Game won't launch

[El Diablo Negro Gato]

2022-10-27 11:11:03 MAIN Thread: 2304
SE EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION at address 0x000000014012F427 inside
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR OCEAN THE DIVINE FORCE\SO6.exe
loaded at base address 0x0000000140000000
Invalid operation: read at address 0xfffffbc8000003d1

[External Code: C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll]
[External Code: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll]
[External Code: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR OCEAN THE DIVINE FORCE\SO6.exe]
[External Code: C:\Windows\System32\KERNEL32.DLL]
[External Code: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll]

Tried restarting and verifying game files

10/28
At this point I have tried many things and none of them have worked the game won't even get past the first time install I will probably wait till the end of the day and if I don't hear from a rep or find a solution I will be refunding.

After trying things over and over Denuvo told me I can no longer authenticate it ♥♥♥♥ square ♥♥♥♥ tri-ace ♥♥♥♥ denuvo I can't wait to pirate this ♥♥♥♥ you won't be getting my money again.

[Yaya]

Bump.
The patch fixed absolutely nothing regarding this problem.

[Sage Pirotess]

Originally posted by Yaya:

Bump.
The patch fixed absolutely nothing regarding this problem.

True that

[adam_odell]

Bump.
That sucks.

[ckpg1]

Just sharing what worked for me:

In my own experience, I kept getting crashes when trying to start the game proper (new game, load game etc). I was able to play some parts of the intro before it would eventually crash at some point. Tried compile shaders etc, and still crashed.

What I eventually found was the problem for me was my windows pagefile settings. I have an SSD and 16 gb of RAM, so I had my pagefile set to something small like 2 gb located on my SSD. I have never had pagefile issues with other games before, so I didn't really consider it before, but apparently this game really needs the pagefile to be large enough from the get-go, and doesn't only fill it when the system memory runs out of space (just my theory anyway). After setting my pagefile to be 16 gb (equal to my RAM size) on my HDD, I could play the game through to the end with no problems after. Having the pagefile running from a HDD seems to perform well enough, so if you worry that it might wear down your SSD with write activity, go ahead and set the pagefile to use a HDD.

[adam_odell]

I've gotten a "new" refurb workstation (ThinkStation P520) and built my existing storage/OS and GPU into it. It's a Skylake Xeon with 2x8GB sticks of DDR4. The game now boots fine instead of black screen CTD. GPU driver is newer- Windows has gotten a few updates since, but I have exactly the same installed programs and storage as always. Either my 8GB of RAM in the HP Z420 was a problem (hard requirement?), or it was my Sandy Bridge-era Xeon. I'm still unconvinced that this game isn't requiring AVX2. Very likely my CPU (or RAM) is what got this game running after migration.

[76561197969632508]

Edit: Don't think it's an avx2 problem, but likely just does a cpu check for ivy bridge or newer, from what I can tell only 3 new instructions were implemented into the Ivy bridge since the sandy bridge.

I was able to launch the game using {LINK REMOVED} Intel SDE , download and extract it somewhere, now in the Star Ocean game root directory make a file called start.cmd, then edit it with notepad and add this (insert the path to intel SDE where you extracted it).

 C:\<path to intel sde>\sde.exe  -ivb -- SO6.exe 

Save the file, then run it as administrator.

Anyways this worked on my i7 2600k with 16 GB of ram, this game does have some lag and stutters which is improved by letting the game build the shader cache (under settings), besides for that performance is acceptable on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, not really a gpu hog but kills cpu often 50-90% use, I am wondering if SDE is emulation navtive instructions as-well.

{LINK REMOVED} Proof

Edit:2
The game is calling vcvtph2ps which is part of the F16C instruction set, F16C support, was introduced into the Ivy Bridge and later CPU's, hopefully can eventually find a way to just emulate F16c without the performance hit of SDE.

Anyways I noticed developers are getting lazy and not optimizing code, this game is not anything special graphic or tech wise.

[Wymn]

Originally posted by The_Hunter:

Edit: Don't think it's an avx2 problem, but likely just does a cpu check for ivy bridge or newer, from what I can tell only 3 new instructions were implemented into the Ivy bridge since the sandy bridge.

I was able to launch the game using Intel SDE [www.intel.com], download and extract it somewhere, now in the Star Ocean game root directory make a file called start.cmd, then edit it with notepad and add this (insert the path to intel SDE where you extracted it).

 C:\<path to intel sde>\sde.exe  -ivb -- SO6.exe 

Save the file, then run it as administrator.

