Table of Contents
- Windows dependencies
- DirectX End-User Runtime
- Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Runtimes
- UCRT for older Windows versions (Win7, Win8) that do not receive Windows Update (Embedded SKU)
- If you have "N" or "KN" editions of Windows (without Media Feature Pack)
- NVIDIA dependencies (for Intel/AMD GPUs)
- Other game-specific dependencies
These are prerequisites for most games supported by spice2x.
Note
Please carefully read all of this page, scrolling to the bottom. You will likely have to install multiple things to resolve your dependency issues (DLL could not be loaded error), and potentially reboot multiple times.
Windows dependencies
Make sure you reboot after installing them, even if you're not prompted to do so. And yes, you don't just extract them, you have to actually run the installer to completion.
DirectX End-User Runtime
Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Runtimes
UCRT for older Windows versions (Win7, Win8) that do not receive Windows Update (Embedded SKU)
If you see `api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll is missing` dialog pop up, click here:
MinGW, the toolchain used to compile spice2x, switched from msvcrt to ucrt, affecting spice2x-24-12-06 and onward. Without UCRT, you'll see api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll is missing dialog popup when trying to launch spice. If you are seeing this, download UCRT from a KB below.
If you have "N" or "KN" editions of Windows (without Media Feature Pack)
Click here to expand and view links:
Windows 8/10/11:
Windows 7 (archived):
- x86: https://web.archive.org/web/20190810145509/https://download.microsoft.com/download/B/9/B/B9BED058-8669-490E-BA61-D502E4E8BEB1/Windows6.1-KB968211-x86-RefreshPkg.msu
- x64: https://web.archive.org/web/20190810145509/https://download.microsoft.com/download/B/9/B/B9BED058-8669-490E-BA61-D502E4E8BEB1/Windows6.1-KB968211-x64-RefreshPkg.msu
NVIDIA dependencies (for Intel/AMD GPUs)
Some games rely on DLLs provided by NVIDIA drivers. To name a few:
- nvcuda.dll
- nvcuvid.dll
- nvEncodeAPI64.dll
If you have an NVIDIA GPU, install the latest NVIDIA drivers and you will automatically have these files in system32; you don't need these stubs, so no further action is needed.
If you have Intel or AMD GPU, then extract the latest spice release (spice2x-xx-xx-xx.zip), then navigate to spice2x\stubs\64. Copy the DLLs from there to the directory with your game DLLs - typically in the modules directory.
These stubs are specifically provided by spice2x team so that you can run NVIDIA-based games on non-NVIDIA GPUs.
A few things to note when using spice-provided stubs:
- DO NOT use the
-stubsoption for this. That option is completely unrelated to this and practically never needed. - DO NOT use
Inject DLL Hooks (-k)for these DLLs either. - DO NOT place the stubs in your
system32, because they will affect other games on your PC.
After you copy the stubs over and launch the game, if you get a popup dialog saying something could not be loaded, please file a bug so that the stubs can be updated.
Other game-specific dependencies
FutureTomTom, DanEvo
Requires Kinect v1.0 SDK, Kinect v1.0 Developer Tools, and DirectX SDK.
v2.0 will not work. v1.8 should work.
Gitadora
Make sure codecs are installed - read the FAQ page.
LovePlus
Ensure you have cpusbxpkm.dll. You can grab a copy from spice2x archive - check in stubs/32.
DDR
Registering codecs (mandatory)
Almost all DDR issues - crashes, black background video, freezing - are caused by failure to properly register codecs before launching the game.
Automatic codec installation
In spice2x-25-08-17 or newer, spice will automatically register codecs in com directory on every launch, which means you won't have to manually register them using regsvr32 anymore. You should see messages like this in the log:
I:ddr: looking for codecs in this directory: C:\ddr\world\modules\..\com
I:ddr: found DLL: k-clvsd.dll, size: 882440 bytes
I:ddr: `regsvr32.exe /s "C:\ddr\world\modules\..\com\k-clvsd.dll"` returned 0
I:ddr: found DLL: xactengine2_10.dll, size: 259736 bytes
I:ddr: `regsvr32.exe /s "C:\ddr\world\modules\..\com\xactengine2_10.dll"` returned 0
If you don't see this, or see failures, then you need to find the codec files and manually register them.
Manual codec registration
Run a command prompt window as administrator, navigate to the directory where the codecs are located (usually com, if not, modules, if not, next to ddr.dll) and then use regsvr32 for each file:
regsvr32 xactengine2_10.dllregsvr32 k-clvsd.dll(if the file exists)
Additional information:
- All calls must show a success dialog. If you see an error (
0x80070005), ensure you're running the command prompt as admin. - You must do this again for each game DLL type (001, 003).
- For 32-bit DDR, you need the 32-bit codecs, and for 64-bit you need the 64-bit codecs.
- 32-bit xactengine2_10.dll is 254KB. 64-bit version of 395KB.
- You must do this again if you move or rename your game directory.
- You may need to unregister the DLLs when you want to run older IIDX or DDR versions, as incompatibility across versions may lead to a crash. (run
regsvr32 /u ...as admin) - Ensure that the path to your codecs directory do not contain any non-Latin characters (Unicode). regsvr32 may seem to succeed in this case but the codecs will fail to create registry entries.