I’m running Mac M1 (Macbook Air 2020), with MacOS Tahoe 26.1 and Playdate SDK 3.0.1
I was developing in Lua for Playdate, using VSCode and checking out the builds in the Playdate Simulator. It was working flawlessly so far with zero bugs.
Then today after one build, the Simulator crashed on start. I tried building the app again and restarting it, then it crashed again. I tried building other, different apps I finished previously, and the simulator kept crashing on those too.
I went into the SDK’s bin folder and tried starting the simulator manually and it kept crashing on start. I restarted the computer several times and the problem persisted. I deleted and reinstalled the SDK again, and yet, the problem still persists and there is now no way to start the playdate simulator at all in any way without it crashing immediately.
The computer is not connected to any external displays, audio devices, keyboards or anything. There were no hardware or software or configuration changes between the period when it worked and now when it stopped working. I am unable to start the simulator no matter what I do. The app just disappears from the bar as soon as it’s started, without the window even opening.
Does the playdate simulator keep any hidden caches or hidden files on Mac OS outside of its usual folder “username/developer/playdateSDK”?
I tried it. It still immediately shuts down as soon as it’s started. The icon shortly appears in the tray and then disappears. Tried few more restarts and reinstallments of SDK, and everything’s still the same.
From my experience it's likely launching your game, and immediately crashing - try deleting your game's pdx folder then launch the sim again and see if it still happens
@benjymous I’m amazed! Even though I was removing and reinstalling SDK kit multiple times and even though I was trying to start the Simulator standalone and with other PDX-es, nothing worked. But when I deleted the original PDX that started the trouble, everything immediately started functioning.
Thank you very much! This resolves the issue.
@willco No crash log unfortunately. It wouldn’t even notify the MacOS of crash or leave the system hanging, it just kept auto-closing. In the end this was resolved after I followed the advice of @benjymous and deleted the original PDX that started the whole trouble. It seems that in all subsequent attempts to open Playdate Simulator, whether standalone or with other PDX files, it kept somewhere in memory something related to the original PDX that crashed it, and it only went all back to normal after I deleted that PDX.
Thank you for your assistance and I hope this helps you diagnose whatever is causing this bug in the first place.
