Heavy Fire Afghanistan & Shattered Spear Not Loading in Windows 11 w/ DemulShooter 14.0

[handsome-van]

Hey Argonlefou,

I saw the new updated hooks in DemulShooter 14.0 for the Heavy Fire games and everything looks awesome and way easier and way more simple to setup with AHK etc. I did see in the misc. notes for both Heavy Fire games that DemulShooter may not work with Windows 11. So I decided to test it out on my Windows 11 Arcade rig with an AHK script for 2 Gun4IR guns, and sure enough the game crashes right after loading the initial setup screen and clicking "play game".

Any chance we'll have an update for both Heavy Fire games to work with the DemulShooter hook on Windows 11 anytime soon? Me and my Dad love playing that game together. Thanks again for all your help and contributions to the Light Gun Scene!!!

-Van

[argonlefou]

Hi

To be honest, I'm not planning to update to win11 anytime soon.
I'm still running win7 on some offline cab-oriented computers...

I don't think that the statement DemulShooter may not work with Windows 11 is true, because I know of people using it with win11 for various games/emulator without any issue
99% of DemulShooter's code is using WIN32 API, dating from decades ago. If Win11 was to remove WIN32 compatibility, that would be a shame :-/

Now, the combo Heavy Fire + DemulShooter... well it's another thing

Answering the following questions might give me some clues :

• Is the game completely working on it's own without DemulShooter, without crashing ?
• If yes, does running demulshooter with the -noinput option cause the game to crash also ?

[handsome-van]

So if I run the game on it's own, it's completely fine and loads up like normal into the game and runs great with no light guns. Next up I did what you said and put -noinput on the DEMULshooter launching line as follows in my AHK script:

Run, D:\DemulShooter\DemulShooter.exe -target=windows -rom=hfa -pname=HeavyFire3_final.exe -noinput

When I do that, the game runs fine and doesn't crash on the Mastiff Dog logo on startup like it normal does without the -noinput. But it's not hooked with my light gun so the mouse curser is going everywhere and isn't stable.

Not sure what to do....

[D-an-W]

I have the same issue with HFA, the other Heavy Fire game seems to work ok however. For now I have rolled back to DS 13.5 just for HFA which works ok with 1 and 2 players. I do still need to test the -noinput later today 👍🏻

[argonlefou]

So if I run the game on it's own, it's completely fine and loads up like normal into the game and runs great with no light guns. Next up I did what you said and put -noinput on the DEMULshooter launching line as follows in my AHK script:

Run, D:\DemulShooter\DemulShooter.exe -target=windows -rom=hfa -pname=HeavyFire3_final.exe -noinput

When I do that, the game runs fine and doesn't crash on the Mastiff Dog logo on startup like it normal does without the -noinput. But it's not hooked with my light gun so the mouse curser is going everywhere and isn't stable.

Not sure what to do....

Thanks for the feedback
With the -noinput switch, it is normal to have DemulShooter controls not working. But doing that test was to get some clue on which DemulShooter's part of hacking has issue with Win11 :

So it means it in the input hacks I'll have to look, as the outputs hack are still on by default and the game does not crash.

But again, I'm not planning to move on Win11 anythime soon (that's why I keep the tickets open with that test result of yours so that I can remember when the time comes)

[argonlefou]

Had the chance to try HFA on Windows 11 computer yesterday.

No issue, no crash when DemulShooter was hooking....everything was working perfectly.....

[D-an-W]

Was that with 14.1? I installed it yesterday for another new release but not tried it yet with HFA.

[argonlefou]

Yes

[D-an-W]

Just tested with and without -noinput on 14.1 and get the same results as @handsome-van

Could the GPU have an impact on this (AMD here)?

[argonlefou]

I don't think the GPU would have any impact on demulshooter's hook.
It's only changing a couple of values to replace game's axis value...nothing fancy or DirectX related.

And if the game is running without any issue alone, the GPU must not have impact on that either...

Another Microsoft mystery 😔
It reminds me of early ages of Win10 where OS updates/changes of version used to broke some software for some people 😮‍💨

[argonlefou]

Just been hit by an obvious idea.....
It may not be an issue with win11 compatibility but with the new DemulShooter patch for HFA !

I just noticed you are using HeavyFire3_final.exe to run DemulShooter, which is the STEAM version of the game

I'm using a non-steam version, so I used this to develop and that's why it's working flawlessly

I may have done some mistake porting the patch to the STEAM exe, as I can't test it for real

Can you get a demulshooter debug file so that I can check what version you have ?

[D-an-W]

I can do it now yes (How? lol).

[argonlefou]

https://github.com/argonlefou/DemulShooter/wiki/Debugging#step-3

[D-an-W]

Debug_2025-02-06_19-57-13.txt

Hope this helps!

[argonlefou]

Hmmm yes and no at the same time ....I'm now totally lost more than anything else

Looks like you have a STEAM exe filename, in a STEAM path...but the exe content itself (based on the file signature) is the same one I have.... which is an old Non-steam exe with a different filename 😱

So.....at the same time there is something strange, and also another sure things : that specific exe hack is good as I'm succesfully using the same on the Win11 computer I got this week

Totally lost...

[handsome-van]

Wow just saw all these replies to the problem I had with these games...I'm going to get on my arcade in a couple hours and test 14.1 with these games on my Windows 11 machine and see if it works now. If it doesn't I'll send a debug report also so you can see what's happening.

Thanks Guys

[D-an-W]

Debug_2025-02-07_06-02-10.txt

This is the same file from HFSS which for me loads ok, I wondered if it might help.

[handsome-van]

Alrighty I tried Heavy Fire Afghanistan and the mouse cursor from my Gun4IR was all over the place and not hooked normal like in RAW input. Here is the debug I ran with DemulShooter 14.2, I hope this helps as well.

Thanks again for all your help!!

Debug_2025-02-08_13-57-09.txt

[argonlefou]

Alrighty I tried Heavy Fire Afghanistan and the mouse cursor from my Gun4IR was all over the place and not hooked normal like in RAW input. Here is the debug I ran with DemulShooter 14.2, I hope this helps as well.

Thanks again for all your help!!

Debug_2025-02-08_13-57-09.txt

To be sure to understand: the mouse was all other the place and the game didn't crash like it did when you started the ticket ?

[handsome-van]

Yes you are correct. The game does not crash and close anymore at startup which is good. But it does not hook the mouse cursor properly and when you aim the Gun4IR on the screen, it jumps around from one side of the screen to the other not playable in game.

[nosoucy62]

hi !
i found the problem after different test
if you use the skidrow version the game will have problems in fullscreen mode.
in this case use another cracked version of the game by someone else, the ideal is to find a version with the hf4.exe file and not another