How to configure without Java installed

How to configure your game settings without having Java Runtime installed.

Instructions

The launcher was written in Java but the game itself doesn't use Java at all. But the settings need to be done using the launcher as the settings file is in a binary format, so changing settings with a text editor won't do it.

I have written a launcher in C++ that resembles the original one and should work the same way.
You can download the latest release from Github and replace the binary SonicLauncher.exe inside the game directory:
https://github.com/darealshinji/sonic-4-launcher/releases

Have fun!

Note: the source code is available to anyone under free licences and can be compiled with both MinGW and Visual Studio 2019. The used images are not free. Wine users may want to stick with release 2, as the newer version doesn't seem to work correctly when I tested it.

[cristobal1492]

BTW this also works on linux/steam deck, just tested.

[Romactu]

I appreciate your help @djcj

The solution worked, but I need to let you know is, downloading unofficial products from other people in GitHub is not safe quite yet, I hope they'll fix the security issues and ban all hackers once and for all.
I'm not stopping you from downloading those stuff, just be careful when you do this around GitHub.

I love GitHub, I want to say it's useful, but is the hackers is what's killing me.
I wish Valve developer team will include that replacing the original launcher file due to requiring java runtime 1.6, so that way I have nothing to worry about it.

Do you want to ask me questions like why or something?

[djcj]

@url8bit: enable playing with Proton and use the launcher release 2.

[url8bit]

Can you make this work on Linux and Steam Deck?

Currently, the only known way to play this game on Linux is to install Windows Vista or up in VMware.

[davidcavalleri]

I've tried the SonicLauncher files and neither of them worked.

[SonicTylanGamer]

I got it, thanks bud

[djcj]

Go to the link, download sonic-4-launcher_r4_gcc.zip or sonic-4-launcher_r4_msvc.zip , extract SonicLauncher.exe and replace it with the one from the Sonic game directory. Sorry but I'm not going to publish a more detailed guide to such a simple task.

By the way, the latest release is statically linked and doesn't require any external Visual C++ runtime files. None of the binaries are linked against MSVCP.dll! If you run into such an error it's clearly something else. DirectX however is required.

[SonicTylanGamer]

Can someone please tell me how to do this, show me some steps or something.

[kosmicant]

i did all that but i got a missing DLL error, MSVCP.dll, how to fix it?

[djcj]

Download sonic-4-launcher_r4_gcc.zip, extract it and replace the SonicLauncher.exe file inside the game directory. That should do it.