Question

I’m currently working on a game based on Slick2D, but I ran into a problem.
When I try to run my game (no matter whether from dist or ide), I get the following error:

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no jinput-linux64 in java.library.path

My directory structure is as following:
./lib contains all the .jar’s for libraries
./natives contains the .dll’s, .so’s and .jnilib’s

If I go to project options, and add -Djava.library.path=./natives to VM options, it works properly. But in that case, I’d need to have all the native libraries inside the root folder of the dist. So I want to have a separate folder for all the natives, so my first line in my main has this:

System.setProperty("org.lwjgl.librarypath", System.getProperty("user.dir") + "/natives");

But for some reason, this doesn’t give a standard linking error (e.g. lwjgl not found) but for some reason picks jinput-linux64, but jinput is added as a library and is in the natives folder.

Is there anything I’ve done wrong or is there a better approach to distributing my game effectively overall?

Thank you !

Answer 1

What is wrong with placing the native libraries in your distribution? You cannot rely on your audience to have the libraries your application needs. Here is how I distribute stuff I make with slick:

MyFancyGame (Top directory)
-- libraries (mine and slick and lwjgl jars here)
   -- lwjgl 
      -- native (dlls and so files go in here)

In the top directory I include a shell script & a batch file which contains one line:

java -ea -Djava.library.path="libraries/lwjgl/native/" -cp  "libraries/*" com.MyGame.Main

This works on every computer I deploy to so long as they have java installed.