Etterna won't open (MacOS)

[astral otter]

hey all! it's rayu_galaxi from reddit and i was told to come here to further discuss my issue

for those who don't know: i've been trying to install etterna to my macbook and i finally got it to almost work this morning, i managed to install homebrew to its terminal, then it would open etterna, and it stays open for just a second and immediately closes itself (as seen in the vid)

• yes, i've tried opening it through terminal
• no, i don't have icloud synced
• yes, i restarted my mac and it still doesn't open lmao

i'm not sure as to what to do, so some help would be greatly appreciated >_>

[mild solar]

we need to know

• what version of macos
• where do you have the game folder stored while you are trying to open the game
• are you an admin user of the computer
• is there anything in the Logs folder visible in the video

@fossil tusk

[astral otter]

• sequoia 15.3.1
• on my desktop
• yes
• what i'm showing below

[mild solar]

send the most recent one of the .logs

they probably all look the same

[astral otter]

:p

i was just adding stuff while i was waiting for you guys to respond so don't mind most of the junk ToT

[mild solar]

if the folder CrashData contains any .dmp files upload one

[astral otter]

i can't open any of these so good luck

[mild solar]

something is wrong with the dmp and the thing that reads it thinks that it is broken

so im not sure exactly what the problem is

but it could be graphic related

it is crashing after the point where it compiles all the shaders and before where it dumps the opengl info of the system

and at that point all i can guess is theres something special about your computer that fucks it up

so like hdr or retina display or something i have no idea

[astral otter]

huh, weird :(

any suggestions or should i just give up? ;-;

[mild solar]

i havent used a mac in 10 years so i dont have experience messing with this

there should be a way to attach a debugger to the thing when opening it and it probably requires xcode and other stuff

but theres also probably a better simple solution to it that i dont know of

another thing is i know the game does not work well when you try to fullscreen it on mac but i dont think it should be trying that because you are missing ./Save/Preferences.ini and it should be defaulting to windowed mode

[astral otter]

mkay mkay

i'm willing to try using xcode as long as i have someone holding my hand while i try it bc i'm not all that experienced with tech stuff tbh >_>

[fossil tusk]

@astral otter

Think your computer might be out of space and that’s making the game unhappy :)

I think you’re launching the game from inside something using icloud storage and you’re completely out of iCloud storage

The game is probably crashing the second it tries to create any new file

The way to fix that in the short term would be to move Etterna out of desktop into somewhere not managed by iCloud storage

Say, Applications under your username?

Long term you might want to fix the whole iCloud storage thing/disable that entirely

[astral otter]

i tried that tho ;-;

[fossil tusk]

Oh?

I believe you, video just seems to show it being launched from Desktop :)

Actually you might want to fully reinstall the game somewhere else too while you’re at it

If you ran out of space halfway through installing Etterna to your desktop it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the files it needs to run are missing or hecked up

[fossil tusk]

If you try ^ again, does it crash the same way?

The video was really quite helpful; ty for uploading it here :D
lots of people ask for support and give literally no information so I really appreciate it lol

[astral otter]

i'll try again when i get home as i currently have an errand to run

i'll be sure to give updates tho!!

[fossil tusk]

Sick, TY! :)

It is certainly possible that's a red herring, btw --
I think you might be the first person to actually try running Etterna on Sequoia lol (TY for doing that, btw! Extremely hype!)

Unfortunately I'm the only semi-active Etterna dev and I'm still on Montery of all things, so it's a bit hard to diagnose the things that go wrong on new macOS releases sometimes haha

If it is though, I can help guide you through running stuff that will help me debug if you're interested :D

Actually this is pretty interesting
@astral otter do you still have an Intel mac by chance?

It would be slightly unusual but not unheard of nowadays

Reason I ask is that we build Etterna targeting both x86_64 and ARM for macOS.
You're running the x86_64 build, but interestingly enough that one actually can run on ARM (M-series) macs with Rosetta V2, so it's not impossible you have an M-series mac :)
If you were running an M-series mac, might be this is a weird Rosetta V2 problem (which isn't to say it isn't our fault to be clear!), might give me something to go on for debugging purposes lol

[astral otter]

oh yeah, it's an intel

also i feel weird being the first to have issues with sequoia ToT

[fossil tusk]

Lol, no worries ❤️

[fossil tusk]

Gotcha 👍

[astral otter]

i'm back now - i'll see if ur suggestions work

running from applications does nothing :(

i'll try to reinstall it now

[fossil tusk]

Wait @astral otter I mean the actual Etterna Folder being in the applications folder :)

[astral otter]

please specify Q_q

[fossil tusk]

You have your desktop

On that Desktop, if I"m not mistaken, is a folder called "etterna"

Inside ^ is etterna.app

Am I right so far? :)

[astral otter]

yah

[fossil tusk]

Open Finder, go to your username, and see if there's a folder under your username called "Applications" -- this would be a little bit different than the main applications folder you're likely used to.

