Aliens: Colonial Marines won't launch with VorpX

[AndyW]

I decided to try ACM again with the new Direct VR feature in VorpX, and I find it won’t launch.

I’ve uninstalled ACM, cleared out all traces of mods (and folder from My Games, just in case), excluded VorpX and ACM from anti-virus, and double-checked Steam overlay is still off.

No joy. ACM starts fine when VorpX Control isn’t running, but if VorpX is running ACM fails immediately with a Steam error “Failed to start game (unknown error).

Any thoughts? Are there any logs I can generate that may cast light on this?

Thanks for any help.

[AndyW]

Oh, I forgot to say, I’m running Win 10 Home 64 and using a non-admin user account.

[AndyW]

Running Steam as administrator allows ACM to run when VorpX is running – but then VorpX fails to hook :(

Running VorpX as administrator makes it bring up prompt for installation key – I cancelled out of that and didn’t pursue that any further.

[AndyW]

Ok, I went ahead and tried running VorpX as administrator (as well as Steam)… ACM fails to start with a Steam ‘unknown error’.

I know Skyrim is working fine, I’ll try a couple of other games.

[Ralf]

Running the game (or vorpX) as admin is not necessary. Running vorpX as admin is only necessary if a game also requires admin right, otherwise it’s not recommended.

I re-checked the game with the last release version of vorpX earlier today to make sure that there is no difference between the dev and and the release build. Worked fine in 5/5 starts by normally starting it from Steam.

I’m aware that this is just some standard answer, but please primarily check for any potential background programs that may also may hook into games and may create a conflict with vorpX. Most importantly your virus scanner, other potential candidates are: any kind if CPU/GPU utility, game/desktop recording/streaming software, messengers and generally eberything that can show any kind of notification in games.

Might also make sense to uninstall and then delete the game’s program folder, just for the potential case that there are conflicting override DLLs in the folder that an uninstall alone does not remove (e.g. from some graphics enhancing mod).

[AndyW]

Hi Ralf, thanks for the reply :)

Yeah, the only reason I tried that is because it’s been suggested as one of the ways of getting round Steam ‘Unknown error’ issues – an act of desperation after trying everything else I could think of.

As said in my first post, VorpX and ACM are excluded from my virus checker, nothing that can show in-game notifications is enabled (I already disabled Steam Overlay). I had already erased the game folder before re-installing, but didn’t phrase that well in my first post.

I’m not aware of anything that’s changed on my system since it was last working, except for the VorpX version, but that can’t be the issue.

Is it conceivable that I’d need to exclude Steam from my virus checker? I mean, VorpX isn’t hooking into Steam itself, so I wouldn’t have thought so.

Is there any way that you know of getting a log that might indicate where the problem is occurring on my system, or what I’ve got set up wrong? Thanks.

[AndyW]

Ah, ok, problem solved. I had to use a VorpX shortcut. I’d already tried that, but forgot to pause the watcher. My bad :(

Still, useful to know if anyone else runs into the same issue :)

[grimah]

I have this problem too. What do you mean vorpx shortcut? and pause the watcher?

[grimah]

AndyW wrote:

Ah, ok, problem solved. I had to use a VorpX shortcut. I’d already tried that, but forgot to pause the watcher. My bad 🙁

Still, useful to know if anyone else runs into the same issue 🙂

I have this problem too. What do you mean vorpx shortcut? and pause the watcher?

[AndyW]

Right-click the VorpX icon in the system tray and select ‘Create Desktop Shortcut’, browse to your Steam folder on whichever drive you have ACM installed, then to steamapps -> common -> AliensColonialMarines -> Binaries -> Win32, and select the ACM exe. This will create a shortcut on your desktop.

Before double-clicking the shortcut to launch the game, make sure Steam and Oculus are running, then right-click on the VorpX icon in the system tray and select ‘Pause Watcher’.

That will hopefully do it… unless you’ve got some other issue which happens to have the same symptom. Good luck :)

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