Downgrade Enemy Unknown to Patch 4 (356266) R&D

[10kLakes]

I'm new to the Nexus forums but this seems to be the right place to ask my question.

 

I heard about Long War, so I downloaded P6toP4v2 to first downgrade my XCOM 398179 (P6) on Steam to 356266 (P4). I had to turn off UAC to stop the popups and right click the VBS file to run it in command line mode (double clicking it as per the instructions threw it into Notepad).

 

The program churned away and came back with a "Wrong game version identified" message and then quit. I looked at the log file (which was big) that showed no errors except for the final "Patch 4 could not be confirmed" message.

 

Looking into the Version.txt file I saw this:

 

Date: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 12:472:47 PM

Changelis56266

 

Why would the 2nd line be butchered as shown above?

 

Since everything seemed to be OK otherwise, I ran XCOM (to do the final MYGAMES changes) and everything seemed to run fine. In fact, looking at the XCOM launch.log shows a line near the beginning which says:

 

Init: FxsChangelist: 356266

 

Does this mean that my XCOM is running at the P4 level?

The fellow on the YouTube tutorial had no problem running P6toP4v2. Why did I?

Can I apply the Long War mod? And if I do, can I then put Steam into offline mode?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dubiousintent]

Let me put it this way. 356266 is the Changelist version for EU patch 4, but that is just a text file. You can check the EXE version number as listed 'here' to confirm, but as long as the game starts up fine, you should be on patch 4. That is what the init log entry says, so go ahead and install LW for EU.

 

If things go wrong, you will have to 'verify game files', which will put you back to EU patch 6, and downgrade again. That has proven necessary for some people. Every machine is different, and it is never an exact science with mods. The primary tip is to give it some time (say 30 seconds to one minute) between exiting one game before you attempt to launch it again, as there are some background processes that still have to shut down even though you are back on the desktop, before you can launch again.

 

-Dubious-

[woweltel]

I'm trying to downgrade my current Steam version of EU+EW back to EU Update 4 with this patch. It's not working. The game simply crashes before the main menu loads after appyling the patch on the step that asks me to rename the Documents folder and start the game. File patching completes without obvious errors or warnings. Steam is online, auto updates are disabled, cache was verified prior to patching, phoning home was enabled then disabled per instructions. Any ideas? Does this patch still work with the current XCOM EU version?

 

The patch log file shows no abnormalities. The game's log file ends in the middle of video adapter detection. Unpatched XCOM EU/EW run fine.

 

Edit:

I was able to get the game to run after running Enemy Within. It seems like patched EU does not create certain localization files in My Documents. But it's no good. The game crashes all the time. The log file shows many faiel attempts to phone home (it's blocked it hosts) and problems loading items from game cache.

Edited March 27, 2014 by woweltel

[dubiousintent]

Try re-enabling the "phone home" until you get a stable game load. Verify game files as needed. You already know that the log is your best friend at this point. Only after you have no problems running the latest EW and EU should you then disable "phone home" and downgrade. Remember to launch and exit both games TWICE (it makes different updates each time), and give it enough time between restarts for the background processes to shut down (30-60 seconds).

 

The downgrade assumes a stable "current patch level" game of EU, and as you found (and news to me) you need to run EW at least once if it isn't a later update to EU. If you can't get a stable "current" patch level game, then mods are only going to confuse the issue.

 

EU was last patched to level 6, and the downgrade works with that.

 

-Dubious-

Edited March 27, 2014 by dubiousintent

[woweltel]

Thanks! I finally fixed the problem by unistalling the game, wiping all the leftover files, redownloading everything and then patching. That seems to have made the difference over just verifying the cache.

[firstkurosvk]

Hello all,

 

I wanted to replay the EU campaign with Long War mod. The first time I played it the Long War did not exist yet. So I wanted to give it a try. I tried to downgrade the EU to patch 4 like 10 times, the vbs (I tried both XP and Win 7,8 versions) script always ended in success but the game always crashes on the startup before any video starts. I followed the guide to the letter but also tried to download the whole thing many times from steam. Updating graphic drivers did not yield a positive result as well. When I check the launch log the correct patch 4 revision is reported and the log is cut off before the graphic card is initialized. EW still running OK though also with LW installed for it. I tried only EU without EW installed but the with same result. Oh and I'm running WIn 10.

 

Can anyone help please?

Thanks.

[dubiousintent]

First, please read the "Basic Guide to installing mods" article,. Pay particular attention to the "Environment" section, but really you need to read everything. It is crucial that you install XCOM outside of the default Steam install location of "C:\Program Files" tree. It is also important that you run through the vanilla game up to the main menu at least twice, before you attempt to downgrade. That is so Steam will complete it's patching cycle. Once it has patched to the current version, you should make a backup of the vanilla game if you have sufficient disk space.

 

Before downgrading, be certain you have taken Steam into "Offline mode" and disabled the "phone home" feature. Failure to do this will let Steam re-apply patches, destroying your downgrade (which is likely your problem).

 

Problems getting the game to launch are 99% of the time the result of failing to follow all the procedures spelled out in the "Basic guide".

