Was anyone on Win7 able to run the Grapple demo?

T

TENTACLE BOSS?

Firstclaimer
#1
Jul 27, 2016
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#1
I installed the redistributables and rebooted, unfortunately the game still doesn't run. Has anyone else had any luck with the game on Win7? If not, are there any work arounds to get the demo running?

I know the devs can't officially confirm Win 7 support, but I know there are workarounds to get some games running on Win7 that don't by default.
 
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Wyntyr

Wyntyr

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Ark Liege
#3
Jul 26, 2016
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Florida
#3
Chromatose said:
I installed the redistributables and rebooted, unfortunately the game still doesn't run. Has anyone else had any luck with the game on Win7? If not, are there any work arounds to get the demo running?

I know the devs can't officially confirm Win 7 support, but I know there are workarounds to get some games running on Win7 that don't by default.
Click to expand...
Don't know myself. :(
 
liandri

liandri

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Omni Ace
#4
Jul 29, 2016
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Zone of Bones, Australia
#4
Do you have any screenshots or further information? Does the demo start at all?

There was an issue with an earlier demo regarding a missing .dll file. Laccolith posted the following steps in his fix: https://forums.em8er.com/threads/first-person-demo-feedback-thread.1772/post-54477

Go to C:\Windows\System32
- Make a copy of "xinput1_3.dll"
- Rename the copy you just made to "xinput1_4.dll"

Maybe this will help?

Alternatively, you could email [email protected] and they might have a better idea... Or on the Em8er Discord.
 
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T

TENTACLE BOSS?

Firstclaimer
#5
Jul 27, 2016
14
31
13
#5
liandri said:
Do you have any screenshots or further information? Does the demo start at all?

There was an issue with an earlier demo regarding a missing .dll file. Laccolith posted the following steps in his fix: https://forums.em8er.com/threads/first-person-demo-feedback-thread.1772/post-54477

Go to C:\Windows\System32
- Make a copy of "xinput1_3.dll"
- Rename the copy you just made to "xinput1_4.dll"

Maybe this will help?

Alternatively, you could email [email protected] and they might have a better idea... Or on the Em8er Discord.
Click to expand...
Yeah I tried this earlier and stuck that file into the games root directory, it detected it, and now there's just an error saying: "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b). Click OK to close the application."

Not a super informative error message.
 
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liandri

liandri

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Omni Ace
#6
Jul 29, 2016
450
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Zone of Bones, Australia
#6
I'm unfortunately unable to replicate what you're seeing on my old Windows 7 64-bit PC. After downloading DirectX Runtime, .NET Framework and doing a CHKDSK, the demo just sits on a black screen and doesn't load. Moving some the user data files from another computer doesn't help. Just unable to get it to run.

I would still recommend contacting the support email or jumping into the Discord channel #tech-talk in case someone knows a workaround. Alternatively, Windows 10 might be the easiest solution, though I'm sure you're on Windows 7 for a reason.
 
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liandri

liandri

Omni Ace
Omni Ace
#8
Jul 29, 2016
450
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Zone of Bones, Australia
#8
Apparently, you still can. See below:
https://www.express.co.uk/life-styl...ndows-10-free-offer-valid-Microsoft-Windows-7
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

I have not attempted this. If you do this, it would definitely be best to set up a dual-boot if you can. Windows 7 definitely has some advantages when it comes to some older games (much like Windows XP).

Edit: I should mention as well, you should be able to use Windows 10 without activating it. Not recommended really, but it can be done.
 
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punkbuzter#6186

Guest
#10
#10
Hi.
While I have not resolved the problem, I've been digging deeper.
By default the demos "Mining" and "Grappling" requires a file called XINPUT1_4.dll. This does not exist in Windows 7 but, out of curiosity I've been fiddling around with this problem and found a couple noteworthy points that might help narrowing down a solution or the potential problem itself.

First off, the "Art" demo works out of the box just fine, tho performance is very low. I turned on Fraps just to see how the different applications behaved and I got a warning message from either Fraps or the demos themselves that said "Fraps is known to crash D3D11 applications".
So, it appears that all the demos runs in DX11 (earlier suspects was that the demos wanted to run in DX12 but that was not the case), but the Mining and Grappling demos just stops at a black screen with the XINPUT fix as mentioned above.
No CPU nor GPU activity is registered during this black screen, and it registers a ~130MB of RAM usage. Conclusion is that the applications launches but fails to launch properly.

In an older bug report similar to this, someone mentioned copying the XINPUT file into Binaries/Win64/XINPUT1_3 of the game structure instead of just cloning it in the System32 folder, which seemed to fixed the problem for others, so I tried this too but the outcome was a completely different error. Now I'm missing "api-ms-win-eventing-classicprovider-l1-1-0.dll" which according to Google was only ever included in Win8 and later versions of Windows.

Also, I talked to someone on Discord who tried to help me fix the problem via DM said the XINPUT1_3.dll was included in one of the earlier demo versions, but non existed in either of the current demos available today. By the looks of it, it seems that a fix has somehow actually worked in the past, but something changed during the development process that rendered Win7 unusable.
And it might be worth noting that while the demos used the 1_3 version the problem was fixable, once 1_4 was required the old fix stopped working. I don't know what this file is for and what their differences are.

I know, I got my tinfoil hat on, this is my own fault and now I'm finally paying for myself for not keeping up with the modern world... But, in the end, I hope as many OS's as possible gets supported for a larger playerbase. Actually, if the game was to upgrade to a better API than DX11 I'd urge to go with Vulkan instead of DX12, not only because it's a low-level API just like DX12, but it supports a wider range of OS's.
Anyway, that's all for now. Cheers :)

[edit]: Cleaning up my bad English.
 
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punkbuzter#6186

Guest
#11
#11
I have an update on the matter. It seems the problem may be related to UnrealEngine 4 itself.
On UE's website there is a hotfix for 4.25 called "Hotfix 4.25.2", and in the patch notes there's a line that says:
"Fixed! UE-94787 Error on Windows 7 - The procedure entry point DXGIGetDebuginterface1 could not be located in the dynamic library dxgi.dll "

I just checked the versions of the currently available demos on Ember's website and the status is:
ART DEMO: Runs v4.17 - STATUS: WORKING on Windows 7
MOVEMENT DEMO: Runs v4.25 - STATUS: NOT WORKING on Windows 7
GRAPPLE DEMO: Runs v4.25 - STATUS: NOT WORKING on Windows 7

Some people still using Windows 7 have disable automatic updates, if that is the case, this is the update that manually needs to be downloaded:
"KB3080149 - Platform Update for Windows 7 SP1 x64 based systems"
Because this is the update that contains the updated DXGI files, previously only available in Windows 8 and above.

Hopefully, the developers uses the 4.25.2 update in the next demo so we can see if the problem was solved :)

[edit]: cleaned up, and added colors just because
 
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