On going anomalous failure to launch of Unreal Tournament 3.


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Hello,

I will endeavour to be brief. I performed every suggestion of other forum members have suggested; each attempt to launch Unreal 3 went without any success.

The identical symptoms other users are experiencing are the appearance of the "Preparing to launch dialog" and the subsequent disappearing of the screen and the game does not launch.

Direct X is updated, the operating system is Windows Xp with the latest updates, un-installed steam several times, renamed the "blob" file, restarted the computer several times and with no success.

Can anyone provide anymore suggestions? There are many of us who have been waiting for the better part of the day simply to play online and to evaluate this game.

Edit: I took the liberty of recording a small video depicting my attempts to launch Unreal tournament 3 and the sebsequent result afterwards. The following requires that your browser allow Flash video playback:

First video:http://endtimecurrentevents.servsuit.com/anomalous.html

Second video: http://endtimecurrentevents.servsuit.com/a...anomalous2.html

Thank you.

Cordially,

Agent_Of_Knowledge

Edited by Agent_Of_Knowledge
  Unimatrix Xero said:
have you tried verifying the cache?

Yes, I most certainly did - twice. I also deleted the .gcf files and re-downloaded the content. Short of formatting the operating system, which I do not intend to do, every suggestion has been attempted.

That's one hell of an issue. What are your system specifications? Perhaps that might shed some light. In the meantime, I'm going to try my best to find an answer. It's unfortunate when you can't get a game running. I definitely understand how frustrating it could be.

  Anaron said:
That's one hell of an issue. What are your system specifications? Perhaps that might shed some light. In the meantime, I'm going to try my best to find an answer. It's unfortunate when you can't get a game running. I definitely understand how frustrating it could be.

Thank you for your response and your offer of help. The specifications are depicted in this image:

computer.jpg

I am currently utilizing ATI's 9.3 Catalyst video drivers and VIA's latest chipset drivers.

As afterthought, the memory timings depicted in the image are incorrect. The current memory timings are set to 2-2-2-11.

You're welcome. I watched the video in your post numerous times and I have concluded that it's an issue with the Steam client. There's no apparent reason for the game to not work. From what I can surmise, the Steam client is unable to launch the game. I assume you reinstalled Steam. If not, backup the UT3 folder and reinstall the Steam client.

EDIT: Nevermind. I found your thread on the Steam forums.

Edited by Anaron

QUIT TALKING LIKE THAT. Can not tolerate correct and proper english on this forum ;/ But anyways, I see no reason hwy that system is failing to launch UT3. But if anything else, I would strongly reccomend a backup/reload of the OS to see if it fixes it.

I have the same problem, I launch the game and nothing happens, what's strange is it has always worked for me and I just did a OS reinstall and now it doesn't work. I haven't spent a whole lot of time trying to get it going yet, I uninstalled it last night and let it download again, I haven't tried it yet though.

This might not work but it's worth a try. In Steam, select File then click on "Go Offline". That will restart the Steam client in Offline mode. Once it restarts, try launching UT3. Here's what you should see before going restarting in Offline mode:

2mh8rxl.png

  Anaron said:
This might not work but it's worth a try. In Steam, select File then click on "Go Offline". That will restart the Steam client in Offline mode. Once it restarts, try launching UT3. Here's what you should see before going restarting in Offline mode:

2mh8rxl.png

The game refuses to run in offline mode as well.

It might be a glitch in the free weekend thing. I had it happen to me during the Left 4 Dead weekend.

Did you try the full installer for DirectX? I know it doesn't sound like it would matter, but when I was testing for GameTap frequently that would fix problems when the web installer wouldn't.

There is also a log called "Steam.log" in the client folder. It may hold some clues.

  GreyWolfSC said:
It might be a glitch in the free weekend thing. I had it happen to me during the Left 4 Dead weekend.

Did you try the full installer for DirectX? I know it doesn't sound like it would matter, but when I was testing for GameTap frequently that would fix problems when the web installer wouldn't.

There is also a log called "Steam.log" in the client folder. It may hold some clues.

