STONKS-9800: Stock Market Simulator not connecting to Comet

[kevin-wijnen]

Context

During testing compatibility of several of my GOG library games, I did find another game (similar to Cuphead's previous status) that does not connect to GOG through Comet: STONKS-9800: Stock Market Simulator.

Issue Analysis

Similar to Cuphead previously, Comet wouldn't connect with the game. After installing GalaxyCommunication.exe in its prefix, it still did nothing. (No logs are made when having Comet running and starting or closing the game.)

The game using an older GOG SDK seems unlikely, as the game is an Early Access game that started its first public release on GOG last year on July 17, 2023.

Looking in the game's files, some noteworthy files (and its MD5 hashes) are:

• steam_api64.dll

I am not sure if this is just a leftover DLL from its Steam release, or whether the GOG Galaxy SDK is used to route the Steamworks API calls to GOG Galaxy.

I would not assume the latter hindering the connection to Comet as Yakuza 0 seems to have this Steam->GOG routing setup and functions just fine through Comet.

MD5 hash: 6b4ab6e60364c55f18a56a39021b74a6

• Galaxy64.dll

Seems to be the normal DLL used for GOG Galaxy communications.

MD5 hash: 54f895617d80efa2c0bdc764b38af835

• GOG.dll

I could not find a lot of information on this DLL, but it seems to be used by other games as well such as Skyrim and Witcher 3. I have tested neither yet, whether they do work through Comet.

MD5 hash: 2f1fa17e6c3921d706a9b5e4e491872b

• libGalaxy.dylib

Seems to be another library from the GOG SDK. Not sure what this is used for.

This library seems to be empty, at 0 B?

MD5 hash: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e

[imLinguin]

Galaxy64.dll hash maps to SDK version 1.150_Windows_MSVC19_64bit|14158336

[imLinguin]

I found the issue, the game links to libraries with debug symbols. This makes it not work even on Windows if the user doesn't have dev environment setup

1245.517:0128:err:module:import_dll Library MSVCP140D.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\GOG Games\\STONKS-9800 Stock Market Simulator\\GOG.dll") not found
1245.518:0128:err:module:import_dll Library VCRUNTIME140D.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\GOG Games\\STONKS-9800 Stock Market Simulator\\GOG.dll") not found
1245.519:0128:err:module:import_dll Library VCRUNTIME140_1D.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\GOG Games\\STONKS-9800 Stock Market Simulator\\GOG.dll") not found

[kevin-wijnen]

I found the issue, the game links to libraries with debug symbols. This makes it not work even on Windows if the user doesn't have dev environment setup

Thanks for figuring it out - sent an email to the dev just now describing the issue for them to fix it in a future patch. I will update the status on this issue when the game gets fixed with a patch. 👍

[imLinguin]

I already contacted the dev on discord as well. They'll look into the issue, it probably comes down to updating the GOG plugin in Gamemaker.

[kevin-wijnen]

I did notice new builds have been published (although without any response to my bug report e-mail from a while ago).

Testing ver. 0.4.3.5 on strictly Linux with Comet (latest build from the Steam Deck link correction CI run), and while the game definitely tries to communicate with the Comet services now without the need of the dummy client: Comet seems to fail at reading "local database RowNotFound".

I attached the captured log (with any (assumed to be) sensitive information like payloads and client information redacted) for the context.
stonks_missing_row.txt

[imLinguin]

It looks like the game doesn't have achievements or at least it never loads them. Nevertheless the error is harmless in this scenario. It's part of the routine that syncs stats and achievements periodically. I think we should just add a safe guard that won't try to do that sync until the game loads the achievements list.

[kevin-wijnen]

It looks like the game doesn't have achievements or at least it never loads them.

Using a third party site to check GOG Achievements, there seems to be a list present but no known figures how many unlocked them (probably zero due to the lack of Galaxy achievement checking in the first place). Could also be still work-in-progress, as it's noticeably a lot shorter than its Steam equivalent achievement list.

[imLinguin]

There is also a possibility that the achievement definitions will be retrieved only after an achievement has been unlocked. Now in theory everything should work properly.

If you are going to play the game further, it may be a good idea to monitor the situation so we'll see if that theory is correct. In that case we'll report back to the game developer.

EDIT: You can also check if achievements are even registered for that game, in your profile