FAQ and Troubleshooting

This section of the Wiki deals with frequently asked questions or problems you may encounter when using Near Infinity.

Maps opened in the Area Viewer of Near Infinity are black or don't open at all.

The area viewer is very memory intensive. It can happen if you have installed a 32-bit version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or your system has insufficient memory. One way to reserve more memory for Near Infinity is by running the tool Hide NI DOS. It starts Near Infinity with enhanced memory settings. You can find the link somewhere in the first post of this topic.

Alternatively you can start Near Infinity manually from the command line with additional Java parameters:

java.exe -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m -XX:NewSize=128m -XX:MaxNewSize=128m -jar "NearInfinity.jar"

On Windows you can also set system-wide parameters in the Java Control Panel dialog found in the Windows Control Panel. Select the "Java" tab and click on the "View" button. It should contain at least one Java entry. Enter the following parameters in the field "Runtime parameters" of that entry: -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m -XX:NewSize=128m -XX:MaxNewSize=128m.

If you're running a 64-bit operating system then it is strongly recommended to install the 64-bit version of the Java Runtime Environment, however. Links can be found on the home page of this Wiki.

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I can see the following message in NI's Debug Console: WARNING: Could not open/create prefs root node Software\JavaSoft\Prefs at root 0x80000002. Windows RegCreateKeyEx(...) returned error code 5.

This message may come up on Windows if Near Infinity can't create a registry key for storing its own settings for some reason. To solve this issue open the registry by calling regedit.exe and navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft. Create a new key Prefs by right-clicking on JavaSoft, selecting New→Key and entering the text Prefs into the edit field if there isn't one. Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft and check whether the key Prefs is present. If it is not then create a new key the same way as described before.

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On macOS I can see the following error message in NI's Debug Console: class org.infinity.NearInfinity cannot access class com.apple.eawt.Application (in module java.desktop) because module java.desktop does not export com.apple.eawt.

This message may come up on macOS when Near Infinity is launched with Java 9 or later. The message is harmless and can be safely ignored.

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After an update of the Java Runtime Near Infinity has reset all options to their defaults and removed all bookmarked and recently opened games.

If you are using the non-free Java Runtime from Oracle then it is possible that installing or updating to a new version removed all Java-related settings from the system, which also includes Near Infinity. This is a bug in Oracle's Java installer or updater. If that happened to you, then unfortunately these settings are gone for good. More details can be found in this Beamdog Forums comment.

It is strongly recommended to use the free Open JDK implementation of Java over Oracle's version nowadays. Links can be found on the home page of this Wiki.

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The game is not properly detected by NI. It displays "Unknown game" in the title bar or "Game Properties".

NI checks for specific files or game resources to determine the correct game type. Detection may fail if specific files are not present (as not all of them are required to run the game), or available files are causing ambiguities.

To make certain that a game is correctly detected you can check if the files needed for NI's detection routine are present:

• BG1: Files baldur.exe and Config.exe exist (on Mac: File movies/graphsim.mov exists)
• BG1-TotSC: BG1 detected and resource DURLAG.MVE exists
• Tutu: File bg1tutu.exe exists
• BG2-SoA: Files baldur.exe and BGConfig.exe exist
• BG2-ToB: BG2-SoA detected and resource SARADUSH.MVE exists
• BGT: BG2-SoA detected and resource ARU000.ARE exists
• IWD: File idmain.exe exists and file movies/howseer.wbm does NOT exist
• IWD-HoW: IWD detected and resource HOWDRAG.MVE exists
• IWD-TotLM: IWD-HoW detected and resource AR9715.ARE exists
• IWD2: Files iwd2.exe and Data/Credits.mve exist
• PST: File torment.exe exists
• BG1-EE: File movies/bgenter.wbm exists
• BG1-SoD: File movies/sodcin01.wbm exists
• BG2-EE: File movies/pocketzz.wbm exists
• EET: Files override/EET.flag OR data/eetTU00.bif exist
• IWD-EE: File movies/howseer.wbm exists
• PST-EE: Files data/MrtGhost.bif, data/shaders.bif exist AND engine_mode in engine.lua is set to 3.

Everything else is treated as "Unknown game" and uses basic BG2 compatibility by default.

Note: "File" indicates a physical file on disk. "Resource" indicates a biffed file indexed by chitin.key or found in the override folder.

Files are checked by existence only. To force detection of a specific game you can simply create empty files or copy over existing files and rename them accordingly.

Alternatively you can manually override game detection either by a presented game selection list, or by using command line parameters. For more details call Near Infinity from the command line with the -help option:

java -jar NearInfinity.jar -help

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Near Infinity displays visual glitches on Linux, such as invisible text or miscolored UI elements, when using the Wayland backend.

Near Infinity uses the Java Swing GUI framework which doesn't provide Wayland support yet and probably won't for a long time. Currently XWayland can be used to run Near Infinity in Wayland environments. But that is only meant as an interim solution and has it's own share of problems. For now it might help somewhat to test the available Look and Feel themes and choose the one with the least visual glitches. They can be found in the Preferences (menu Game > Preferences > GUI and Text > Look and Feel UI.)