Not installing Project Zomboid correctly Thread - Desura

Hello.
I bought my first game on Desura (Project Zomboid) some days ago and ran into a quite big problem. I couldn't run it.

Launching it gave me an error message. After googling I eventually found out that I should try to download it from the Desura site instead of using the client. Downloading the game that way worked.

What I noticed was that the file from the website was significantly bigger. I thought that this could be either due to a different compression alorithm or the version the client downloads being incomplete.

What follows contains a lot of information that's probably only interesting for the developers. Skip to the conclusion in the end, if you're not interested in how I found those out.

Today I took some time to actually have a closer look at the issue. Here's what I found out:
Please note that Project Zomboid is written in Java.
I run a 64bit Arch Linux installation.

Desura Client(Linux), 162.78MiB, Doesn't work
Desura Client (Windows), 164.89MiB, Works (after copying lwjgl & launch script from 64 bit version)
Desura Web (x86-Linux), 182.98MiB, Works (after copying lwjgl from 64 bit version)
Desura Web (x86_64-Linux), 183.01MiB, Works
Desura Web (Windows), 165.67MiB, Works (after copying lwjgl & launch script from 64 bit version)

After looking at this I think that it boils down to a different compression algorithm, because the Windows versions are equally small in comparison.

The next thing I looked at was Desura's build-in console. During the installation it gave me quite a few of those:

14:36 DS: Failed to change UncachedUrlStream$LoaderThread.class time stamp to 20130522235339.
14:36 DS: Failed to change KahluaNumberConverter$1.class time stamp to 20130522235339.
14:36 DS: Failed to change AngelCodeFont$DisplayList.class time stamp to 20130522235338.
14:36 DS: Failed to change KahluaNumberConverter$3.class time stamp to 20130522235339.
14:36 DS: Failed to change Texture$PZFileformat.class time stamp to 20130522235338.
[...]

It's just time stamps, but there's more to it as I found out later.

After that I compared a clean installation (just installed, never launched) of the game the client downloads and the 64bit version I downloaded myself. It turned out that there are some differences despite the version being the same.

[philip@Vaio-S-Arch PZDesura]$ diff -qr Linux_Desura/project-zomboid Linux_x86_64_Web/projectzomboid | sort > ~/diff.txt

Files Linux_Desura/project-zomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis/Floor1.class and Linux_x86_64_Web/projectzomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis/Floor1.class differ
Files Linux_Desura/project-zomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis/Mapping0.class and Linux_x86_64_Web/projectzomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis/Mapping0.class differ
Files Linux_Desura/project-zomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis/VorbisFile.class and Linux_x86_64_Web/projectzomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis/VorbisFile.class differ
[...]
Only in Linux_x86_64_Web/projectzomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis: CodeBook$DecodeAux.class
Only in Linux_x86_64_Web/projectzomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis: Floor0$EchstateFloor0.class
Only in Linux_x86_64_Web/projectzomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis: Floor0$InfoFloor0.class
[...]

This is just a very short part of the list. There're a lot of files missing in the version installed with the Desura client.

Lastly I compared some of the files that differ by hand.

Example:"../projectzomboid/com/jcraft/jorbis/Floor1.class" (Desura: 635 B, Web Download: 11,6 KiB)

Turns out the files don't just differ, but are incomplete.

Conclusion:
The version downloaded through the Desura client is missing files. All of them have a "$" in their name.
Some files are incomplete and at least some incomplete files are related to the missing ones.
("Floor1.class" incomplete; "Floor1$EchstateFloor1.class, Floor1$InfoFloor1.class, Floor1$LookFloor1.class, Floor1$Lsfit_acc.class" missing in the same directory)
Note that all the files that gave me errors during the installation had "$" in their names too.

My theory: Parsing errors. If the Desura client downloads the same versions you find on the website, it's during the extraction/installation. If the Desura client downloads the games from elsewhere, it's either during extraction/installation or earlier, during compression.

I hope this helps you to fix this issue.

Edited by: TheSniperFan

Any chance you could give me a blow-by-blow on how to get it working properly? I too just bought my Project Zomboid on Desura (first game on Desura) and it will not launch.

Using Ubuntu Linux.

Go on Indiedb.com and log in.
After that click on "Play Game", then on "download direct" and select the version you need (either the x86 or x86_64 version, depending on whether you have a 32 bit or 64 bit installation).
Once downloaded, extract it somewhere and launch the game with the launcher provided inside the extracted folder.