Bug: Metaphor: ReFantazio ASI Loader loads crash handler

[mnepk]

Describe the Bug
When attempting to start the game "Metaphor: ReFantazio" via API loader, an error occurs by the loader trying to load crash_handler.exe in a subdirectory of the game.
The game starts normally after closing the error message however.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behaviour:

1. Deploy API loader on Reloaded-II
2. Start the game on Steam

Expected Behaviour
The API loader loads only the excutable for the game (METAPHOR.exe), without loading the crash handler (\bin\crash_handler.exe).

Screenshots
The error message:

Log files (created simultaneously)

Additional Context
It occurred on Windows 10, with no mods loaded.
ASI loader dll file is named WINMM.dll.

[Sewer56]

Game has Denuvo, I'm not personally touching it with a 10000000 foot pole. I don't support the destruction of game preservation.

In any case, you can probably ask @AnimatedSwine37 or @DeathChaos25 for a patch to disable the crash handler. While it's unclear why it's getting triggered, MetafaEssentials should probably kill it by default, so devs don't get random crashes on modded copies sent to them.

[mnepk]

Game has Denuvo, I'm not personally touching it with a 10000000 foot pole. I don't support the destruction of game preservation.

In any case, you can probably ask @AnimatedSwine37 or @DeathChaos25 for a patch to disable the crash handler. While it's unclear why it's getting triggered, MetafaEssentials should probably kill it by default, so devs don't get random crashes on modded copies sent to them.

Thank you for your reply.

Oh, I didn't notice this being a Denuvo matter.
I'm not willing to disable Denuvo, I'm just annoyed by the error occurring every time I launch the game, and the game itself is running without issues after closing the error message.

Other games with Denuvo, Persona 5 Royal for example, have no problems like this, so I wonder why this happens for Metaphor only...

[AnimatedSwine37]

That's strange, I'm fairly sure the other PC persona games have a crash handler exe like this as well but I've never seen an error like this with them.

I'm not really involved in metaphor modding at all so far (I've never even launched it with mods) so hopefully DC will look at it. If it is just preventing that process from being run it'll hopefully be easy to change.

[Sewer56]

@mnepk It's not a Denuvo matter, but I just refuse to support it for moral reasons.

@AnimatedSwine37 in any case yeah, regardless of cause, I'd just kill the game code that launches the crash handler. Don't want to be spammimg devs with crash dumps of modded games in any case.

[DeathChaos25]

I could not locate where the game was calling crash handler as the executable is not seemingly accessed directly via name.

However you can delete the crash handler with 0 consequences and be rid of this problem entirely, which is what I resorted to.

[Sewer56]

Can you not force induce a crash, for example by dereferencing 0x0 in your code?

From there you can check what calls CreateProcess and trace back.

[mnepk]

Thank you all for your responses.

I confirmed that the error is evitable by deleting or renaming the handler, something like crash_handler.exe.bak, but I want to keep the files in their original state if possible.

Also, for additional information, the error doesn’t occur when I use launch application function on Reloaded-II.
Well, maybe the only and biggest problem about this is that I prefer to use steam launcher much more.