Commercial Games made with MV don't run on my system...

[felsenstern]

Hiya,

over time I've bought several Games made with MV but unfortunately other than the free games I download from this forum, they don't run on my system... unless I keep deleting Web Data and Web Data-journal.

While I thought about setting up a batch process to do this task every time I'd start the game I wondered if there might be already a better solution out there.

-apology if this is not the right forum to ask.
-yes I did use the search function but couldn't make up a working search term that would get me to an answer.

 

[Andar]

it sounds as if you have your browsers (or a browser-addon) set to very high security, with a background program blocking access after it detects the games.

The technical difference between free games and commercial games is usually that free games are unencryted and not contained, while commercial games are not only encrypted but also usually inside a container-exe that hides the code and the browser running it.
And that last one can be mistaken for a regular program containing a hidden virus, especially since the browser still uses the general windows internet setting as soon as it is running.

Sorry, I don't know enough details about your system to help you finding the real cause, but the above would be my guess as to where you should start looking.

 

[felsenstern]

Unfortunately, it's not that easy. It was also my first thought, since my browser blocks almost any web game and if I want to play one I have to go through tons of exceptions to make it work. But in this case it's something different.

And it has to do with different node.js versions. From my understand the implementation of Greenworks for MV needs an older node.js, which causes the game to crash at launch as soon as a Game with a newer node.js has been played. - well until these two files Web Data and Web Data-journal) have been deleted.

In my case I immediately returned two games that didn't work and I also would've returned a third one if it hadn't been in my lib for too long already. Now that I know there is a workaround I can use that but, I had my hopes up for a more final solution.

 

[Shaz]

Based on your description, it sounds like it's "games released on steam" that aren't running for you, not "commercial games"? Or is Greenworks only used by commercial games on steam and not free ones? What about MV games you buy from other sources?

 

[TWings]

Might be because those games overwrote the default NW.js version to add Steam achievements. In that case, those games will stop working as soon as the user launches a newer version of NW.js (older version throwing an error at launch when detecting the newer files).
I'm not sure if there's any workaround other than ask the dev to update the game to the latest NW.js version.

 

[felsenstern]

@Shaz : yes, I was inaccurate due to better knowledge. I haven't played any commercial MV games from other sources yet and everything else I'm playing comes either from here or from rmnet. But you're right, any MV game commercial or not that is using greenworks to note achievements on steam in conjunction with this older node.js would have the same effect on my computer.

@TWings : Bummer, the author wrote that newer versions don't work correctly with greenworks which is the reason why he has to release also newer games with the old node.js (note from White Shadow: https://steamcommunity.com/games/794030/announcements/detail/1701694867549807423)

 

[TWings]

No wonder there's a problem, version 22.3 is more than 2 years old ! I'm currently working with version 30.4, while the last greenwork release is compatible with version 33.3 (and the latest NW.js version is 41.2), so you're bound to find a bunch of games using newer versions.
I don't know what the dev's issues are exactly, but considering the amount of games concerned, he should try to make it work. Asking customers to manually delete files every time they wanna play is not ideal. Maybe there's a way for the games to write/read those files from/in a different folder used only by the game ?
It's worth noting than if you don't mess with the default version, MV games are working no matter the NW.js version your PC has been running. So maybe MV does something by default to prevent that issue and it's overwritten when manually updating NW.js ?

Anyway I'm just thinking out loud here. It's definitely not a default Maker issue. It's due to tempering with it actually. But I'm sure it affects a lot of MV games on Steam so any real solution would probably be most helpful.
I intend to look into it myself too eventually, but I'm still months away (at best) from a Steam release, so this is really low on my priorities right now.

 

[bgillisp]

Sometimes also running the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode can help, and/or running as administrator. You'd have to find the file it runs though to fix that.

As an side, that NW.js seems to cause a lot of problems, and is one of the reasons I still use ACE, especially as we as developers can't control when it gets updated. What do we do if 10 years down the line a new update breaks all MV games? We might not even be game making then.

 

[TWings]

Sometimes also running the game in Windows 7 compatibility mode can help, and/or running as administrator.

This won't help. I'm still running on Windows 7 and have the same issues.

As an side, that NW.js seems to cause a lot of problems, and is one of the reasons I still use ACE, especially as we as developers can't control when it gets updated.

As I mentionned above, this is not a default MV issue. The default MV works just fine. This is caused by devs messing with the files and so the responsibility here is not Kadokawa but the games devs.

What do we do if 10 years down the line a new update breaks all MV games?

That is a whole other problem that isn't limited to MV but rather every PC game/program. New windows versions, hardware, drivers... can prevent a game from working and there's not much you can do about it except providing some patch or workaround. You'd be surprised how many old games aren't actually working nowdays. When Windows 10 came out, lots of games weren't compatible as they were (some still aren't).

 

[bgillisp]

Well true, but the thread on Steam is saying it is due to running a program using an updated nw.js, then trying to run this. So what do we do if MV updates it? Do we just say all older versions are out of luck?

Granted it would help though if they used another method to do Steam achievements too.

 

[TWings]

This has nothing to do with NW.js as it is in the default MV setting. Kadokawa did update it to version 25.4 when they released MV 1.6 and I don't believe it has caused any issue for games running 1.5 or lower (correct me if I'm wrong here, I'm not using 1.6 yet).
Again, the default MV setting seems to handle NW.js properly (I got the case after updating NW.js where my game wouldn't run anymore with older NW.js versions, while it would run perfectly with the default MV version (older too)). The problem comes up when a dev overwrites manually several MV/NW.js core files in order to force update the NW.js version. I assume somewhere in the process it's overwriting some key settings of MV that allows to handle NW.js versioning.

 

[felsenstern]

I want to thank everyone for the answers here. And @TWings also for the insides. I'm not sure really what to do next, but I know my options now.