Recently started to attempt to get into the map making process again, came back from a vacation and updated to windows 8.1 a while ago. Now sapien won't even open. I have it on compatibility with Windows XP, its running as administrator. It worked fine a year ago, now it crashes whenever I try to load tutorial.scenerio. Is there in any way an alternate, compatible, program I can use?

Have you checked the debug file in your Halo CE Directiory? You may have courrupted or missing tags within the tutorial scenario. Open it up in Guerilla and see if any of the tag references are red.

Also try opening a different scenario.