The game does not launch and crashes

[TaoTeChing]

Hi to everybody,
I bought this game and it does not launch!
After the screen with the title of the game the screen goes black and an error message appears: "Adobe Projector stopped working".
I tried different resolutions of the monitor and the troubleshooting suggested by Kingius but the problem continues.
If the game is not compatible with Win10 the developers should have stated that.
Does anyone have a solution or a suggestion?
Thanks in advance.

[Kingius]

I've moved the topic to the troubleshooting forum to help others who might experience the same issue you have. The game is supported on Windows 10 and has been tested on Windows 10 during its development, so there is likely something else happening which is causing your crash. Glad to see you've tried the resolution/monitor options just in case it was one of those that was the issue.

Here is something you can do to help determine at what point in the launch cycle the game is crashing.

Right click the game in your library list view, select properties and click the Local Files tab. Click the Browse Local Files button and the folder the game is installed into will launch in Windows Explorer. You'll see a file there called Dbgview, which is an executable. Launch the file by double clicking it. Once launched, this will listen to debug messages which programs on your computer output, including the Dungeons of Castle Madness.

Run the game again and once it's crashed, take a look at the debug output in the Dbgview window. If you could screen capture or copy/paste the output that will really help determine the cause of the problem.

[TaoTeChing]

Greetings Kingius,
Here is the output of the Dbgview:
00000001 0.00000000 [8376] onecore\base\appmodel\resourcepolicy\gameconfigstore\client\gameconfigstoreclient.cpp(104)\resourcepolicyclient.dll!00007FFEBBC1976C: (caller: 00007FFEA0BA0AD3) LogHr(34) tid(72c) 80070490 Elemento não encontrado.
00000002 0.00298646 [10112] windows\dwm\udwm\toplevelwindow3d.cpp(346)\udwm.dll!00007FFEBB42D108: (caller: 00007FFEBB404642) LogHr(1) tid(265c) 80070057 Parâmetro incorreto.
00000003 20.07831192 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(113) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000004 20.57721710 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(114) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000005 27.07734680 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(115) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000006 32.24694443 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(116) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000007 47.95443344 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(117) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000008 47.97011566 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(118) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000009 63.50196075 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(119) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000010 73.19624329 [8376] onecore\base\appmodel\resourcepolicy\gameconfigstore\client\gameconfigstoreclient.cpp(104)\resourcepolicyclient.dll!00007FFEBBC1976C: (caller: 00007FFEA0BA0AD3) LogHr(35) tid(27a8) 80070490 Elemento não encontrado.
00000011 80.66822815 [10924] Game update: AppID 506840 "The Dungeons of Castle Madness", ProcID 6120, IP 0.0.0.0:0
00000012 80.69018555 [6120] FTH: (6120): *** Fault tolerant heap shim applied to current process. This is usually due to previous crashes. ***
00000013 80.80055237 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(120) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000014 84.10159302 [8376] onecore\base\appmodel\resourcepolicy\gameconfigstore\client\gameconfigstoreclient.cpp(104)\resourcepolicyclient.dll!00007FFEBBC1976C: (caller: 00007FFEA0BA0AD3) LogHr(36) tid(27a8) 80070490 Elemento não encontrado.
00000015 89.99230957 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(121) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000016 89.99267578 [8376] shell\explorer\taskband2\taskband2.cpp(4148)\Explorer.EXE!00007FF626BB7BDA: (caller: 00007FFEBE7A7DE3) ReturnHr(122) tid(3268) 80004005 Erro não especificado
00000017 91.96104431 [10924] Game removed: AppID 506840 "The Dungeons of Castle Madness", ProcID 6120
00000018 91.97835541 [10924] No cached sticky mapping in ActivateActionSet.

The translation:
Elemento não encontrado --> Element not find
Erro não especificado ---> Error not specified
One more remark: as I said the message "Adobe Projector stopped working" appeared and the game aborted. I put this message in Google and found that this Adobe Projector (a part of Flash, argh!) is not compatible with Windows Vista and above.
Thanks for trying to solve the problem,

[Kingius]

The Flash link is a red herring, the game was actually developed on a Windows 7 64 bit box. The game does use Flash video for its intro (see below).

I've added a new command line switch to the latest version which will help us here as dbgView seems to be capturing evertything but the game. If you add the launch option '-l' (in the same way you would do this for the monitor/resolution options) the game will now create a log file of its specific debug messages and it won't include messages from other processes. If you would like to add this to your launch options and then look inside C:\Users\{your username on windows}\AppData\Local\Dungeons of Castle Madness (if your appdata folder is on C Drive, for example) for a file called log.txt we should find just the messages from the game as it tried to initialise.

In case the intro is causing your game to crash you could also add the switch -sk (also new to this version) which would make the game skip the intro and go straight to a static screen on the main menu.