[astral otter]

i moved it to applications just now and it still does nothing :(

[fossil tusk]

Hmm

[fossil tusk]

Could maybe be ^

Or I was just on the wrong track from the start

We'll see :)

[astral otter]

i have nothing synced to icloud, it's just that mac is dumb and keeps trying to suggest that i turn it on ToT

cuz this is how much i have left lol

[fossil tusk]

Yah, I believe you :)

[astral otter]

so yah idk

i'll reinstall now

[fossil tusk]

Sick

When you try ^^, skip your desktop entirely and install it into applications, if you don't mind :)

[astral otter]

have any command recommendations to put into terminal?

[fossil tusk]

What happens when you double-click Etterna?

I'm gusesing it says the app is damaged or something?

[fossil tusk]

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine ~/Applications/Etterna

Try ^

And uh

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Etterna

Then try again, see if it changes anything

I'm somewhat suspecting it might not tbh, but we'll see

Actually

Can you also right-click the Etterna there, "Get info", and send me a screenshot of that screen?

You may have gotten the ARM vesion of Etterna

[astral otter]

:b

[fossil tusk]

Yeah

You got the ARM version, sorry lol

[astral otter]

damn ToT

[fossil tusk]

github.com/etternagame/etterna/releases/latest

I think ^ should work

Find the one that doesn't say ARM or Apple Silicon or what have you, I forgot the exact thing I made the DMG be named lmfao

[astral otter]

there's darwin, high sierra, and m1

[fossil tusk]

Go for Darwin :)

[astral otter]

(i'm so sorry i feel like a 5yo calling the cops for help on math homework, thank you for having patience with me ToT)

[fossil tusk]

No worries at all!

This is way more fiddly and annoying that it should be haha

[astral otter]

so it's just doing the same thing as before - it opens for one second and then closes itself

[fossil tusk]

Hm :)

Ok, would you mind uploading the latest log from it?

[astral otter]

yah

[fossil tusk]

TYTY :)

[fossil tusk]

When it dies, it doesn't pop up a macOS "This application stopped working" box or anything, right?

I'm not expecting it does, but would be convenient if so lol

[astral otter]

nope, it just closes and no pop-ups are present

[fossil tusk]

Ah crap I'm a little worried I might know what this one is...

@mild solar hypothetically, I'm a bit worried that macOS just fully dropped opengl support...

Can double-check that now

In any case, @astral otter , do you happen to have lldb installed already?

Could try running just lldb in Terminal, see if it does anything :)

[mild solar]

maybe

[astral otter]

still nothing :(

[fossil tusk]

lldb?

[astral otter]

yeah

[fossil tusk]

Ok, if you were up for it, I could walk you through installing the macOS dev stuff on your computer that would help me debug this.
Wouldn't take a ludicrous amount of space on your system and would be free, but would take up some space :)

If you were, just
xcode-select --install

The point of doing ^ would be to help us install lldb, a debugger which would be able to tell us where exactly Etterna is crashing when it does.

The point of ^ would be to narrow down the function / root cause

E.g. if it were crashing on some OpenGLDoSomething() function, it'd support my theory it's an OpenGL deprecation problem.

It could be something completely different though, and that'd actually be a good thing because it'd increase the odds it's an easy fix :D

[astral otter]

currently installing it, may take up to 10min

[fossil tusk]

👍

When it does finish, run uh

lldb /Applications/Etterna/Etterna.app/Contents/MacOS/Etterna

^ will drop you into a command prompt thingy, "r" and then enter to run the game

It'll probably immediately crash again, when it does, lmk :D

[astral otter]

just put it in, it's currently loading

it still crashes :(

[fossil tusk]

No that's expected! :)

Can you type bt all now?

And then hit enter a whole bunch of times

Copy-paste the whole bunch of stuff it outputs for you :D

[astral otter]

into etterna or xcode? (sorry for asking >_>)

[fossil tusk]

Oh into the terminal window

With lldb

Where it crashed :D

[astral otter]

hmm

[fossil tusk]

Wait

Oh no type "r" and then "enter" into ^

Wait for it to crash

[astral otter]

waugh

[fossil tusk]

And then do "bt all"

Sorry 0_0

[astral otter]

nah is okai lol

._.