I clicked several times and selected launch while simultaneously monitoring the log file, however nothing is recorded. Save for the start and exit threads of the steam client. Does this strike you as strange?

  Agent_Of_Knowledge said:
The game refuses to run in offline mode as well.

If that's the case then it's logical to assume that the game isn't up-to-date, despite showing up as "100% - Ready".

  Anaron said:
If that's the case then it's logical to assume that the game isn't up-to-date, despite showing up as "100% - Ready".

I uninstalled steam, deleted all registry entries, and re-downloaded the 8 gigabytes worth of Unreal Tournament 3 content and the problem remains.

Wow that ****ing sux about the redownload dude, if it's just this weekend trial of ut3 that's not working and lots of people are getting the problem, then it's probably something theye ****ed with on their end and there nothing you can do.

Possibly get a non steam crack for it just to see if it works, obviously you couldn't play online but it'd be an interesting test, i'd love to post a link but have a funny feeling that it wouldn't be allowed.

  maskedforever said:
It's an issue with Steam. Don't reformat your computer. You got to love it when a free weekend deal messes with Steam's cloud computing delivery service.

I think so too, nothing at all has changed with my system and I am getting the same problem, has always worked fine before. Sucks because I wanted to play with the new influx of trial players.

  maskedforever said:
It's an issue with Steam. Don't reformat your computer. You got to love it when a free weekend deal messes with Steam's cloud computing delivery service.

UT3 does NOT use steam clould, only Valve game use steam cloud

  StealMySoda said:
I had the same issue with a demo on steam. Running the executable in the game folder worked. I assume it will be UT3.exe or something similar.

It's not a fix, but it might let you run the game.

Well I just tried that by running UT3.exe in the binaries folder, and it still didn't work but this time it at least gave me an error:

"the program can't start because d3dx10_35.dll is missing from your computer"

So then I ran the installer for Directx that is in the Directx9c folder provided by UT3, and now the game launches fine both from the exe or from steam.

I really don't understand why this happened, I am running Windows 7 which comes with Directx 11, so I skipped the Directx install the UT3 prompts when you first run it. It seems like I have always skipped it for Win 7 and Vista as well, and I have never had this problem before. Before I thought it would be a bad idea to try and install an older version of Directx, but I guess there are some compatibility issues between the versions?

Anyways, your suggestion lead me to find the answer, thanks, I'm just glad it is working now. Valve should really look into making sure the steam client doesn't hide error messages like that.

  Unimatrix Xero said:
UT3 does NOT use steam clould, only Valve game use steam cloud

I was referring to how they deliver content. Amazon, Google and others use cloud computing. I wasn't referring to Steam's trademark network, Cloud, which I believe they started using in L4D. I should have worded it properly.

  Treemonkeys said:
Well I just tried that by running UT3.exe in the binaries folder, and it still didn't work but this time it at least gave me an error:

"the program can't start because d3dx10_35.dll is missing from your computer"

So then I ran the installer for Directx that is in the Directx9c folder provided by UT3, and now the game launches fine both from the exe or from steam.

I really don't understand why this happened, I am running Windows 7 which comes with Directx 11, so I skipped the Directx install the UT3 prompts when you first run it. It seems like I have always skipped it for Win 7 and Vista as well, and I have never had this problem before. Before I thought it would be a bad idea to try and install an older version of Directx, but I guess there are some compatibility issues between the versions?

Anyways, your suggestion lead me to find the answer, thanks, I'm just glad it is working now. Valve should really look into making sure the steam client doesn't hide error messages like that.

The DirectX files that are included with Windows can only be as recent as the Windows build so they don't include the stuff like "March 2009 DirectX Update" and so on. I always keep dxwebsetup.exe handy just in case. :)

Ah, so it was an issue with DirectX. You should inform people on the Steam forums, and Valve too. I'm sure a lot of people are experiencing the same issue. Also, the DirectX End-User Runtime/Redist updates DirectX 9.0c only. It doesn't update or change your version of DirectX 10 or 11.

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