Cannot open Star Wars Battlefront II through EGS || Steam Overlay Problems when using Epic manually to launch the game
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I have Star Wars Battlefront II on Epic.
However when I try to launch through OSOL it obviously has to go through EA Desktop first.
I tried using EADesktop.exe as LauncherPath and the starwarsbattlefrontII.exe as the GamePath.
EA Desktop launches, Epic soon follows along. However when Epic is put onto focus an the Game is shown to be "launching", nothing happens.
I also tried vice-versa but with the same result.
I remember that it was pretty tedious to get this to work with Origin too but now that I'm stuck with EA Desktop, I can't seem to get out of this problem now.
Perhaps it has something to do with that Link2EA App or something but if I knew the new URI since EA Desktop seemed to have changed this application, maybe that could make the game run again.
I really want the Steam Overlay ingame.
Alright, so I managed to partially work around it.
What I did was use Epic as the LauncherPath and setting AutoGameLaunch to False.
During investigations I encountered that Epic thinks that the Game is launching if OSOL is launched from within the game directory so I had to move it out of there.
By launching OSOL it launches the Epic Games Launcher.
From here I can then launch SWBFII, which relays to Link2EA to start the game and OSOL detects the starwarsbattlefrontii process now.
I had to adjust the InterProcessAcquisitionTimeout to 30, so there's enough time to catch the right process. 15 seconds weren't enough.
However the Steam Overlay isn't working still. Steam now detects that I'm ingame however I can't bring up the overlay. The only overlay I get is from EA.
What I tried without success:
-Disabling EA Overlay
-Launching OSOL as Admin
-Disabling AMD External Events Utility Service
Any suggestions how to get the overlay to work here?
Hooking overlays can be tempermental on AMD GPUs and I don't own an AMD GPU so I have no way to document a workaround that actually functions as of the current date.
If you still have Steam's overlay turned on you may have to disable it (or disable the EOS overlay) for that particular shortcut in order for any overlay to work properly. I'm unsure of how to do this on the newer Steam client UI as I don't have a reproducible test case on my dev box.
If anyone else wants to chime in with any anecdotes I might be able to investigate this further with a little more info on what's been tried or is known to work on the EOS client's overlay.
I found a solution for this problem.
However it involves external programs. I have no idea if this is valid for a solution however I am linking this particular program with OSOL.
First I created a batch script to open EA before the game starts and close EA once the game is closed. I linked these scripts into OSOL as particular PreGame and PostGame ExecPaths. Epic's Launcher is used as the LauncherPath.
Relaying OSOL to Frosty Mod Manager(I used the latest pre-release version here) as the GamePath and -launch Default as it's GameArgs to start SWBFII through it's own launcher solves the overlay problem for me.
Here are the settings I have used for OSOL here:
It works by first opening Epic and EA(so that the transition goes more smoothly) before opening Frosty to automatically apply any mods(or none) and launch the game through the Mod Manager (possibly through Link2EA). This is done by a DatapathFix Plugin(it has to be installed and activated in the Mod Manager first to work) for the Mod Manager which allows for launching from the Mod Manager from other platforms instead of EA if the game was bought in a different store.
It works by presumably using Link2EA directly to start the game. Link2EA is the linker tool from EA used to launch EA Games from other stores instead of EA.
This may mean that using Link2EA is the only way to get the overlay to work. However I am not sure. I vaguely remember that before EA App was launched and I was still on Origin I made a batch file to use through OSOL to launch a specific command related to Link2EA to launch the game and the overlay was usable.
Frosty is automatically closed so it doesn't get in the way when launching it with command arguments.
Opening Frosty on it's own and launching the game with applied mods/or none leaves it open.(Theoretically you could leave the GameArgs out to manage everything through Frosty Mod Manager when launching through OSOL and directly apply it, however you would have to manually close it and I haven't tested that method yet so I can't guarantee it would work with the Steam Overlay)
Once the game launches, I suddenly get greeted with the opportunity to use Steam's Overlay along with EA's.
So combining Frosty with it's DatapathFix Plugin along with OSOL allows for the Steam Overlay to be used.
After closing the game, Epic and EA will close before OSOL closes, effectively finishing the game session.
Since Frosty supports Mod Profiles, you can also make a seperate ini file to play the game with mods enabled as well if you got any. You only would have to replace Default in the GameArgs with the associated Profile Name.
If I am allowed I could prepare a package which contains my CMD scripts for opening/closing EA and the settings INI File I have configured for OSOL, which obviously needs to get it's paths changed and upload it here for anyone else who likes to play with the Steam Overlay in the Epic Version of the game.
I could also make a video tutorial to simplify the process.
This issue should therefore be resolved by using these instructions.
As for your question: Star Wars Battlefront II doesn't use Epic's Overlay at all. It only uses EA's Overlay.
Alright...it seems there are some flaws in this method. It does work but sometimes the overlay can still refuse to show up.
At some point even my game crashed in the loading screen or making EA's Overlay take priority and shutting Steam's out by having both EA's and Steam's Overlay enabled. Weird how they worked together for few attempts before starting to go nuts.
Disabling the EA Overlay makes it work again without crashing. The Steam Overlay appears. It seems both of them don't work well together in SWBFII. Using both can work but doesn't have to.
However it's a bit of a weird cycle overall. At one point it may work and at one it won't. Restarting Steam or rebooting your PC usually gets it working again.