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

[dubiousintent]

Sounds like you are doing everything correctly then. If "downgrade.vbs" is broken, there should be a "Windows error" to be found in the "Eventlog Viewer". See 'Windows Error Messages' section in the 'Troubleshooting Basics - XCOM-EU 2012' article.

 

-Dubious-

[Rayhawk11]

I'm having the same problem as firstkurosvk and I also think the downgrade.vbs (or the binary patcher) may be broken. I'd imagine that a recent, unnoticed update could be the problem--Because the downgrade works with binary differentials, even a slight change in the game files would break the patcher. I've done the procedure from scratch well over ten times, even trying a clean install on a completely different computer. I'm on Windows 10, if that matters. The link below contains the relevant Control Panel logs. I have Windows Error Reporting disabled, hence it does not appear in Event Viewer. The information should be the same, however.

 

https://gyazo.com/e083b8bd9de4dc083868db85c4abd28e

Edited September 5, 2017 by Rayhawk11

[Drakous79]

You can check Launch.log in your user files\Documents\My Games\XCOM - Enemy Unknown\XComGame\Logs\ and see, if there is some clue, what is going on.

[Rayhawk11]

I checked the logs there too and there's little information of use. The log cuts off abruptly--no error messages whatsoever. That's part of why I suspect that the binary difference patcher is broken; some corruption in the executable might result in an abrupt crash like this.

 

https://pastebin.com/jVgyyQFc

[Drakous79]

When the log is cut like this, I run the game again and wait for it to crash, then mouse over log's icon on windows taskbar to see its window and what's wrong prior to closing error message. I always run XCOM with -log start switch. Windows 8.1 here.

 

I remember XCOM Enemy Unknown crashed a lot because of incorrect hashes of certain *.upk files in XComGame.exe. You can try to update them with XShape or use PatcherGUI > set path to XCOM EU > Tools > Disable hash checking.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Drakous79

[dubiousintent]

Did you install Steam to it's default location? If so, please see the wiki "Installing Games on Windows Vista+" article for why the default Steam behavior of installing games to the "C:\Program Files" folder tree is bad and "disabling UAC and running as Administrator" is NOT sufficient, with instructions how to move it. This is the single most important thing you can do to fix and protect yourself against problems in the future.

 

Steam no longer allows you to disable automatically updating the game. Doing so will break the downgrade (as well as other mods). Once you have verified files for patch 6 and run up to the main menu twice, you must go into "offline mode" and stay there once you install mods. Do not launch the game from Steam in "online mode" again. Disable the "phone home" ability as well. (Described in the "Basic Guide to installing mods" article.)

 

Set Win10 compatibility mode to "Windows 7 SP1".

Otherwise, you are just out of luck unless someone still has EU with patch level 4 and builds another difference file. And that was a rarity back when the downgrade was created. The author (Bertilsson) has not been active on Nexus since 31 Mar 2016, so help is unlikely from that source.

 

-Dubious-

Edited September 5, 2017 by dubiousintent

[Rayhawk11]

@Drakous79:

Thank you for informing me of the -log switch. The game crashes so quickly that I couldn't actually see the console before it crashed; that being said, I did manage to get a look at it with the help of some screen recording software. Here is a screenshot. This is from after I disabled hash checking with PatcherGUI.

https://gyazo.com/65e3fc6c61c1f969fa4acd50985492aa

 

@dubiousintent:

Yes, XCOM EU is installed on my secondary drive and phone home is disabled. I was not aware that keeping Steam in offline mode was necessary, seeing as how the downgrade.vbs still yells at you to keep it in offline mode. I will try again and edit this post once I have attempted this.

 

UPDATE:

No dice. Tried again, redoing the procedure from scratch, launching the fresh install in compatibility mode, and launching the new install in compatibility mode post-PatcherGUI patching. Here is the log.

https://gyazo.com/ca9c7aaf4a27d6ce70cd3b1c64d85e06

Edited September 5, 2017 by Rayhawk11

[Drakous79]

Unfortunately, the log you post gives no clue, why the game is crashing.

 

I can try the downgrade on Win 7, Win 8.1 and Win 10 machines on saturday. I have patch 4 backup too (not sure if with or without movies), so there is hope. But until weekend I doubt I can help.

[Rayhawk11]

Thank you, I really appreciate all your help. I'd try the downgrade on a Windows 7 VM, but that would introduce the confounding variable of, well, a VM.

[Bertilsson]

Otherwise, you are just out of luck unless someone still has EU with patch level 4 and builds another difference file. And that was a rarity back when the downgrade was created. The author (Bertilsson) has not been active on Nexus since 31 Mar 2016, so help is unlikely from that source.

Sometimes the most unlikely things happens :smile:

 

Unfortunately, I'm unable to start XCom EU after manually downgrading to patch 4. I just end up with a background process called "XCOM: Enemy Unknown (32 bits)" running and nothing more happens :sad:

 

When comparing my backup of XComGame.exe (patch 6) with newly installed XComGame.exe I can see that file size has increase ~500 bytes, so something has definitely changed after the downgrade patch was originally created.

 

I will probably do some more attempts and keep an eye on this thread to see if Drakous79 has better luck getting an old version running, otherwise I think it is probably well overdue to retire the mod.

 

Edit: Fixed incorrect quote.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Bertilsson