Weird error "expected <"

[DecDuck]

So I was trying to make a mod, and when I tried to start my game, this strange error came up:

[00:00:02]: LOADING LUA SUCCESS
[00:00:02]: PlayerDeaths could not load morgue	
[00:00:02]: PlayerHistory could not load player_history	
[00:00:02]: ServerPreferences could not load server_preferences	
[00:00:02]: bloom_enabled	false	
[00:00:02]: OnFilesLoaded()	
[00:00:02]: OnUpdatePurchaseStateComplete	
[00:00:02]: Klump load on boot started.	
[00:00:02]: Klump files loaded: 	0	
[00:00:04]: Mod: mods (New Mod)	Registering prefabs	
[00:00:04]: Mod: mods (New Mod)	  Registering prefab file: prefabs/bell	
[00:00:04]: Mod: mods (New Mod)	    bell	
[00:00:04]: Mod: mods (New Mod)	  Registering default mod prefab	
[00:00:04]: expected <

There is nothing else. I checked all other logs. I have no idea what it is, any ideas?

[Thomas_klei]

can you send your bell prefab

[DecDuck]

bell.lua

[Hatty DeWitt]

Came here with the same problem, but I ended up finding the solution. Looking at your code, it seems the cause of your problem was the same as mine. The "ATLAS" and "IMAGE" assets are swapped hahaha

You have:

local assets =
{
    Asset("ATLAS", "images/inventoryimages/blunderbuss.tex"),
    Asset("IMAGE", "images/inventoryimages/blunderbuss.xml" ),
}

It should be:

local assets =
{
    Asset("ATLAS", "images/inventoryimages/blunderbuss.xml"),
    Asset("IMAGE", "images/inventoryimages/blunderbuss.tex" ),
}

Apparently the game was trying to read the .tex file as an .xml and was expecting a "<" character, because that's how the .xml files begin.

I know it's been almost a year since the original post, but I'll leave the solution here for if you still need it or someone ends up having the same problem.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Hatty DeWitt