Game wont start anymore

[KnightoftheWhiteSun]

HI,

I have been playing for about 54 hours and then today my game will not open for some reason.
I am so confused as to why, got tides of avarice the day before yesterday and suddently... wont start.

Tried uninstalling, reinstalling, deleting everything in Documents>Egosoft>X4, none of it works.

I even turned off cloud synch with steam...

I know I definitely meet the minimum specs, considering I'm running 16 GB of RAM, a. GTX 3070, and have a I-9 600K processor. And it's a desktop and in case you were wondering.

Please help? I enjoy the game and want to play.

Vulkan and Dxdiag:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[Imperial Good]

Did you try to restart your computer? That can help by forcing all drivers to reload. Be aware that restart is not the same as shutdown and power on, as shutdown usually performs a hybrid sleep and retains all driver state, even if buggy.

[Alan Phipps]

You didn't mention whether your game was ever modded or not. Some 3rd party changes don't keep up with new game versions and a simple uninstall/reinstall can leave 3rd party debris in your gamefile folders unless you have totally deleted the Steam X4 game folder local files before reinstalling it.

[KnightoftheWhiteSun]

Did you try to restart your computer? That can help by forcing all drivers to reload. Be aware that restart is not the same as shutdown and power on, as shutdown usually performs a hybrid sleep and retains all driver state, even if buggy.

Yep, I have restarted my computer and doesn't seem to work. I've also completely shut down my computer and turn it back on and I still get the X4 application hanging when I try to click on it and infinite loading icon from my mouse. And of course when I click on task manager it says X4 is not responding.

And no, my game has never been modded.

[chew-ie]

Game itself is pretty solid and won't stop working from one day to another. You should check for external reasons - even more so as you don't use mods.

Usual suspects are windows updates and nvidia drivers. I personally only use the plain drivers (no additional software bloat like geforce experience etc.) and the windows X4 runs on is only for playing games (so it is also a plain installation). You said you did a re-install - if using Steam I'd say just verify the files for good measure. Even with a "clean install" you are dependent on your internet connection. If you get corrupted files during reinstall the repair / verify tool can find & correct them.

Also, do you have more details about the game not starting? As in what exactly happens: is there no initial loadingscreen at all, does it close right at the main menu / before etc.

You could also try to get some additional infos with the debuglog - just add this to the X4 starting parameters:

Code: Select all

-logfile debuglog.txt

This will create a debuglog.txt file in your X4 profile directory (Documents>Egosoft>X4).

[KnightoftheWhiteSun]

Game itself is pretty solid and won't stop working from one day to another. You should check for external reasons - even more so as you don't use mods.

Usual suspects are windows updates and nvidia drivers. I personally only use the plain drivers (no additional software bloat like geforce experience etc.) and the windows X4 runs on is only for playing games (so it is also a plain installation). You said you did a re-install - if using Steam I'd say just verify the files for good measure. Even with a "clean install" you are dependent on your internet connection. If you get corrupted files during reinstall the repair / verify tool can find & correct them.

Also, do you have more details about the game not starting? As in what exactly happens: is there no initial loadingscreen at all, does it close right at the main menu / before etc.

You could also try to get some additional infos with the debuglog - just add this to the X4 starting parameters:

Code: Select all

-logfile debuglog.txt

This will create a debuglog.txt file in your X4 profile directory (Documents>Egosoft>X4).

I did as you said and created a debuglog.txt, here was what it said:
"Logfile started, time Sun Apr 24 20:44:42 2022
[General] 0.00 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070' NVIDIA-driver v512.15.0 (Vulkan 1.3.194) check=1"

That is it. Not sure what that means.

When I open it opens the program on the task bar but nothing pops up on screen. No sound playing, nothing but a loading Icon. I let it sit for a few minutes and nothing changes. It does lock me into that monitor though as it it is about to start just never does. When I check it out in task manager it says the program is not responding.

[Ketraar]

Can you go over these steps and see if any apply to you? As usual doing a file validation may help, also check if its not your AV program blocking writing, temp disabling it or add X4 to exceptions might help.

