Small Soldiers Squad Commander - Crashing before starting

[KutieKatelyn]

Hey there, looked up this game before hand and saw a thread from March talking about the game having some iffy video quality and while the people there mention the game running on default DxWnd settings, I for the life of me can not get it to run. DxWnd pops up, logo fades out, and then it closes. Any help would very much be appreciated. Here's the log for a few of the attempts I made.

EDIT 1: For the record I'm trying to get it in a window. I can play the game just fine in full screen but it completely locks me out of using anything without Alt-Tab

[gho]

I see that you are using a Steam release and there are a few compatibility layers associated with the program. But clearing the compatibility could impact on the possibility to run the game in fullscreen mode, so it's better to take care.
Can you describe better the Alt-Tab problem?

[KutieKatelyn]

ah, so removing Steam from the equation should let it run?

The Alt Tab lets me minimize the game but I'm trying to record footage of it so having it be in its own window would help me to capture footage easier.

[gho]

ah, so removing Steam from the equation should let it run?

No, I didn't mean that. I just wanted to say that if the game simply doesn't work you can try whatever you like to make it running, you'd have nothing to lose, but a Steam game is supposed to work correctly in its own way, so if you alter some dispositions like the applied shims you may have it malfunctioning. So, it's better be prudent, though in the worst case you may always uninstall and reinstall the game.

The Alt Tab lets me minimize the game but I'm trying to record footage of it so having it be in its own window would help me to capture footage easier.

Have you tried to set the "Main > Do not notify on task switch" flag? That should allow you to get out of the window without the game noticing it.

[KutieKatelyn]

I removed it from my Steam library but it didn't change anything afaik. It still just closes. Here's the updated log. It's still in the Steam folder but I can't imagine that'd change anything.

[gho]

I reinstalled my copy of the CD game (non-Steam version) and it works pretty well with the attached configuration, also using fake-registry and fake-cd functionalities. The fake cd has to hold the "data" and "setup" folders and the autorun.inf and setup.exe files.
If you still have problems with the steam release, you may download some abandonware CD version and make it worling with DxWnd. It runs perfectly in a window and allows the mouse to move freely inside or outside.

[KutieKatelyn]

Mine was the Abandonware version too. I just got it setup to display on Steam thanks to a friend but they're unavailable currently lol. This dxw didn't work either. It does the same thing.

[gho]

Please, repeat the experiment using this Logs configuration (see screenshot). The previous test was logging almost nothing at all ...

[KutieKatelyn]

Sorry, been a hectic few days but went ahead and did it exactly what you asked. There's a lot more info to sort through though so hopefully you can make some sense of it.

[gho]

Well, going through the log is not that difficult, usually it's just a matter of finding the last error and try to understand why it happens .... but in this case there is no error in proximity of the game sudden termination!
I was puzzled by this couple of log lines:

[00000:594] advapi32.RegQueryValueExA: hKey=0x18c("0x18c") ValueName="DDrawIgnore" Reserved=0 lpType=0x19fd44 lpData=0x19fd3c lpcbData=0x19fd38->(4)
[00000:594] advapi32.RegQueryValueExA: res=ERROR_SUCCESS size=4 type=0x4(REG_DWORD) Data=0x1

these seems to tell that the game is wondering if it should ignore the ddraw and the answer is 0x1=YES. This is weird, also because my copy of the game doesn't search this registry key. Maybe one could try to find this registry key and change if to 0? By the way, The key is 0x18c, but this number gets out of the blue, this is really strange ... and in particular doenn't let me know where the key is located.
Another experiment that you could try is to set the "Compat. > Handle exceptions" flags "Suppress DEP" and/or "Set NOPs" to see if the sudden termination could be caused by a game exception.
In the meanwhile I'll try to devise some other experiment, though I'm quite running out of ideas ...

[KutieKatelyn]

I did all three of those and it crashed every time... I wish I knew what was causing it because I have no idea what that ddraw registry is nor would I even know where to change it or how to even look for it.