive for Never, Lock is off, so it's not (hopefully) popping me up a password screen while the monitor is inactive.

If I knew LUA I'd throw in a keep-alive line somewhere and see if that fixed the problem. Hey, maybe this is the gods telling me it's time to learn LUA.

Current workaround is setting x to never fire while playing ToME, but I remember to do that about as often as I remember to turn off twilight surge when an escort pops up...

(And if I'm the only one having this problem then it's not a bug and I'll shut up. Thanks for listening! Any extra relevant info I left out let me know and I will edit this.)

Signal loss requires an X crash, so your OS bears some responsability for not handling tome's fault better.

I have not had a problem exactly like yours, but I have had a similar one. While starting a character in trollmire I take a step and the game window just vanishes. It had never happened before. I am running a more modern Linux, and this is the correct handling for a crash (rather than let X die), so it migth be related.

I'm playing on Ubuntu 13.04 64 bit, never had anything like that happen. Even back when I was on 12.04 - but then I was playing a different version of ToME. I don't have screensavers though - instead I do have Brightness set to turn off the backlight after a couple of minutes where I'm inactive, and also lock the workscreen. It does both absolutely without problems.

So I think it's specifically the interaction of your screensaver and ToME that's problematic - and it may be more on the screensaver's side. In my experience, ToME is perhaps the single most well-behaved game I've ever run in respect to transitioning from fullscreen to backbround and playing nice with the window manager. Of course there's always room for improvement... so I hope this may help.

jotwebe wrote:I'm playing on Ubuntu 13.04 64 bit, never had anything like that happen. Even back when I was on 12.04 - but then I was playing a different version of ToME. I don't have screensavers though - instead I do have Brightness set to turn off the backlight after a couple of minutes where I'm inactive, and also lock the workscreen. It does both absolutely without problems.

So I think it's specifically the interaction of your screensaver and ToME that's problematic - and it may be more on the screensaver's side. In my experience, ToME is perhaps the single most well-behaved game I've ever run in respect to transitioning from fullscreen to backbround and playing nice with the window manager. Of course there's always room for improvement... so I hope this may help.

Bloody'ell, the reply notification for this got lost in the shuffle in my inbox. Hallelujah, suggestions! Never occurred to me to check the screensaver, so will be poking that with a stick today. Thanks, chaps, will let you know the outcome...

With a fresh install of 13.10 (the upgrade died), the problem still occurs. Screensaver not installed, so that can't be the issue. Card is an nVidia GE220, and I've had the problem occur using Nouveau, proprietary 304,and proprietary 319 (current), both with the downloaded version and the Steam version, with and without add-ons. No pattern to WHEN it occurs--I have left it for half an hour as a test and had it not throw the error, and I just had it happen in between rapid keypresses, so idleness doesn't seem to be a factor.

Starting to wonder if the graphics card might be overheating.

Just to keep things updated...

Since ToME is the only game I've played for over a year, it never occurred to me that it might not be ToME-specific. But it happened a couple of days ago while I was playing Bastion, and wonder of wonders, when I rebooted I had two error messages, both SIGSEGV crashes (one in compiz, one in apport-gtk). A little digging has revealed that the particular compiz error seems to be related to running multi-core CPUs and Nvidia cards, and is "the most reported bug in saucy" according to one thread I read in launchpad. So it definitely ain't just me having the problem. And unfortunately I can't afford to jump back over to an ATI card right now...

Turn off compiz?

Hasn't happened to me on Ubuntu 12.4. I'm not quite on the map on what's happening. Screensaver shouldn't pop up when you input stuff with mouse or keyboard. If that still happens it has to be OS bug. Can't you just increase the screensaver time or disable completely?

Do you have the checkbox for the "turn off monitor when screensavering" checked?

Edit: I'm running the same OS with Compiz and Nvidia card and while Compiz tends to crash often it doesn't act like that. You know you can just turn off Compiz? Also I think it got replaced by some newer better working alternative.