Game Won't Start at All

[Liam Stillwell]

Hey guys,

So, I'm having a pretty weird combination off issues. I don't have any clue as to what could be causing them as I'm not getting any error messages (the game just...crashes) and the game was running fine for the first couple hours of play.

Here is a list of the issues, simply put: 1. If I try to start a new game, the game crashes immediately after the Marsh level loads 2. When the game crashes, the gamma on my screen is all screwed up. 3. I'm not getting any error message so I have no way of identifying what the problem is. 4. OBS won't detect the window, so I can't use Window Capture OR Game Capture to try and record the error.

I'm running the game on Windows 10 x64 My graphics card is an Nvidia GTX 1060.

[Frank Sapone]

Latest 64-bit "FULL" install being used?

Does it crash when you do "map e1m1b" in the console?

[Liam Stillwell]

Hey Frank, thanks for getting back to me.

So, I reinstalled the game and the mod to try out your suggestions, and I've run into another issue. I was curious as to whether resolution had anything to do with the game crashing, so I changed some of the video settings. When I changed to Windowed Mode, the window was offset in a weird way, so I couldn't move my mouse up to change the resolution, as shown in the screenshot below.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game, but when I ran daikatana.exe, I got the same settings. It's as if the app "remembered" what my settings were the last time it was run on this machine (even though I even re-downloaded the installation package off of the download's page to try and ensure a completely clean install).

I have some screenshots I can send you, but they're just over 1 MB, so Bitbucket won't let me upload them. Any other way for me to get them to you?

Also, yes, I am using the latest x64 FULL release.

[Frank Sapone]

The game will remember your settings because the config file is stored at My Documents\My Games\Daikatana\data.

Delete the current.cfg file in there and you will have default settings.

In the video menu you will notice you have multiple options. You can select fullscreen, windowed or borderless. Borderless windows is probably what you want on a modern system.

[Liam Stillwell]

So, I found the config file in My Documents and deleted it, and that fixed the issue with the offset window.

However, when I tried using the console to access the level, the game still crashed the same way it would when starting a new game.

[Liam Stillwell]

Another update,

I theorized that there may be some corruption in the "My Documents" folder, hence why a reinstall wasn't fixing the issues.

So I tried this:

1. I uninstalled Daikatana from Steam
2. I deleted the folder from steamapps/common
3. I deleted the "My Documents/My Games/Daikatana folder

I reinstalled Daikatana on Steam, reinstalled the patch, But this time, I didn't do that whole 'pak file verification' thing.

Now that I think about it, I remember when the issues started happening. When I first installed the patch, I went though the '.pak file verication' process, and then the 'update process' (it closed the app, asked me if I wanted to run the "DAIKATANA_LATEST" or whatever it was called, etc.); everything was working fine.

But then, I started the game the next day, and it asked to verify the pak files and then update AGAIN, even after I had already done all this. I thought maybe a new release had been pushed and it was auto-updating, so I clicked yes.

Ever since then, I haven't been able to start the game; Using the console, doing a clean reinstall; none of it works.

[Frank Sapone]

It sounds very possible that your Daikatana folder may have a permissions issue, or even in your My Documents folder.

Give Everyone Full Control ownership to your Daikatana and your My Games/Daikatana folder. Let me know if that works.

If it still fails, you can create a blank portable.cfg file in your Daikatana/Data folder. This will bypass saving to My Documents.

[Liam Stillwell]

Well, that did it!

I changed the permissions for the game directory folders and sure enough, everything is working now. Thanks!

I still occasionally get the whole "Failed to allocate _____ bytes" error that corrupts some of my saves, but other than that the game runs great now.

[Frank Sapone]

By any chance do you have saves that you know will load, but if you go to the next map then it will fail? We've been trying to narrow down this Failed to allocate error, which appears to be unique to 64-bit builds.

Have you noticed any pattern in reproducing it? I have not had this bug happen to me, or any of the people who tested the 64-bit builds. We haven't found a common cause.