Unable To Launch From Steam (Windows 10)

[JeffSalisbury 59]

I searched the forum for threads about people being unable to launch the game on a Windows 10 machine, but pretty well all of the threads were related to people trying to launch it via physical media, which is impossible (thanks, MS).

I got my nephew a Dell Precision 5530 that my office sold as they were replacing the older laptops with new models. Totally wiped with a fresh Win10 Home install. Fully updated, no anti-virus or firewall software installed. He installed Steam and bought himself SC4 there.

It's fully installed, but won't launch at all. It won't even pop up the launch graphic. Upon clicking Play in Steam, it'll try to launch for a couple seconds, and then will immediately stop itself and go back to as if he'd never clicked the Play button. We tried launching it directly from Win Explorer to see if it was maybe a Steam launching issue, but that didn't work either (resulted in the exact same thing where it tried to launch for a second or two, only to stop and go back to as if we'd never tried launching it at all).

We also tried changing the compatibility option in the SC4.exe launch file to Win XP SP2, but that didn't change anything either.

I've only ever played the game from my Win7 machine, so I'm completely unfamiliar if there is a standard process for getting it to run on Win10. Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

[rsc204 21,808]

Usually when the game tries to initialise but fails this early, it denotes something that the game is trying to do that your hardware can not or otherwise just a more general compatibility issue. Note the game is designed for hardware/systems from 20 years ago, whilst it can be made to work with moderns systems most of the time, you may need some manual configuration to get it going. Try adding the following commands one at a time and you should be able to get things going, for detailed instructions of how see here.

Your GPU/Monitor may be unable to support the low resolution SC4 intro videos, the following command disables them:

-Intro:off

It is also possible that your Audio card is preventing the game from loading, sometimes this happens when nothing is plugged into the Speaker Output jack, but to see if it's a problem you can simply add another command:

-Audio:off
If this doesn't fix anything, remove this command since it's not useful, once toggled this command doesn't need to be present, once we can get into the game you can switch the audio back on there. 

Whilst it's not going to be the cause of your problems, whilst we are here you should add the following command, it prevents random CTD with modern systems:

-CPUCount:1

Lastly the game's default resolution may not work with your hardware, change that using the following command:

-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32
Note this example is for a FHD screen, you should replace 1920x1080 with the resolution used by Windows. Note not all resolutions will be supported by the game, but you just need to find a match between one of the options Windows provides (i.e. system supported resolutions), that SC4 will also work with.

Lastly some modern GPUs can not handle Legacy DirectX 9 support, needed for SC4 to function. In these cases it will be necessary to successfully configure a DirectX Wrapper that essentially adds this legacy support. dgVoodoo2 is one of the easiest to setup, so I'd recommend using that.

[JeffSalisbury 59]

Interesting, I wondered if there might be an issue with something like an antiquated version of DirectX. It's curious why, with fairly modern hardware, it would still run on a Win7 machine without issue (besides its tendency to CTD seemingly at random), but on Win10 it seems to have so many issues initializing. I'll try the CPU count and customer rez commands in the launch string, hopefully that solves the issue. I might also see if the SC4 Launcher app helps any if manually adding the commands doesn't allow it to launch.

Thx for the suggestions, it's honestly amazing some of you still actively respond to these posts after all this time.

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, JeffSalisbury said:

It's curious why, with fairly modern hardware, it would still run on a Win7 machine without issue (besides its tendency to CTD seemingly at random), but on Win10 it seems to have so many issues initializing.

A Win7 machine and the GPU drivers that would be compatible with it are probably old enough to still have the legacy DirectX support that SC4 needs. The game was designed for DirectX 7, which was obsolete by the time SC4 was released in 2003. DirectX 7 is also the source of many other issues, like requiring a DirectX wrapper to support resolutions above 1920x1080.

What resolution is the monitor you are trying to run the game on? I noticed while testing a plugin that replaces the need for the -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 and -Intro:off arguments that SC4 will show a black screen and crash if it runs in full screen mode and the monitor resolution exceeds 1920x1080. I also wrote another plugin that replaces the --CPUCount:1 argument.

Another DLL Plugin you should install is SC4Fix, it fixes a number of bugs that would cause the game to crash.

[JeffSalisbury 59]

It looks like a launch script consisting of

-intro:off -CPUCount:1 -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32

seems to have done the trick. We've got it up and running now. 

I'm going to get SC4Fix, I-HTfix, and probably the latest NAM installed for him just so things run and work better. 

I appreciate all the help.