SWG Legends launcher: JavaFX crashes on login click in Wine 11.9 (Gcenx)

[nickk02]

What works elsewhere

The SWG Legends launcher works in CrossOver (proprietary, paid) on the same Mac. Confirmed by user 2026-05-27.

What's broken in Crosswire

The launcher's JavaFX UI crashes shortly after the user clicks "Login" in the launcher window. Two distinct crash signatures depending on prism pipeline:

Crash A — JavaFX CSS access violation

• _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Dprism.order=j2d -Xint
• Renders the login screen ✓
• On Login click: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x7bf2800b
• JVM stack ends in java.lang.Object.getClass() inside com.sun.javafx.css.BitSet.equals() → StyleManager$Key.equals() → HashMap.get() → Node.reapplyCss() → Control.impl_processCSS()
• Triggered when JavaFX reapplies CSS for the post-login UI state transition
• Wine address 0x7bf28* suggests Wine GDI / memory layout interaction

Crash B — JVM internal safepoint error

• _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Dprism.order=sw -Xint
• Renders the login screen ✓
• On Login click (or shortly after, in a background WebKit thread): Internal Error (safepoint.cpp:712), fatal error: Illegal threadstate encountered: 6
• Current thread: JavaThread "Disposer" daemon (WebKit's class disposer)
• Java stack ends in URLClassLoader.findClass during dynamic class loading
• Only 1017k of stack free at crash — small but not exhausted

What we've eliminated

Theory	Eliminated by
Per-program env vars not applied	Confirmed via run log: _JAVA_OPTIONS = "-Dprism.order=j2d -Xint" correctly present in process environment
Stale 2017 bundled JRE	Replaced with Liberica JDK 8u492 Full (April 2025, includes OpenJFX) → launcher process runs but no visible window with -Dprism.order=sw and auto
Bottle config	CrossOver bottle has identical JRE binary (md5 match), no special DLL overrides, same win10_64 template
AeDebug debugger leak	Disabled at bottle creation; doesn't change crash behaviour, only suppresses winedbg spawn
Missing runtimes	corefonts installed via winetricks; vcrun2019 fails to install (vc_redist returns status 41 — separate issue)
FreeType not found at runtime	Engine wrapper now sets DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH (commit 8e23a23)
Vulkan / GPU	Launcher is pure JavaFX, doesn't need Vulkan. Game client does, but launcher fails before any handoff

Engine in use

• Wine 11.9 from Gcenx
• All CW patches applied (CW 20760 WoW64 lretq, CW 24945 + 25719 + 18947 + 23427 virtual.c mprotect, CW 22131 debug-reg fake-success, CW 20186 + 24256 signal_x86_64)
• Engine ad-hoc signed (Phase 1)
• Crosswire build with env-var routing fix (eeaf999) + AeDebug=0 on new bottles (66713d2) + portable-exe adoption (39769bd) + locale-plist salvage (e2f4264)

Diff against CrossOver — what's different

The only known difference is the Wine binary itself: CrossOver ships their own Wine fork (Version = "26.1.0.39808" in cxbottle.conf) with proprietary patches. Their bottle is otherwise identical to ours in template, registry, and bundled JRE.

CodeWeavers contributes a subset of their patches back to upstream Wine over time, often months later. The relevant fix is likely either:

• Already in a newer upstream Wine (post-11.9)
• Or in a CW HACK that hasn't been published

Reproduction

1. Fresh bottle, Win10, AeDebug=0
2. Copy SWGLegendsLauncher.zip contents into drive_c/Program Files (x86)/StarWarsGalaxies/
3. Program Settings/SWGLegendsLauncher.exe.plist with _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Dprism.order=j2d -Xint
4. Launch via Crosswire's Run button or:

   WINEPREFIX=<bottle> WINEDEBUG=fixme-all _JAVA_OPTIONS="-Dprism.order=j2d -Xint" \
     Engine/bin/Crosswire64 start /unix .../SWGLegendsLauncher.exe
   

5. Type any credentials, click Login → crash within seconds with hs_err_pid*.log dropped beside the .exe

Investigation paths

• Try a newer Wine (11.10+, 12, staging) — see if upstream has incorporated relevant CW fixes
• Try a different Wine fork with broader patch surface (e.g., Wine 11.9 with the additional CW patches that Gcenx didn't pick up)
• Build CrossOver's Wine source (if available) against the same toolchain to confirm it's the patch set
• Compare backtrace addresses in hs_err to Wine's loaded libs at crash time — narrow which Wine subsystem returns garbage in Object.getClass() path

Crash logs

Both hs_err files preserved in the SWG bottle. Will attach on the issue once the bottle's PID-numbered files are captured.

Out of scope (don't chase here)

• The launcher's auth-thread CLOSE_WAIT we saw earlier — that was a red herring, current crash is upstream of any network call
• The mid-morning bottle wipe — separate issue, fixed by 66713d2 and atomic engine swaps in scripts/build-vulkan-engine.sh

[nickk02]

Update 2026-05-28 — root cause of the login-click crash found

The JavaFX post-Login crash was caused by Wine's bundled MS DirectWrite. Overriding it to use Wine's builtin dwrite via:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\DllOverrides]
"dwrite"="builtin"

unblocks the JavaFX CSS reapply path entirely. Confirmed empirically against the SWG Legends launcher — typed credentials, clicked Login, the login succeeded (previously the launcher crashed with EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in BitSet.equals → reapplyCss here).

There is a separate post-login crash (different stack, different cause) that's downstream of the login itself, which is a separate issue tracked outside this thread.

Now persisted automatically

Crosswire now auto-applies this override during the install flow for any self-contained Java/JavaFX app (alongside the existing _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Dprism.order=j2d -Xint plist seeding):

• Wine override write: Wine.setDllOverrideIfAbsent("dwrite", value: "builtin", bottle:) in CrosswireKit/Sources/CrosswireKit/Wine/Wine.swift (ee17eb6 lineage)
• Triggered from: JavaAppDetector.applyDefaultsIfNeeded(forExeAt:in:) in Crosswire/Utils/JavaAppDetector.swift
• Same self-contained Java detection as the existing plist seeding (4 bundled-JRE markers under lib/jre/bin/ and app/runtime/bin/)
• Same respect-the-user contract: skipped if any prior dwrite override exists in user.reg

CI engine produces the same behavior

The engine-bundle workflow now applies all our CW patches in CI from Gcenx/wine source (CW 20760 + 22131 + 23427 + 24256 + 24945 + 25719 + 18947), rebuilds wow64cpu.dll + ntdll.so + wineserver, and packages everything into a verified artifact. Smoke-tested 2026-05-28:

• wineboot --init clean (zero try_map_free_area, zero version-mismatch)
• Fresh SWG bottle reaches the same launcher-renders pre-Login state as the local engine

CrossOver Wine source cherry-pick (originally identified as the long-term plan in this issue) is no longer load-bearing for the Login click. Still potentially relevant for the post-login crash, but that's deferred.