Game won't start

[genehaynes]

I just purchased a few minures ago from Matrix site. After clicking Play game I get the follow error msg: "Armageddongame.exe is not a valid Win32 application". I have a Win Xp sys.

Any suggestions? BTW, I downloade and installed the latest update, rebotted my machine wothout any luck.

I lso posted this thread on the Matrix forum.

[lordzimoa]

I don`t think this game supports XP and we had some problems in testing on XP... but Alex might have something.

[genehaynes]

My fault, Didn't notice the game IS NOT compatible with XP.

[Newdiv]

Well, that was written on the manual:
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8

So genehaynes, you're excused as far as I am concerned. I did exactly the same mistake

[rickydigits]

Yeah I just got the game as well and was angered when I saw that dialog. I know it comes up because of the linker the developers are using, they are using something like VS12 or VS13 which makes an executable thats unable to be understood on our NT5 systems. There is a hack you can do which works and works for me though idk if VAC or something would notice this change in an online game I hope to hear from the devs on that before going online the hack is to change the linker code from 6 to 5.1 which will allow it to run on XP. (btw windows xp is 5.1 and windows xp 64 is 5.2)
Of course back up the original executable first.
Open the ArmageddonGame.exe with a hex editor
goto these offsets change the data at offsets 0x158 and 0x160
from
06 00 00 00
to
05 00 01 00

It works fine for me to play games I would hope maybe the developers could see this and just relink their program with an older linker so that they can have XP support, its a neat game too.

[Rudankort]

So, has anyone tried this solution and can confirm it works? I have no XP machine handy.

[zakblood]

have seen similar stuff done tbh, so no reason why not tbh

Code: Select all

http://wp.xin.at/archives/1575

[Rudankort]

Oh there are many possible reasons. The game is built with this toolset: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=41151 and it does not include XP support.

[zakblood]

plus a hack on the game exe maybe lead to dll errors as well?

as in my post you had to alter some of those as well, so maybe, maybe not

[rickydigits]

Yeah I've played two online games as well as the campaign and it works fine on xp the numbers at those offsets are just the major and minor operating system and subsystem versionings I get errors like that all the time when running new apps on windows 2000 or even windows 98 and its just a matter to change those numbers and the application will work. Microsoft's new linker in that toolset just makes a PE with a higher number and the windows OS is programed to only run applications with numbers lower and the same as its NT version. I don't understand why couldn't the developers just use an older toolchain, something like VS08 has pretty much the same optimizations unless the code is mess of C++11 and all those funny statements which belong more in D then a C language.

Anyway baring the developers getting VAC or enforcing a hash of the EXE on start the changing of the versionings will work.
I gotta say it is an addictive game.