MFG

Ketraar

[chew-ie]

I did as you said and created a debuglog.txt, here was what it said:
"Logfile started, time Sun Apr 24 20:44:42 2022
[General] 0.00 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070' NVIDIA-driver v512.15.0 (Vulkan 1.3.194) check=1"

That is it. Not sure what that means.

Just for future reference - there should follow the INIT process of the game engine. Here is an example snippet from one of my debug sessions. (hiding it behind spoiler to not confuse the search for a solution for your problem)

Spoiler

Show

Code: Select all

Logfile started, time Sun Mar 20 19:04:49 2022
[General] 0.00 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060' NVIDIA-driver v511.79.0 (Vulkan 1.3.194) check=1
[General] 0.00 'Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630' gfx-driver v0.402.489 (Vulkan 1.2.148) check=1
[Init   ] 0.00 Entering startmenu in 5.00 (475121)
[Init   ] 0.00 Loading saved game 'quicksave', first pass
[Init   ] 0.00 - Saved in 5.00 (475121), game time = 2d 09h 44m, gamestart 'x4ep1_gamestart_pirate2' started in 5.00 (474665)
[Init   ] 207843.59 Loading saved game 'quicksave', second pass

So your game installation not reaching the INIT is a hint that your game is not even reaching the startmenu. (program-flow-wise)

[KnightoftheWhiteSun]

I did as you said and created a debuglog.txt, here was what it said:
"Logfile started, time Sun Apr 24 20:44:42 2022
[General] 0.00 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070' NVIDIA-driver v512.15.0 (Vulkan 1.3.194) check=1"

That is it. Not sure what that means.

Just for future reference - there should follow the INIT process of the game engine. Here is an example snippet from one of my debug sessions. (hiding it behind spoiler to not confuse the search for a solution for your problem)

Spoiler

Show

Code: Select all

Logfile started, time Sun Mar 20 19:04:49 2022
[General] 0.00 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060' NVIDIA-driver v511.79.0 (Vulkan 1.3.194) check=1
[General] 0.00 'Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630' gfx-driver v0.402.489 (Vulkan 1.2.148) check=1
[Init   ] 0.00 Entering startmenu in 5.00 (475121)
[Init   ] 0.00 Loading saved game 'quicksave', first pass
[Init   ] 0.00 - Saved in 5.00 (475121), game time = 2d 09h 44m, gamestart 'x4ep1_gamestart_pirate2' started in 5.00 (474665)
[Init   ] 207843.59 Loading saved game 'quicksave', second pass

So your game installation not reaching the INIT is a hint that your game is not even reaching the startmenu. (program-flow-wise)

Hi,

So I checked windows defender but X4 was checked as being allowed though as a program so I thought that wasn't an issue.
Taking your advice I disabled my windows defender.... and it started right up!
I got a good couple hours of gaming done and went to bed.
Started up today after work, thinking i could just turn off the firewall again and it would start up like normal and........ Hanging applications, does not load to start menu.....
Fuuuuuuuuuu@*(#UI#I%O#!!!!

I legitimately have no idea what could be causing this.
Why would it work when I turn the windows defender firewall off one night and then not the next? GAHHH!!!

[Alan Phipps]

Well now that you know that the game will start on your system, it only remains to find out what conditions are stopping it from doing so. Think how the situation or method when you disabled Windows Defender the first time may have differed from the second time. For example, the first time you mention Defender (which is more than a firewall), but the second time only mentioned firewall. Was there a difference there, or perhaps in whatever else was running at the times?

[Ketraar]

Also to expand, Windows Defender tends to reenable stuff, often very sneaky by annoying you with a prompt you probably didn't read and just agreed to it (speaking from experience ). My advice is to calmly go through the steps setting up Defender, the firewall should not be a factor, usually what blocks game to start is access, as in Defender blocking files, which can be solved by adding X4 to the Defender exceptions and making sure they stay.

MFG

Ketraar

[Imperial Good]

Windows Defender in its default configuration will not prevent X4 from loading, or any game I have encountered for that matter. I use it and have never had issues running X4 with it enabled.

This means it has either been set incorrectly, or some other part of your system is interfering with Windows defender and X4.