[TaoTeChing]

Greetings Kingius,
I have added the launch option '-l' then tried to run the game. The same message appeared "Adobe Projector stopped working" and the game did not lauch. Then I searched for the Dungeons of Castle Madness folder and did not found it. There is no such folder.

Next, I added the launch option '-sk' and runned the game. Again the same message appeared "Adobe Projector stopped working" and the game did not lauch. Then I searched for the Dungeons of Castle Madness folder and did not found it. There is no such folder.

[Kingius]

Thanks, we'll look into this. With no folder created the game failed extremely early in this initialisation process.

[marcvc47]

ZELFDE ADOBE PROJECTOR PROBLEEM

[Kingius]

Here are some things you could try while we are looking into this. Navigate to the game's install location (right click the game in your library list view, select properties and click the Local Files tab. Click the Browse Local Files button and the folder the game is installed into will launch in Windows Explorer). Right click the DungeonsOfCastleMadness229 executable file. Go to properties, compatability and select Run as Administrator. This is probably worth a try all on its own in case your Windows 10 configuration is locking something down that the game is trying to access. You could also try selecting an earlier version of Windows here, from 7 down to XP service pack 3, to see if these resolve the crash. If any of these settings do work for you please post them here as it may assist others.

[TaoTeChing]

Greetings marcvc47,
I don't speak holland. I hope you understand English or ein bisschen Deutsch.

[TaoTeChing]

Greetings Kingius,
I set "run as administrator" and tried every compatibility option from Win 95 to Win8, here are the results:
- Win95: the game appears, I can choose a class and a name. There is some text and voice telling about the Castle and the game begins. The screen is black, at the bottom left there are icons of movement (turn left, right, etc.), at the bottom center I see globes showing life, mana and at the bottom right I see a map as I move and a compass. But: the rest of the screen is black, no matter to where I move. I can click on the upper right corner of the screen and go to the main menu. When I quit the game a message appears: "Quit process stopped working".

- Win98: when I lauch the game a message appears: "This application requires an Xtra (Billenium Transitions Xtra) that either does not exist or failed to initialize properly. Please make sure the appropriate Xtras are in the Xtras folder(s)."
I click OK and game runs exactly as described above for Win95.

- WinXP, WinXP SP2, WinXP SP3, Vista, Vista SP1, Vista SP2, Win7, Win8, Win 10: the message "Adobe Projector stopped working" appeared and the game aborted.
.
Remark: the game is with launch option '-sk'

[Kingius]

Good testing there, very thorough. Amazing that any of the codebase works at all with pre-Windows XP! The game is built on top of DirectX9 (though it will try to fall back on a software renderer which is probably responsible for the black screen you see - it can't cope with the directX9 shaders). Looking online there does seem to be some incompatability for some users of Windows 10 with DirectX9 games (example, see threads like: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2756506/directx-games-work-windows.html). What you could try is a solution that seems to have worked for other Windows 10 users who had problems with DirectX9 games, which is to do a manual install of DirectX9 from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109 and then run the game as normal with no compatibility mode. If this works it will be because the low level framework is trying to map straight to DX9, and while DX10+ do have DX9 within them, it can't find it. Worth a try while we look at things on our end in the codebase.

[TaoTeChing]

Greetings Kingius,
I downloaded the file "directx_Jun2010_redist.exe", clicked on it and extracted it to "C:\Users\a\AppData\Local\Temp\Dx9SDK". Then I executed "DXSETUP.exe" and it was installed. DX9 does not appears on Uninstall-Programs-ControlPanel nor does DX10.

I removed the compatibility options and launched the game. The message "Adobe Projector stopped working" appeared and the game aborted. Remark: the game is with launch option '-sk'.

I tried with Win7 compatibility and the same problem occured.

Then I extracted the DX9 to the folder "C:\dx9sdk" and executed "DXSETUP.exe" to install again the DX9. Tried to run the game with and without compatibility and the same message "Adobe Projector stopped working" appeared and the game aborted.

[Kingius]

Great testing there. I've uploaded a number of Windows10 tests here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/57qsgbbb3zjgvgs/Windows10Tests.zip?dl=0

If you could, could you run each one in turn and note if any of these crash on your system? This will help narrow down if the crash is caused by one of the modules that the game is using, and if so, we can look at creating a new build that replaces the module. The tests are simply executable files that contains various modules that the game uses and are just to see if initialising any of these causes the crash.

[TaoTeChing]

Greetings Kingius,

Here are the results:

Test 1 and Test 16- appeared the message "Test Successful"

Test 2 to Test 15 - nothing happened

[Kingius]

Did any of the tests result in a crash?

[TaoTeChing]

Greetings Kingius,

When I said nothing happened it means I clicked on the *.exe and no message appears, no window opens. It is like clicking with the left mouse button on an empty spot in your working area. Got the idea?