Recently got the game, and it crashes every time after the intro movie - no error message, just Windows informing me it crashed XD. On Win8 with a few year old mid-end laptop. Tried a fair number of things:

- Renaming the video folder etc.. This just makes it skip the intro and crash right away.
- All the different renderers - no real difference. Tried windowed also.
- Compatibility modes on the executable.

Kind of verging on just plain stumped right now with nothing to go on other than what is in Event Log, which is just the standard access violation (0xc0000005). Anyone else have the same issue and/or a tip for fixing it?

Try installing DirectX.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=35

Heh, Steam does that on practically every single game install... it's annoying. I tried it again though - list ditch attempt and all. No go. To support it goes.

Here's a 20 minute video of me trying pretty much everything :( (no in game video because recording software. Just imagine the introduction video and 3dfx logo showing in glide mode unless I rename the video folder and turn the logo off respectively):
https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=29D4BB97791557B8&resid=29D4BB97791557B8%21519&authkey=AHI_NSXsj8aJt3E

You might want to install the latest nGlide then, after that rename the glide.dll and glide2x.dll in the BoD directory.

http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

Yeah, one of the first things I tried. Thanks though :).

Though Direct3d mode at least should work (well, it does technically - it just crashes after the resolution change on all video modes XD).

How about turning Data Execution Prevention (DEP) off? Did you try it?

I'm having the same exact issue as the OP. It's very aggravating.

I tried to make a exclusion for the .exe, no luck.

EDIT: Tried disabling it completely as well. Still no luck.

From my experience with windows 7 error might be also caused because of antivirus, firewall, video drivers (or any other drivers, like modded creative) and overclocking. Shouldn't be much different with win 8. You may also try starting game with one core only. To do that right click on game shortcut, choose properties and add in the target field: c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /C start /affinity 2 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Blade of Darkness\Bin\Blade.exe" But first of all i would try changing video drivers if turning off antivirus and/or firewall won't help. Good luck!

Indeed. I don't have UAC enabled or any software firewalls or active anti-whatever "protection" enabled due to compatibility and other issues.

I tried installing different video drivers (support also suggested this) - basically for mine there is a stable version, a beta version, and the version that comes with Win8 (the latter of which lacks even some basic OpenGL support... bad ATI/AMD!) - tried all 3 with restarts in-between... because why not? No change in behavior in there in BoD.

For some reason I didn't think to lock the exe to a single processor, so I tried your suggestion. Unfortunately, still no change :(.

Also tried clean boot and "reinstalling" DirectX (again, just a different way) as suggested by support FYI.

MetalPlateMage, I've found a solution that works for me after many hours of trying.

Install Python 1.5.2 and set the install folder to C:/Python15. After that is done, go to your Environment Variables settings (right click on my computer, go to properties, advanced system settings, and then environment variables) and change the PYTHONHOME path to the C:/Python15, and the PYTHONPATH path to C:/Python15/Lib.

The game now boots normally for me, and I really hope the solution works for you.

Oh, I wish I could mark yours as an answer, but sadly it does not work for me :( :( - but I'm really glad you got it working for you! I even tried the latest version of Python too if that helps. I also made sure the PATH variable was set each time too.

On a side note, I tried another laptop - this one with the only real differences being Vista32, an NVidia video card, Core 2 duo - and it worked out of the box, no python needed or anything. Didn't even care that anti-virus and windows firewall flagged it XD. *scratches head* Still need to get it working for laptop, sigh XD.

That's a real shame, hopefully you can get it working some time soon. Best of luck!

Last night I've installed win 8.1 trial on virtual machine and Blade started without any problems. Even in safe mode game runs fine. Could try that? Tap windows key along with R, type msconfig in Run window, hit enter. In msconfig window choose Boot tab, check Safe Mode -> Minimal, confirm and restart your laptop. If game will work in safe mode, has to be problem with one of your drivers or starting with system software perhaps. Like malwarebytes, I think I've seen that one on the video.

Tried safe mode, same result (tried reinstalled in same mode too for kicks afterwards for same result):
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=29D4BB97791557B8!522&authkey=!AA-0MFAGSCd3Q2c&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

Also tried uninstalling Malwarebytes. Didn't expect that to do anything though since active protection wasn't on (nor supported in the basic version). Thanks for the suggestions!

I left MemTest86+ running over the night - RAM checks out. So do hard drives (no bad sectors).

Anyway, here's a dump collection courtesy AdPlus (Windows debugging tool - have a dump uploaded from WinDbg too but it's the same thing - crashes on the same line every time. Includes windows symbols for all you software devs out there).
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=29D4BB97791557B8!525&authkey=!AHW5VMAn6UdFlG0&ithint=folder%2c

Crashes in some routine called IsValidProtocol - there's a version of it in netgame.dll that is used in scripts/menu.py that checks whether IPX or TCP/IP is enabled (pass 0 for IPX, 1 TCP/IP - function returns 1 for success + 0 for failuire), but the version here is from Blade.exe itself. Could be completely different and a red herring.

At this point, since safe mode doesn't work, it seems reinstalling windows is the last option... something that I'd rather not do since it works fine and runs my other 100+ games fine right now XD.