Schrullenhaft
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Posts posted by Schrullenhaft
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If you're running Windows 10, then Windows Defender Antivirus may have become active if you uninstalled your AV program. If that's the case, then you'll want to add an exclusion within Windows Defender for CMFI. You will want to exclude both the game executable and the game folder (just in case). When you uninstalled your AV program was it with the uninstaller (via the Apps control panel) or did you have to run an utility ? You may want to double-check with that AV provider's website to see if an utility might be necessary or helpful in removing the AV program fully (in case something is 'left behind').
Something is definitely interfering with the running of CMFI. I doubt that the game has suddenly become 'incompatible' with your system and it is somewhat unlikely that the game files have become corrupt (a reinstall would easily fix that, if that were the case). Is this a laptop or a desktop ? If it is a laptop and you have both the integrated Intel video and a dedicated GPU, then you'll want to add a profile for CMFI game/executable in the dedicated GPU's control panel/app so that the game will run on the GPU rather than the Intel integrated video. Intel video often can work to a limited degree, but when it does the text can be blurry/unreadable and the performance will definitely be sub-par. Frequently Intel video may run into problems where the game may not run (which you MIGHT be experiencing here if this is a laptop).
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The web link to the download appears to still be incorrect:
https://battlefront.sharefile.com/share/view/s2e2523832154406a
That's the link that initially appears before it changes to an URL for an 'invalid link'
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The current Windows CMBN 4.02 'full' installer is a 3GB .rar compressed file. Extracting this will get you the installer (which consists of the setup executable and a number of .brz data files).
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Looks like Battlefront Support ( BFCElvis ) will need to correct that Sharefile link. I've sent a message, but don't know how soon the link will be corrected.
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What file did you download, was it the 'Full' installer ? Where did you install the game and are these files present there (within the 'Data' subdirectory, if I recall) ? The current 'Full' installer should have all of these files.
When you activated the game, did you see green boxes for the base game, upgrades (3.0 & 4.0) and the modules ? The green boxes at the end of the activation process tell you what is currently activated/'unlocked'. Unfortunately there isn't an utility that tells you outside of the activation process.
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To make sure that the game is running on the GeForce (and not the Intel GPU), create a profile in the Nvidia Control Panel for the game in the 3D Settings ('adding' the game's executable in the list). In this profile make sure that the FXAA is off and I would suggest enabling the 'Triple Buffering' for OpenGL. With a profile, the game should typically be launched on the GeForce, otherwise it will almost certainly use the Intel GPU which will have unresolvable issues with the game text.
Regarding the missing vehicles, definitely do the reinstall as suggested earlier. You appear to be missing some data files (or they're corrupted somehow). A clean installation of the game (delete the current one before reinstalling) should hopefully restore those missing graphics.
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One other thing to be aware of... CM has a 'short draw distance' and items (trees, buildings, ground/grass, vehicles, etc.) will be replaced with very low res textures and low poly models only a short distance from the 'camera'. Going forward (on the map) a short distance and then coming back to the desired location on the map may draw a few more of these items in with more detailed models and textures that weren't originally there before moving the camera.
I'm not sure what the algorithm is to determine how much of a draw distance to have in the game. Sometimes this can be somewhat adjusted with 'Balanced' model and texture quality settings in the Options, but it generally appears to be a hard-coded behavior in the game. Higher-end video hardware doesn't really give you much of a change in draw distance, but significantly lower-end video hardware (typically built-in GPUs in chipset or CPU) will frequently see lower detail models and textures closer to the camera.
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I'm not certain about copying over the 4.02 installation to the 3.12 installation and having it work. I believe the license activations should remain in effect 'computer-wide', so the file location shouldn't affect the activation to my knowledge. The issue to watch out for would be copying all of the necessary files to their correct destinations in the 3.12 installation. There are some .BRZ data files that will need to be copied over and I'm uncertain if you have to copy over (write over) the scenarios and campaigns from the 4.02 install to the 3.12 install. I assume you'll need to copy over the preferences file and any customized hotkey settings.
The CMBN 4.0 Upgrade download should have had everything in it that you would have needed (including the 4.02 patch). You could download this and run the installer and you should be good to go (no need to reactivate any license keys as far as I'm aware).
