[v1.20] - Game won't launch

[Cohali]

I just purchased the Early Release today, and it seems I can't launch the game at all. I have a fairly simple system, Windows 11 w/ AMD Radeon 580X.

When launching the game (via steam or explorer), the helicopter splash screen is displayed and the bar progresses to 86%...then just drops back to the desktop. I have updated adrenaline drivers, tried 3 different 'flavors' of beta version in Steam, uninstalled and reinstalled, deleted all local files (in Steam Library and My Games folder), etc. It always dies in the same place.

I've also gone into the json display file and set fullscreen to 'false' and manually set a lower resolution than my monitor's native...the game now launches in a smaller, windowed mode, but still crashes.

This seems like a simple game...not sure why I can't at least get past the splash screen.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Cohali
adjusted title

[foxfire]

Same for me, exept the progress bar reaches 100 %. and i am able to select the language. After clicking on understood its straight back to the desktop.

Steam, amd 5900x + rtx3080 Win 11 with all patches and latest drivers. deleted all local files and reinstalled the game too.

[Chris]

4 hours ago, Cohali said:

I just purchased the Early Release today, and it seems I can't launch the game at all. I have a fairly simple system, Windows 11 w/ AMD Radeon 580X.

When launching the game (via steam or explorer), the helicopter splash screen is displayed and the bar progresses to 86%...then just drops back to the desktop. I have updated adrenaline drivers, tried 3 different 'flavors' of beta version in Steam, uninstalled and reinstalled, deleted all local files (in Steam Library and My Games folder), etc. It always dies in the same place.

I've also gone into the json display file and set fullscreen to 'false' and manually set a lower resolution than my monitor's native...the game now launches in a smaller, windowed mode, but still crashes.

This seems like a simple game...not sure why I can't at least get past the splash screen.

 

1 hour ago, foxfire said:

Same for me, exept the progress bar reaches 100 %. and i am able to select the language. After clicking on understood its straight back to the desktop.

Steam, amd 5900x + rtx3080 Win 11 with all patches and latest drivers. deleted all local files and reinstalled the game too.

Sorry to hear both of you are having problems. We'll try and get this debugged for you as soon as possible (although it's quite late at night UK time so we'll probably have to check it out tomorrow).

The first thing to try is just to delete your entire Xenonauts 2 folder in My Documents/My Games/ if you haven't already. That does sometimes cause load screen crashes.

If that hasn't helped, please can you try switching your Steam beta branch to "debug" and then run the game. If it still doesn't load, can you provide the logs?

• Changing beta branch is done by right-clicking on the game in your Steam library, going to Properties, then Betas, then changing the dropdown.
• Details on how to find the logs here: https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/19974-logs-saves-what-they-do-and-where-to-find-them/

[Cohali]

Chris,

Thanks for your reply. I switched to the debug branch and launched (says development build in the lower right corner) ...it crashed in the same spot.

I believe I see the problem...I have a non-conventional path to My Documents: \\server\share\profile\Documents\My Games\Xenonauts 2. It's having troubles parsing the folder, giving an INITIAL CRASH fatal error. The output.log file states the saves folder is not found, even though I can navigate to it and confirm it exists. I'm assuming something in the logic is looking for a local/UNC path instead of a shared path? 

Anyway, it's pretty clear that's where it's failing. I'll see if I can 'trick it.'

 

 

[Chris]

42 minutes ago, Cohali said:

Chris,

Thanks for your reply. I switched to the debug branch and launched (says development build in the lower right corner) ...it crashed in the same spot.

I believe I see the problem...I have a non-conventional path to My Documents: \\server\share\profile\Documents\My Games\Xenonauts 2. It's having troubles parsing the folder, giving an INITIAL CRASH fatal error. The output.log file states the saves folder is not found, even though I can navigate to it and confirm it exists. I'm assuming something in the logic is looking for a local/UNC path instead of a shared path? 

Anyway, it's pretty clear that's where it's failing. I'll see if I can 'trick it.'

Thanks. Yeah, the game doesn't like it if it can't access the save folder because that's also where it stores all the campaign data and player profile stuff. If you can trick it then great, but it's useful to know that that's the root cause of the problem (as ideally we'd also get it fixed at our end so other people don't encounter the same issue in future).

[foxfire]

Same here, also non-conventional path to My Documents- No idea how to ´trick it´though...

[Cohali]

It would probably have to involve symbolic links (junctions), but I'm afraid I'll end up breaking more than I fix. May just have to wait for a later build.

Chris, is there a switch I can throw in a batch file to force the game to look at a local location for the Saves folder rather than the default? I'm assuming it's pulling the path during launch, and if I could just override that.......

[Chris]

Yeah. We’ll be discussing this in more detail tomorrow morning so I’ll keep you guys in the loop.

[Chris]

@Cohali @foxfire I think we have a fix for this which we should push in the next 24 hours on the Experimental branch. I'll ping you when we do and hopefully you can check if it works!

[foxfire]

thnx, looking forward to the fix.

[Chris]

@Cohali @foxfire so this bug should theoretically be fixed in Milestone 1.24 that is on the Experimental branch. Can you let us know whether it works for you?

Details about the patch and how to change branches are in the changelog below:

 

[foxfire]

Tried the Patch, sadly it didnt fix it. Same Error as before.

[Chris]

@Cohali @foxfire can you guys try again with 1.25 (which is currently only live on the Experimental branch)?

Hopefully it will just work by default, but if not you can supply a command line override for the save path in the Steam launch options.

 

•     -gameSaveFolder="<PATH>"

[foxfire]

Tried the new build. doesnt work by default, but when adding the save path to launch options it works.

Thnx

[foxfire]

Update: It´s not working, found out after 3 hours of Playing, that though the game runs and autosaves seem to work while your playing, there are no savegames in the specified folder nor anywhere to found.

 

[Cohali]

I was able to get it working with the experimental build and adding the command to Steam Launch Options (didn't work by default). Manual and autosave seem to be working as-intended. Thanks for taking the time to work this out.

 

[Chris]

On 7/24/2023 at 4:46 PM, foxfire said:

Update: It´s not working, found out after 3 hours of Playing, that though the game runs and autosaves seem to work while your playing, there are no savegames in the specified folder nor anywhere to found.

 

Interesting that it doesn't work for you but does for Cohali. Would you mind letting us know your new chosen directory? There's definitely nothing in the /saves/ folder? It must be able to write to the directory or the game wouldn't be able to start.

EDIT - oh, it's probably related to another bug. There's probably two folders in your chosen directory, one called "Xenonauts 2 Editor" and one called "Xenonauts 2". If you copy the contents of the first one into the second one all your saves should come back.