[fossil tusk]

Wait

Ok, just double checking

New terminal window, empty

lldb /Applications/Etterna/Etterna.app/Contents/MacOS/Etterna

"r", then the enter key

Wait for Etterna to crash

bt all

Oh wait I might be messing up GDB and LLDB again gyargh 🙃

thread apply bt all

^ work?

[astral otter]

well it certainly did something

[fossil tusk]

Which bit

The r?

[astral otter]

all of the above ._.

[fossil tusk]

huh

So the r should have told it to launch the app with a debugger attached

[mild solar]

that looks like the game is breakpointed and your focus would need to be on terminal

[fossil tusk]

Once it crashes, the rest will tell us why :)

[astral otter]

mkay

so far it's just stuck on an endless loading cycle so idk what to do here ;-;

[fossil tusk]

Uh, the terminal window doesn't display anything?

What step precisely made it do that?

[astral otter]

r

[fossil tusk]

Hm

[fossil tusk]

If you go to the terminal window, it doesn't show anything?

Ah

It did crash

Ok, give me the bt all now :)

[fossil tusk]

Copy paste all that nonsense, upload it? :)

Scroll up a bunch too

[fossil tusk]

@mild solar
Dying inside LowLevelWindow_MacOSX::Update(), not a great sign towards it not being OpenGL nonsense.... 🙃

[fossil tusk]

Grazie

Interesting

Ok, uh, can you do

info frame for me?

[fossil tusk]

This thing is dying early early btw
It's not even the main window that's dying, it's the weird pre-loading loading window that uses a completely different type of OpenGL window

Actually maybe a good thing, since that's not essential to the game working

[astral otter]

;-;

[fossil tusk]

Heck sorry

Uh, GDB/LLDB moment

frame?

Like just frame

Maybe show frame

[fossil tusk]

Oh ffs

frame info

For context, GDB/LLDB are two very similar debuggers serving the same role in different systems with very similar but slightly different syntax

[fossil tusk]

Which drives me insane constantly because I swap between them

frame variable maybe

[fossil tusk]

Ah

Ok, fair enough :)

I think this is enough to be really incredibly helpful anyway though, TYSM for doing all this nonsense for me / for us :D

What I can tell so far --

The game is dying very early on while trying to draw the primitive low-level loading window it uses before swapping over to the main window the rest of the game uses

^ could be because macOS has been deprecating OpenGL functions and we're still using random ones deprecated well o ver a decade ago, and with this latest macOS version they just stopped working altogether.

It could be something else too, though I'm somewhat doubtful

The thing dying is specifically the low-level loading window, so if there's a way to just ... not display that, there's a slim chance this crash might just go away.

@mild solar would know better than I do if there's some obscure preference somewhere that does ^ baked into the game :)

I can also take a look at this in some more detail tomorrow when I get into a coding setup on my computer :D

Sorry this issue isn't resolved for you quite yet, but hopefully we'll get there ASAP @astral otter :)
I'll keep you posted!

[mild solar]

there is no way around it

[fossil tusk]

In the meanwhile, you could play Etterna through WINE on macOS, though that'd be suboptimal for a few reasons

^^ heckj, gotcha

Hmm, I could always try the good ol' "Create a random patched version of the game which disables some specific feature" like I've done in the past...

Actually you know what there was one interesting thing I noticed in that stack trace

sm_main wasn't called in the main thread 🤔

Not sure if ^ is default behavior anyway, but I know XCode gives me quite a few errors about calling graphics API functions in non-main threads

And I could have sworn in the past I saw sm_main under thread 0

Might be going insane though :)

Actually you know what too

I do have a very specific random thing I was working on a bit back....

@astral otter down for trying a strange highly-experimental build of the game that might maybe do something that fixes your problem? :)

haha

BRB, swapping over to the dev computer...

[astral otter]

i wouldn't mind being a beta tester of sorts haha

what's the pay? /j

[mild solar]

on mac, thread 0 holds a main method which creates smmain

its just shaped differently from the rest of the platforms

i cant tell what line is dying from the Update() offset but if it was on the params it would be funny that the reason it dies is that the params arent initialized

[fossil tusk]

Ok, https://github.com/bluebandit21/etterna/actions/runs/14897290098 might do somewhat useful stuff

When GHA is done building it

^^ was a thing I made a while back to fix a thing

We were using an ancient ancient method for initializing display window settings

^^^^ theoretically does it the right way

Ish

It also replaced a lot of the horrifically obsolete stuff with ... somewhat obsolete stuff?

