Game not launching but says its running on steam

[cold sundial]

When I attempt to launch the game The window for it does not open up even though steam says it is running. When I open task manager it says that the "ProjectZomboid64" is running in background processes but that is the only sign of the game running to any extent. When I try the alternative launch option in the steam launcher I am met with this output in the terminal (attached file). I have tried the following steps in trying to solve my problem so far:

1. Restarting my computer.
2. Redownloading the game.
3. Verifying the integrity of the game files.
4. Deleting all mods and repeating the previous steps.

[twilit tree]

Can you share the screenshot of the rest of the console?

[cold sundial]

This is all that shows up when I do the alt launch. Is there a way to see more info?

[twilit tree]

There should be way more info after this

Can you share your console.txt file found in C:\Users\YourUserName\Zomboid?

[cold sundial]

This is all that appears in the console text files

This is what appears in the "zomboid console files"

[cold sundial]

Not sure why it would get stopped like this

[twilit tree]

Generally what comes after is listing of the drives

Do you have any external drivers connected? Any network drives?

[cold sundial]

Just my c drive (which the game is on) and a w network drive for school

okay I actually just solved it lol

apparently I need to have my school network drive connected (which the game isnt on) to start the game

I guess it needs to verify that all drives are connected?

[twilit tree]

More or less correct, depending on how you have the connection set up

[cold sundial]

I have to use a vpn to connect to my school drive. so is the vpn not being connected messing with the game somehow?

[twilit tree]

I meant more of how the drive is set up, is the drive set so it is marked as connected always, but only actually connets when you start the VPN

Or is the drive marked as Disconnected when the VPN is off