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I don't think that the original intent of the multiple activations available per license key was to allow for two players to use one purchase of the game. Some customers have done this and Battlefront really hasn't prevented this or punished players for doing this. However if this other player frequently plays the game (even if it is only mulitplayer with you), then it would seem more legitimate if they bought a copy/license of the game/modules for themselves. Hardware changes and moving to new computers (and other occasional technical problems) were more of the assumed use of the additional activations.
The CM 1 series, CMSF 1 and CM Afghanistan used eLicense which had an unlicensing mechanism to allow you to unlicense the game/modules, perform your changes (or move to a new computer) and then relicense the game/modules. Doing this would preserve the two activations (assuming something didn't happen to prevent the unlicensing). The eLicense games came with 2 activations per license key. Ever since CMBN a new copy-protection system has been in use and that system does NOT have an unlicensing mechanism. Instead the activation is simply 'used up' and you use another one to activate the game/modules. Those license keys come with 4 activations per license key (unless you have purchased more than one copy of the game at one time and only received one license key - those will have more activations).
If you run out of activations you can contact the Helpdesk to request an additional activation for your license key(s). You'll of course need to provide the license keys for each product that needs additional activations.
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It looks like there may be some sort of incompatibility with the Radeon Pro Vega hardware and the drivers that AMD/Apple provide for the OS and CM. This is one of those situations where you wish Apple would update the video driver much more frequently for their OSes. Instead you typically have to wait until some x.x.x release down the road to have an updated driver that may fix the problem.
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Open a ticket with the Helpdesk by clicking on the blue '+new ticket' button in the upper right. You'll need to provide the license keys for all of your CMSF1 content that needs another activation.
With CMSF2 you do NOT need to install and activate CMSF1. The 'upgrade' to CMSF2 just requires the license keys for CMSF1, not any previously installed game/files. The keys are needed during the activation process and they should show up with 'green boxes' in the success screen (mentioning that their CMSF1/Original license keys) when they're activated.
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With the Intel graphics I don't think there will be an answer. The corruption of the text appears to be some sort of anti-aliasing built-into the Intel drivers that doesn't work well.
I'm not sure what exact GPU and drivers you'll have for your laptop, but with a desktop i5 8500 with the Intel UHD 630 Graphics and Windows 10 there is a control panel with some options you can experiment with. You'll need to 'search' for the 'control panel' (the Control Panel that looks like the one of Windows 7). Launch that and then click on the 'Intel Graphics Settings' control panel. Click on the '3D' icon along the bottom. Make sure that the 'Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing' is set to 'Turn Off' and 'Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing' is also set to 'Turn Off' (the second being the most likely culprit). I don't know if your drivers will offer these settings or not, but they're the closest guess to a fix that I can think of.
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Typically the scenarios, campaigns and saved games are stored in your User directory, within the Documents folder. If a different user installed the game, then the game can't see those files. If you can see those files (in the other user's account) and you can move them over to the same place in your account, then the game may show them. Otherwise you may need to reinstall the game (with the account that will use the game).
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You should be set to go, unless you have any modules (Marines, British Forces and NATO). Then you'll want to use the 'Activate...' shortcut again to, one at a time, enter the new license key(s) and the old (CMSF1 module) license key(s).
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As far as I'm aware Erwin is running Windows 10 v.1909. The v. 2004 update is out and this is the "known issues" list, which is dominated with driver problems. I don't think any of them apply here to Erwin's situation; the closest being the Nvidia driver problem, but he can't be using the v. 358 Nvidia driver with his GeForce 2070 Super (too old to recognize/work with that new of a videocard). He isn't using a laptop to my knowledge, so the Intel video driver issue of v. 2004 also shouldn't be an issue (if he were using a laptop with both integrated Intel and dedicated video).