Anyways this worked on my i7 2600k with 16 GB of ram, this game does have some lag and stutters which is improved by letting the game build the shader cache (under settings), besides for that performance is acceptable on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, not really a gpu hog but kills cpu often 50-90% use, I am wondering if SDE is emulation navtive instructions as-well.

Proof [ibb.co]

Yes, thanks to you now i'm compile shader inside the game. My PC at work is a i5 2320 + 12gb ram + R9 280x DirectCU II and start menu was like 15fps lmao but on option was like 50fps. I used to play this with Geforce Now so i had all the graphic option in high and even resolution at 4k so the process of compile shader will take some.. long time probably 4 hours i think because well needed to lower all the graphics to low and resolution to 1080p, started at 1015am and now is 11:18am and still 17% so i still have 6 hours more of work anyways.

I will update after the compile shader (if this doesn't ♥♥♥♥ up my PC) because before changing any option i clicked on continue and game crashed, i did had the game uninstalled prior to this since i was playing in cloud so this is a fresh install so i don't know if the intel SDE skip the initial compile shader process, if it does then my theory was correct thank to you and square enix / TriAce need to fix that lol.

Edit: The Fix works but FPS stucks and max to 30 in menu, 15fps while exploring and 7 to 15fps in battle. If you are desesperate to play: do a fresh install, wait till initial compile shader finish, the game will close itself anyways, execute the game from the start.cmd and you are set to play on 2nd to 3rd gen cpu or amd equal. Still chaging the graphics from low to high didn't change for me the fps so it won't matter. So looks like once someone finds a way to fix all this i think low end pc can play this game at least on 45fps. I think the DEVS should see this and look into it or any modder who can help.

[76561197969632508]

Originally posted by Wymn:

Originally posted by The_Hunter:

Edit: Don't think it's an avx2 problem, but likely just does a cpu check for ivy bridge or newer, from what I can tell only 3 new instructions were implemented into the Ivy bridge since the sandy bridge.

I was able to launch the game using {LINK REMOVED} Intel SDE , download and extract it somewhere, now in the Star Ocean game root directory make a file called start.cmd, then edit it with notepad and add this (insert the path to intel SDE where you extracted it).

 C:\<path to intel sde>\sde.exe  -ivb -- SO6.exe 

Save the file, then run it as administrator.

Anyways this worked on my i7 2600k with 16 GB of ram, this game does have some lag and stutters which is improved by letting the game build the shader cache (under settings), besides for that performance is acceptable on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, not really a gpu hog but kills cpu often 50-90% use, I am wondering if SDE is emulation navtive instructions as-well.

{LINK REMOVED} Proof

Yes, thanks to you now i'm compile shader inside the game. My PC at work is a i5 2320 + 12gb ram + R9 280x DirectCU II and start menu was like 15fps lmao but on option was like 50fps. I used to play this with Geforce Now so i had all the graphic option in high and even resolution at 4k so the process of compile shader will take some.. long time probably 4 hours i think because well needed to lower all the graphics to low and resolution to 1080p, started at 1015am and now is 11:18am and still 17% so i still have 6 hours more of work anyways.

I will update after the compile shader (if this doesn't ♥♥♥♥ up my PC) because before changing any option i clicked on continue and game crashed, i did had the game uninstalled prior to this since i was playing in cloud so this is a fresh install so i don't know if the intel SDE skip the initial compile shader process, if it does then my theory was correct thank to you and square enix / TriAce need to fix that lol.

Edit: The Fix works but FPS stucks and max to 30 in menu, 15fps while exploring and 7 to 15fps in battle. If you are desesperate to play: do a fresh install, wait till initial compile shader finish, the game will close itself anyways, execute the game from the start.cmd and you are set to play on 2nd to 3rd gen cpu or amd equal. Still chaging the graphics from low to high didn't change for me the fps so it won't matter. So looks like once someone finds a way to fix all this i think low end pc can play this game at least on 45fps. I think the DEVS should see this and look into it or any modder who can help.

Yeah, that's about the FPS I am seeing more or less regardless of the graphic settings, I believe SDE is emulating ALL the native instructions of the ivb architecture (even ones supported by our cpu natively) as-well causing a major slowdown, since when starting the game without SDE it only takes about 10 second to show the game window, with SDE it can take up to 1 minute, so definitely a huge performance hit going on.

Hope for a patch or less impactful mod, I believe we just need to emulate just the F16C instructions and pass the processer off as an ivy bridge, {LINK REMOVED}this project might be a good start but instead of the popcnt instruction do the F16C stuff instead, and CPU type, at least it's playable for now, I'll continue to try different things to see if I can improve performance.