[astral otter]

just let me know which one to install q_q

[fossil tusk]

Willco lol

It's going to take a little while to finish since https://github.com/bluebandit21/etterna/actions/runs/14897290098/job/41842166240 is currently building the thing for you in real time lol

In a fortunate / perhaps not entirely unexpected twist of fate, seemingly no-one has touched the lowlevelwindowmacos code since I was fiddling with it a year ago (what a shocker there haha), so I was just able to merge develop into it without problems and push it for something that will maybe kind of work from the get-go

We'll see! :)

If this actually fixed your problem, would be pretty neat and would be motivation for me to actually finish this sooner than later haha

[astral otter]

taking a while :v

[fossil tusk]

Yeah :/

[astral otter]

but yah i find it crazy how this whole process has taken ten hours now ToT

[fossil tusk]

Yeah sorry :(

[astral otter]

nah is okay lmao

[fossil tusk]

If this does work, I think you'll be the first person to actually run this game on Sequoia haha

[astral otter]

yuppiiii

yeah i tried to install etterna on this same mac like two years ago and it never worked (i don't remember the reason) so im jus happy to be trying again

i've been a player since 2019 so i'd like to get back in the practice of 4k rhythm games and not only play pjseka ToT

[fossil tusk]

:D

[astral otter]

speaking of - i know im going a bit off-topic but do you have any idea if there are song packs that include songs from pjseka? (project sekai // hatsune miku: colorful stage)

[fossil tusk]

I'm not sure, but feel free to ask in #etterna and I'll bet someone knows :D

[astral otter]

mkay mkay, i'll ask once i manage to get this running first >_>

[mild solar]

until kind of recently i was probably the only one to chart a song that was specifically made for that game

[astral otter]

:0

[mild solar]

project sekai already has like 4 billion old songs on it so if you search for vocaloid packs and dont get the very oldest ones you probably find stuff thats recognizable

[astral otter]

yeah i try to find vocaloid packs but a lot of the songs are too easy for me :(((

i need something above lvl12 for it to be enjoyable imo ToT

but ya thank you :0

[fossil tusk]

@astral otter
Try uh macOS x64 from https://github.com/bluebandit21/etterna/actions/runs/14897290098, you'll have to be logged into github for it to work :)

[astral otter]

stupid question - how do i get it to run ;-;

[fossil tusk]

Uh you downloaded the macOS x64 from ^^?

[astral otter]

i can't find a file to download (i may be stupid)

[fossil tusk]

Are you logged into github?

[astral otter]

yah

[fossil tusk]

Huh

Send me a screenshot of the page?

[astral otter]

i've never really used github before so idk what i'm doing tbh ToT

[fossil tusk]

Use ^ link :)

And scroll down a bit

[astral otter]

thank you Q_Q

[fossil tusk]

Npnp lol

[astral otter]

i feel like we're going in circles

it keeps opening and closing

[fossil tusk]

Like in a loop, forever?

[astral otter]

no

it did that to me before tho

[fossil tusk]

Define "keeps opening and closing"

[astral otter]

but it just runs for ONE second and closes itself right after

[fossil tusk]

Ok

[fossil tusk]

The reason I ask is that ^ is a thing that can happen

Log say anything interesting?

In particular I'm curious if it outputs a list of resolutions

[fossil tusk]

[2025-05-07 21:10:41][WARN]: LowLevelWindow_MacOSX::SetActualParamsFromMode: Unable to query display refresh rate!
[2025-05-07 21:10:41][WARN]: LowLevelWindow_MacOSX::SetActualParamsFromMode: Unable to query display refresh rate!

huh

Now that might be something interesting/relevant

Ok, sorry that didn't magically fix it for you, I think the next step involves me looking at the source code for a bit and reading up on changes to OpenGL in Sequoia... :)

@astral otter if you want to play Etterna on your mac before ^ (and ^ could take quite a while if I have to rewrite Etterna's low-level graphics backend to fix your problem; that's been an ongoing effort on-and-off for years by multiple people 0_0), I think your best bet would be to play the Windows version of Etterna on your mac through WINE; #etterna could help walk you through doing that

I'll get back to you if I have any more modified versions of the game code to try 🙂

[astral otter]

ah okai :0

[fossil tusk]

(Note to self) Check me; think ^ is a debugging message I added in my modifications

Sorry, I'm afraid the Etterna experience on macOS has always been pretty rough, even more so when I'm the only mac developer and I don't really spend much free time developing this game anymore 0_0

