Fatal error running OpenGL ES 2 program on Android device, but not on the emulator

Question

I am developing a Breakout-style game on Android using OpenGL ES 2.0 and I've run into a fatal error that only happens on my Android device (version 2.3.4) but doesn't happen on my emulator (Android version 5.0.1). I first thought the bug is with the difference of versions but I'm not entirely convinced.

I had the game working nicely on both emulator and my device, but the problem occurred when I wanted to add a Particle effect shader, and I received a RunTime exception during the compilation of the second shader as seen in the stack trace below.

03-31 15:50:52.339  24359-24371/com.package E/GLSLProgram Class﹕ glAttachShader: glError 1281
03-31 15:50:52.359  24359-24371/com.package W/dalvikvm﹕ threadid=9: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x40018560)
03-31 15:50:52.359  24359-24371/com.package E/AndroidRuntime﹕ FATAL EXCEPTION: GLThread 10
    java.lang.RuntimeException: glAttachShader: glError 1281
            at com.package.GLSLProgram.checkGlError(GLSLProgram.java:55)
            at com.package.GLSLProgram.<init>(GLSLProgram.java:38)
            at com.package.ResourceManager.insertShader(ResourceManager.java:103)
            at com.package.GameRenderer.onSurfaceCreated(GameRenderer.java:69)
            at android.opengl.GLSurfaceView$GLThread.guardedRun(GLSurfaceView.java:1349)
            at android.opengl.GLSurfaceView$GLThread.run(GLSurfaceView.java:1119)
03-31 15:50:52.369  24359-24359/com.package D/GameActivity﹕ in onPause
03-31 15:50:52.729  24359-24359/com.package  E/libEGL﹕ call to OpenGL ES API with no current context (logged once per thread)

I have a method from the Android OpenGL ES 2 tutorial that I call after many OpenGL method calls (notably the ones I don't want to cause problems):

public static void checkGlError(String glOperation)
    {
        int error;
        while ((error = GLES20.glGetError()) != GLES20.GL_NO_ERROR) {
            Log.e(TAG, glOperation + ": glError " + error);
            throw new RuntimeException(glOperation + ": glError " + error);
        }
    }

I notice the stack trace says the error occurs after shader compilation (glAttachShader). If I comment out the checkGlError function then the program won't crash but the particle effect that I'm trying to create won't be show which means the shader didn't compile. Thus, I assume the issue is with the particle vertex and fragment shaders but those compile and run as expected on the emulator. Here are the particle vertex and fragment shaders:

Vertex:

attribute vec4 aVertex; // vec2 position, vec2 tex coords

varying vec2 vTexCoords;
varying vec4 vParticleColor;

uniform mat4 uParticleProjection;
uniform vec2 uParticleOffset;
uniform vec4 uParticleColor;

void main() {
    float scale = 10.0f;
    vTexCoords = aVertex.zw;
    vParticleColor = uParticleColor;
    gl_Position = uParticleProjection * vec4((aVertex.xy * scale) + uParticleOffset, 0.0, 1.0);
}

Fragment:

precision mediump float;

varying vec2 vTexCoords;
varying vec4 vParticleColor;

uniform sampler2D uParticle;

void main() {
    gl_FragColor = vParticleColor * texture2D(uParticle, vTexCoords);
}

I have the OpenGL ES 2 feature enabled in my manifest. As I mentioned previously the app runs fine on my device until I introduced the Particle shader. The fact that it continues to run on my emulator has me baffled. I figure its something with the version of my device or the shaders but I can't figure it out.

Unknown Unknown · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-29T10:58:56

Is this function exposed in the Java OpenGL API? If so you can get the compile log back from the driver and find out exactly why it doesn't compile.

At a guess though:

float scale = 10.0f; 
// should be ->
float scale = 10.0;

precision mediump float; // This should be in the vertex shader also?

Adding that log function will give you more to work with rather than just guess.

Fatal error running OpenGL ES 2 program on Android device, but not on the emulator

1 Answers