There’s no point in installing workshop mods when the base game doesn’t work, so no, I’ve got no workshop mods at all. Didn’t even know D4 had a workshop 
Damn, worth a shot. I hope you two can figure it out then!
Mhm, thx anyways 
@cliffski I don’t know if it matters, but I do run Win 10 Pro & Home (Home on my laptops). The log seems to think I run Win7, but I didn’t think that was of any relevance.
No, its just checking its window 7 or later. Thats super weird its happening on multiple PCs that you own though.
I also guess my game license is irrelevant (ie. this couldn’t possibly have to do with my license nor Steam user)?
To sum up things I find weird about this:
- This error is replicable on multiple devices.
- Sound issues do not occur in any other games, not even D3.
- Steam version gives me the splash screen for a few secs, then a runtime error, followed by a CTD. Standalone version downloaded via the humble bundle page does not produce a runtime error, but it does freeze at the splash screen for a few secs followed by a CTD. debug.txt looks identical and the game seems to crash at the same position in the flow.
I do have a slight hypothesis that this error does not have to do with sound at all though.
Run game as admin
Already attempted, as is described by the very first post in this thread.
This sounds like nonsense, but I have seen it as an actual documented bug in other games:
Create a new windows user called something really simple like ‘test’
Then log in as them and run the game.
The only thing i can imagine is consistent over multiple PCs for the same user is the username… and I notice its using onedrive. Is that over all the PCs? is the user profile on a remote PC or network drive maybe?
I think this is the issue. The game is trying to read in what volumes are set for the music and SFX. It reads a file from the my documents\my games\democracy4 folder for this. That could theoretically be it…
lol I searched for OneDrive in forums and it showed me “game crashed” threads…
Somehow your game engine hates OneDrive…
i don’t even know what it is. Isn’t it some virtual drive networking nonsense microsoft trick people into using? You would think microsofts own windows file APIs would work with its own products but here we are…
Yeah, its builtin service in Windows 10.
I thought something along the lines of it being my Microsoft user. I’ll try to disable OneDrive as a first step - if that doesn’t work, I’ll try to create another user. If that fails too, I’ll just boot up a VM and see.
Just a status update. Removing OneDrive and moving the document folder to the Windows default location for Document folder didn’t help,
I now suddenly got something in eventvwr:
Faulting application name: Democracy4.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5fd67bbd
Faulting module name: MSVCR120.dll, version: 12.0.40664.0, time stamp: 0x5926098c
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x000a7646
Faulting process id: 0x50b8
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6d3fe486a3726
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Democracy 4\Democracy4.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\MSVCR120.dll
Report Id: c643310e-a3b6-4fb5-8e22-ab44da227a81
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
that doesn’t help unfortunately, but if you never got that before and suddenly do… I really don’t know whats going on with your PCs 
Okay, after removing OneDrive, I’m getting some more info in the debug.txt that might help you help me
“[13:58:55:246]- ----DEBUG FILE----
[13:58:55:246]- Windows 7 detected
[13:58:55:246]- Game version: 1.17
[13:58:55:247]- Failed to open file: C:\Users\henri\Documents/My Games/democracy4/mod_status.ini : 2
[13:58:55:247]- GBufferedFile failed to open file [C:\Users\henri\Documents/My Games/democracy4/mod_status.ini]
[13:58:55:565]- Setting Color palette
[13:58:55:565]- Updating BG shader
[13:58:55:565]- BG shader updated
[13:58:55:565]- Saving options
[13:58:55:565]- Options saved
[13:58:55:565]- Color palette set
[13:58:55:567]- Desktop resolution is 3840 x 2160
[13:58:55:568]- GEngine::Init Engine mode: 3840x2160
[13:58:55:568]- GEngine::Desktop mode: 3840x2160
[13:58:55:568]- Matching desktop res
[13:58:55:568]- Calling SDL_CreateWindow: 3840x2160@0 [fullscreen]
[13:58:56:310]- Attempting to initialise steam
[13:58:57:222]- Steam initialisation success
[13:58:57:223]- Checking steam workshop subscriptions…
[13:58:57:225]- Requesting steam stats…
[13:58:57:225]- …Steam stats requested
[13:58:57:226]- Initialising 3D Engine
[13:58:57:255]- OpenGL Vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
[13:58:57:255]- OpenGL Renderer: GeForce RTX 2070/PCIe/SSE2
[13:58:57:255]- OpenGL Version : 4.6.0 NVIDIA 460.89
[13:58:57:256]- Initialising global vertex buffer
[13:58:57:736]- Failed to open file: C:\Users\henri\Documents/My Games/democracy4/stats.ini : 2
[13:58:57:736]- GBufferedFile failed to open file [C:\Users\henri\Documents/My Games/democracy4/stats.ini]
[13:58:57:827]- Initialisizng Vector Engine
[13:58:58:142]- Setting vector Engine Dimensions
[13:58:58:149]- VE Clearing existing textures to replace with new [3840]x[2160]
[13:58:58:154]- Initializing Text
[13:58:58:154]- Creating font config
[13:58:58:154]- font config created
[13:58:58:154]- adding font directory
[13:58:58:384]- font map created
[13:58:58:384]- creating pango layout
[13:58:58:393]- pango layout created
[13:58:58:394]- PANGO context font map font families:
[13:58:58:394]- Noto Sans
[13:58:58:394]- Sans
[13:58:58:394]- Serif
[13:58:58:394]- Monospace
[13:58:58:407]- Initializing Input
[13:58:58:407]- Initializing sound
[13:58:58:407]- Initialising Sound Engine
[13:58:58:407]- Resetting Sound volumes to maximum
[13:58:58:407]- Loading in volume presets”
Final try at giving you some uninformed help.
You might have already done this, but after quickly skimming over your posts I didn’t see it (could have just missed it)
But have you tried a TOTAL uninstall of Democracy 4? Not just getting rid of the My Games folder, but going into Control Panel, Uninstall a Program, and deleting it there, and then getting rid of any file that may still exist afters in Program Files x86, Steam, SteamApps, common, Democracy4, and then also the My Games folder?
After that, try a reinstall?
Just a suggestion if you havent done it once already.
Yup, already done. As a last measure, I will try to load it up in a VM and see.
There was this thread that got fixed earlier today, and he posted a similar crash log to you.
Have you tried doing what this guy said he did? He said he plugged his monitor into his graphics card rather than his integrated graphics, and that it worked fine as a result.
Crashing on that line implies an inability to read a file from the disk. Thats definitely something to do with either permissions or file-systems.
All the game is doing there is checking to see if you already have a config file which stores the music volume, then reading in that (simple text) file. The only way that can go wrong is if a 3rd party program nukes the game for daring to read a file (from my documents so…allowed), or if some file-system shenanigans mean the O/S is not serving up the file it claims to.
I wonder what got him to use the motherboard’s I/O instead of the GPU’s in the first place In other words; I’ve never connected any monitor to my motherboard’s I/O, so this is not applicable to me. Thanks anyways