[astral otter]

nah dude it's okay haha - i'm really patient and i'm willing to wait until the end of time xdddd

[fossil tusk]

@astral otter in the meanwhile too if you're desperate for something

Outfox isn't keyboard-focused like we are, and they don't have a lot of the features we do, but they do have a much more modern graphics/input backend than us since their team rewrote all that stuff to use something modern and sane :)
Worst comes to worst, you could steal all the keyboard charts from us at etternaonline.com and use that as your client while waiting for me / us to fix this hecking thing for macOS :)

Stepmania and NiTG definitely won't work; I know for a fact I've fixed more of the deprecated macOS stuff for Etterna than either of those two have

Etterna + Wine on mac is a thing people have done before, and it reportedly actually works pretty hecking well

[astral otter]

i'm actually trying to revert my mac from sequoia to sonoma rn TmT

[fossil tusk]

0_0
GL with that, though not sure I can recommend doing that specifically only for Etterna haha

This is definitely a "Our code is old and not great" moment and not a "macOS sequoia is horribly broken", almost gauranteed :)

[astral otter]

oh, a majority of apps don't work on sequoia so like- >_>

i can't run a majority of emulators haha

[fossil tusk]

Ah

[astral otter]

so yeah, it's probably just certain issues from both sides

welp, i'm committed

maybe we could try doing sequoia runs later down the line tho :0

[fossil tusk]

GL!!! ❤️

I'm almost positive Sonoma + Etterna has worked historically, so here's hoping :)

[astral otter]

if not, i'll just come back to this thread haha

[astral otter]

welp, i'm back on sonoma now

[fossil tusk]

Sick, here's hoping the update (downdate?) went smoothly :)

[astral otter]

yah! i actually went ahead and just restarted my macbook entirely (i put all my files on an sd card, dw)

so yeah, now i just need the proper links again for etterna ToT

[fossil tusk]

HOpefully uh github.com/etternagama/etterna/releases/latest should work this time haha

Grab Darwin, not m1

[astral otter]

waugh

you're not gonna believe it

[fossil tusk]

It still doesn't work? :/

[astral otter]

yup ToT

[fossil tusk]

Heck's sake

Same symptoms?

[astral otter]

no

[fossil tusk]

Oh 👀

A new error is huge progress actually

[astral otter]

it doesn't even run for a second, it just "opens" and closes

[fossil tusk]

Do you get a crash pop up thing?

[astral otter]

nope

[fossil tusk]

Upload latest log?

[astral otter]

OH MY GAH

[fossil tusk]

What, did it start magically working?

lol

[astral otter]

OH MY GAHHHHHH

[fossil tusk]

!!

[astral otter]

im happy now

[fossil tusk]

Hype hype :D

[astral otter]

[fossil tusk]

Hope very deeply your keyboard inputs work haha

^ is a thing a lot of macOS Etterna peeps run into problems with

I'mma really hope you just ... don't

For both our sanities lol

[astral otter]

it is that

keyboard AND mouse inputs are invalid for whatever reason

[fossil tusk]

🙃

Ok, uh

[astral otter]

im just gonna restart rq and hope for the best

[fossil tusk]

Fortunately this is a more known problem

To the extent I actually wrote a guide for it

I think the latest up-to-date version is on the Etterna wiki?

Let me dig it up...

https://gist.github.com/bluebandit21/d34d7b0b4f9137c34c167e607db63c03

Whelp, no, it's still my github gist lmfao

I do link to it in the wiki though

So that's almost something

[astral otter]

so i tried it

now it just says "no noteskins found"

[fossil tusk]

👀

Wait that's weird

Did you run xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine (not this literal command!) and such?

[astral otter]

...fuck

now it runs magically???

what the hell

i'm so confused

if it works, it works - i'm not gonna ask ToT

[fossil tusk]

Lol

Is it fully working now @astral otter ? :)

[astral otter]

yuh!!

sadly, some of the skins i downloaded aren't showing up - but that's okay xP

[fossil tusk]

Nope, this was past me's messy WIP dev branch with gross commits being dumb/lazy

It always prints that message

Oh I see

Because when that function is implemented (which it wasn't because WIP), it's never supposed to exit that for loop; it's supposed to set the best display inside and then return

https://github.com/bluebandit21/etterna/blob/9a7a8dd637b14de572a6a00154cb03715e23f5b5/src/arch/LowLevelWindow/LowLevelWindow_MacOSX.mm

Actually