 

Be advised that the Long War team (despite their original intentions) did not get back to the EU version of LW once EW came out and they started work on it. The EW version of LW is much more polished and robust. Any bugs in the EU version are unlikely to get any attention. Any questions regarding LW itself should be addressed to their forum.

 

Win10 users need to be aware that older games are 32-bit and require 32-bit versions of libraries and Windows WDDM drivers.

Cause-1: Win10 has DirectX12 drivers, but the DX9 driver the game is expecting is not being found.

 

While Win10 comes with DirectX12 installed and is backwards compatible with older DX versions, older games do not know that and are looking for specific versions of DX library files (i.e. d3d9_32.dll) and not finding them. So you need to install the appropriate "DirectX End-User Runtimes" as well: ones which are compatible with Win 8.1+.Note that you need the 32-bit version for 32-bit games. I make it a practice to always download both the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of any libraries I manually install, so I am covered either way. (There is a reason they published a version for both 32-bit and 64-bit. They are not "interchangeable", and are separate installs going into different locations.)

(Games that used DX7 and 8 are murky territory. Many will run on OS's newer than XP, but may require fixes/tweaks. Always use the latest available "runtime" versions of those DX libraries.) Some games try to install an older DX version they come bundled with. Those versions may not be compatible with the later versions of Windows, which is why you should manually install the version you know is compatible. Then those games will see that DX version is already installed and not try to install their bundled version causing incompatibility problems.

• Solution-1: For DX9, manually install the DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010) which is Win 8.1+ compatible. Download the full runtime package. DO NOT use the "Web Installer" version.

• When the DX installer asks where to install the files to, you choose any folder you like, but generally have it unpack the files to a folder on the desktop or one dedicated to that purpose anywhere, because this folder can be deleted or emptied after the final install is done. (DirectX does not actually get installed at this point. The files are only 'unpacked' from an archive)
• Once the files are unpacked to this folder you open the folder and locate DXSETUP.exe (the actual installer).
• Run this installer (as an Administrator) to finalize the DirectX re-installation.
• When the installer is finished delete this folder.

Each game uses a specific DX file, or files, (e.g. d3dx9_32). A newer game may use two DX files (e.g. d3dx9_42 and d3dx10_42). See the MS article How to make Win10 run DirectX 9.0 for more details.

 

-Dubious-

Edited February 7, 2017 by dubiousintent

[plagueis1017]

I carefully followed the instructions in the basic guide to installing mods, and XCom will still ctd after I run the downgrade. Installing dx9 doesn't fix the problem either. I verified the integrity of the games files in Steam after running the downgrade, and more than 50 files failed to validate.

Edited July 17, 2017 by plagueis1017

[dubiousintent]

It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you do not have the game installed under the default "C:\Program Files" folder tree, especially with versions of Windows after Win2000. That is guaranteed to fail. If you have to "run as administrator", or disable or otherwise circumvent UAC, then you need to move the game instead. Please read the "Installing Games on Windows Vista+" article in my signature.

 

At this point in time, running "Long War" on a downgraded version of "XCom: Enemy Unknown" is not something we recommend, especially if you are running on Windows 10 (which I assume from your mention of installing DX9). Development of LW stopped for EU with that patch version and switched over completely to "Enemy Within". LW for "Enemy Within" is a much better experience. EW is often available at a discount on Steam.

 

I'm afraid we really can't provide any more complete instructions than those already in the "Basic Guide" and this thread. Most of the forum regulars have moved on to XCOM2, and I haven't played it for years. I only drop in to try to point people to the available information in the wiki because I am the most familiar with it.

 

If the game CTD's once you downgrade (and before you install LW), then the downgrade did not work. It is important to do each step in order and completely. First install the game and run up to the game's "Main Menu" TWICE before you disable any of the settings listed under "Recent discoveries". Before downgrading you have to prevent Steam from updating the game again (by running in "offline mode") and disabling "phoning home". Either will break the downgrade (because it isn't "current", which is what those are intended to ensure). Also note that background "protection" processes like "anti-virus" may interfere because you are INTENTIONALLY making changes to the game files, which is "malware-like" activity.

 

I'm not clear what you are expecting when you say "verifying files" reported more than 50 failed to validate. Mods of any sort are making changes to game files (because the game was not designed for modding), and once you install one, "validation" will always fail at least some files. "Validation" is intended to get you back to the basic "vanilla, un-modded" game. With the attempt to downgrade, that alone is probably not sufficient. It is best to completely uninstall it and reinstall again from a "clean slate". Then you have to go through all the preparations laid out in the "Basic Guide" once again. As pointed out in this thread, people have often had to try to downgrade more than once before it would "take".

 

-Dubious-

[plagueis1017]

I absolutely did move my installation of XCom out of C:\Program Files(86). When that didn't work I went as far as uninstalling Steam, and reinstalling to C:\Games\Steam. I disabled phone home both in the host file, and with patchergui. I made sure Steam was in offline mode before I ran the downgrade as well. I have been trying to get the downgrade to "take" for a week now. At this point I'm beginning to think that downgrade.vbs is broken.

Edited July 17, 2017 by plagueis1017