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.