Empires client won't start(yes I have the latest patches and have tried reinstalling)

I've been playing empires for quite a while now and this just started happening to me a few days ago - was right after a Steam update
(don't know if that was related or coincidence - hadn't installed any other apps recently other than Firefox2.0 and IE7.0)

When I start empires steam displays that little "Preparing to launch" window, but just hangs there and does nothing. :confused:

If I bring up the taskmanager, the CPU usage is perfectly normal - steam at 0 - 2 %, and mem usage is not fluctuating.

I've tried wiping the sourcemods/empires folder and reinstalling the
1.0 then 1.7 then 1.71 patches but I'm just getting the same behaviour. :eek:

Also tried the workarounds for the "Empires Not In My Games List" thread but those dont fix it either

Anyone had this happen to them before, or got any ideas how I might be able to fix it?

 

I think IE 7 is causing the problem, try deleting that and trying again.

 

Good idea Solokiller, still getting the same problem though - reinstalled empires again after uninstalling IE7. (wonder if Microsoft have snuck in underlying OS changes that they don't let me uninstall)

Some other mods are giving me the same problem aswell e.g. HL2CTF, whereas other mods work fine e.g. TheHidden. Odd how some mods still work but not others

Will have a snoop around the valve and microsoft sites and post back here if I find a fix

 

It might be something in the mod's gameinfo.txt, i don't know what the hidden uses though.

 

Have you tried the "shortcut fix" yet?

Ooo, my fix might actually get a name!

 

Ah, back in business
I had tried the shortcut with the "-applaunch 320" parameter and that didn't make any difference for me. Went back and tried the other 2 and found that "-applaunch 220" fixes the problem for me (115 doesn't work either)

Then had a look back in gameinfo.txt and changed the SteamAppId value from 320 to 220, and restarted Steam. It's working fine from within steam now aswell as the shortcut.

The difference between the mods that did and didn't work for me was that the SteamAppId in gameinfo.txt was either 320 or 220 - that seems to be why the Hidden was working fine but empires & hl2ctf were broken (all working now with the updated SteamAppId)

Thanks for your help Solokiller and Niarbeht

 

I hope you realize you just made your mods run on Half-life 2 instead of Half-life 2: Deathmatch, which means they are using an older version of the source engine. I believe demo recording is broken on that version. I would try re-installing Half-life 2: Deathmatch and put the app ids back to 320. If you can't get it to work like that, try changing the app id to 215, which will make the mods run on Source SDK Base, which always uses the most recent version of Source. If it still doesn't work, then either valve or microsoft has some explaining to do.

EDIT:
You could also try creating a shortcut containing the following:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\accountname\half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2.exe" -steam -game hl2mp -game "C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\SourceMods\Empires"
This is the command steam uses to start the game.

 

Nope I had no idea that's what i'd done, but I was delighted that it started working again at all -was starting to get worried there that I might have needed to reinstall steam completely - 30 GB and a knock on the door from my ISP - *shakes*

Bunged in App ID of 215 and that works fine for me aswell so I'll switch to that for the moment, cheers

Will try reloading deathmatch at the weekend

 

God hates me.

That's all there is to it.

Now, neither Steam's menu nor my shortcut will start Empires.

I officially HATE the fucktards at Valve.