Hi Debbie,

Likely related to this: Crash when loading a save / loading certain skirmish maps / map editor maps (Patch 1.4.2) please give the workaround a go and let us know how you get on.

Great to hear, I'm going to merge this into the related thread. It'll keep you updated on when the hotfix is deployed. :)

You're welcome hope you enjoy the game :)

The way we usually see this resolved is by playing around with the graphics modes. See Case 2 on that link, usually one of those will cause the UI to load. Make sure if you've got both Intel and Dedicated graphics that the game is trying to render on the correct card as well.

Finally please let us know what your system specs are :)

Just gonna keep it set as Pending Customer so I definitely see any updates you put on :) I'll leave it like this for up to 2 weeks.

Hi Merket,

I've discussed the issue with the code team and they can confirm that the issue is occurring as part of a very simple bit of code that Valve provides and recommends. They provided this extract from the steamworks documentation:

// If Steam is not running or the game wasn't started through Steam, SteamAPI_RestartAppIfNecessary starts the // Steam client and also launches this game again if the User owns it. This can act as a rudimentary form of DRM.// See the Valve documentation for more information: https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/drm#FAQ

The Steam wrapper doesn't support .Net applications. Instead of using the DRM wrapper, use SteamAPI_RestartAppIfNecessary(). SteamAPI_RestartAppIfNecessary() detects if Steam is running, and will only return true if a restart is needed. If true exit the process. If it returns false, your game was launched by the Steam client and should continue running. One exception is that SteamAPI_RestartAppIfNecessary() will return false if a steam_appid.txt file is present. This allows you to develop and test without launching your game through the Steam client. Be sure to remove the steam_appid.txt file when building the game depot.

According to the team this is the reason the game restarts in a loop which is behaving exactly the way it should provided it's getting the correct input.

There are two reasons this would return a "True" and thus restart the app:

1. The Steamworks code is unable to detect that Steam is running for whatever reason
2. You don't actually own or launch the game via Steam ( We're assuming this isn't the case ;) )

Unfortunately this once again leaves us stuck, the problem is clearly within the Steamworks API which is not supported by us, merely used in line with the documentation provided to us by Valve themselves.

I understand that this must be genuinely frustrating and we share your frustration because our hands are tied in this matter and unfortunately Valve customer support seems content to do the bare minimum possible.

We'd just like to clarify as well that the way this is being used is not actually for DRM Purposes, because as far as DRM goes it's not exactly a strong solution and can easily be spoofed. It's being used to ensure that Steamworks and it's features are accessible by the game as the Steam version relies heavily on those features.

For players affected by this issue we'd be happy to help you get your hands on a DRM-Free version of the game, we've updated it to Patch 1.4.1 and we'll be updating it again once our latest hotfix is out. You can find out the differences between the versions here: DRM-Free Build FAQ

I'm also going to tentatively say now. We're investigating the possibility of a GoG.com version in the future and if we are able to release that it will be more fully featured than the DRM-Free Build. Once more it's still tentative but if it does come out we'd be happy to provide you with a free copy.

Sorry I can't be any further help,

Lee

I'll pass this straight on to code to review the output log but unfortunately I'm not confident we'll be able to gleam much information from it.

With regards to save files if you're affected by the r6025 issue then you can find a description and workaround of the issue in this article: Crash when loading a save / loading certain skirmish maps / map editor maps (Patch 1.4.2)

Hi Jonas,

I suspect this is related to the known issue in this knowledgebase article: Crash when loading a save / loading certain skirmish maps / map editor maps (Patch 1.4.2)

Please give that a read for the full description of the issue and workaround and confirm for me if the workaround resolves the issue for you.

Hi Angeltear,

Have you had a look at the suggestions in this knowledge base article: Missing, Invisible or Laggy UI

This usually resolves the majority of issues.