I did an install to a 'non-standard' directory like Erwin and everything worked fine on the system I tried it out with (in addition to using one of the Start Menu replacement programs he's using). I did have Avast anti-virus installed rather than Windows Defender Anti-virus on this particular computer. As far as I know he is logging in with an 'administrator-level' account and he's added exceptions and/or temporarily disabled the Windows Defender Anti-virus. He's able to activate the license keys, but CMFB (the initial game we were testing) didn't show up in the Task Manager, which would suggest it is either crashing or it is actively being shut down by something (security software). Since this issue doesn't seem to want to solve easily, going with the default installation location would probably be a good idea.
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I doubt you would have to re-download the installers. If they were corrupt, then they would either not run, crash during installation or possibly give you an error about the files being copied/installed.
Reinstalling with the Antivirus off may help, though I'm not sure what would get blocked during installation. Some security programs interfere so much that you need to turn them off or the installs don't go right. I wouldn't have suspected that of the MS Defender, but maybe that is an issue now.
I wouldn't assume that a 'network' would be an issue. As long as you're logging in with administrative-level permissions on your account for both the network login and the local permission level.
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Have you rebooted or shutdown this computer lately (rather than putting it into 'Sleep') ? If you haven't, try that first. I don't think a reinstallation of the game will make any difference.
This issue appeared a long time ago (2002 - 2003) and at the time it seemed to be related to a computer's clock/time keeping getting out of sync with the OS. For some of these computers a BIOS update was able to fix the issue, but I doubt that would be the solution for this problem. Other solutions were to shutdown any 'instant messaging clients'. I'm not aware of any in particular that may cause a problem with the CM1 series (many have disappeared now). I don't know if Discord or other gaming chat clients would be considered as such, but you may want to shut them down in case. Another possible solution was to let the computer run for 20 - 40 minutes to 'stabilize the clock' before running the game. I don't know if such a suggestion would make sense anymore, but it is something to try out.
A suggestion from Gog.com's site (though it is a general suggestion not tied to this particular problem):
CHECK IF THE GAME IS RUNNING ON MULTIPLE CORES AND, IF NEEDED, FORCE IT TO ONLY USE ONE
To do this, Alt-Tab out of the game, go into the Task Manager (Ctrl-Shift-Esc), select the Processes (Details - Windows 10 users) tab, right-click the game's process, click "Set Affinity..." and make sure that only "CPU 0" is selected, then click OK and go back to the game.Alt-tab'ing out of the game and then remaximizing it also tends to help with display performance for the CM1 games on Windows 10 (it only needs to be done once). There's a possibility that setting the Affinity might make the game clock a bit more stable (... possibly).
And another suggestion about Power Saving modes (I don't know if that is coming into effect at all while you're running CMBB):
CHANGE POWER SAVING MODE
Press WinKey+R. In Run window type:
controlAnd press Ok. This will open Control Panel, and from here navigate to Power Options and change Power Saving Mode (it may be called Minimal Power Management) to something more power-intensive, like for example: High Performance.
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I would guess that the solution would be what Sgt. Squarehead has said. However I'm surprised that installing the game while logged in on your son's account didn't work. The scenarios, campaigns and game saves are stored in each individual's 'user account'. Perhaps attempting to install the game in a different directory than the default might help (thus two copies installed). I would guess that the activation would remain in place with this second install (i.e. - no need to activate again).
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I missed this too. If you're "moving an installer", which I assume to mean the executable file only, then you're missing the .brz files that are part of that install, but not built into the installer - they're separate files. Moving that executable only will result in the installer being unable to find the .brz data files (resulting in the error that you're seeing during the installation process). You need to run the installer in the same folder as the .brz files that should have gotten extracted along with the installer.
I just downloaded the installer (Windows version) and it had a filename of 'CMBN Windows v402 Installer.rar', which is the .rar compression format (different from .zip). When this is extracted there are 22 files taking up 10.2GB of disk space. The installer needs to remain with all of these files in order to find them during the installation process.
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Option One. We just want to turn it off temporarily to see if it makes any sort of difference to CM.
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I'm not seeing anything that sticks out as being something that could interfere. What USB devices do you have plugged in ?
It turns out that Defender Anti-virus DOES have active protection (compared to previous versions of Windows Defender that only performed scans), so adding an exception within that might be helpful. Supposedly you should get notified when it blocks something, but that doesn't always seem to happen with a number of security programs. You can also temporarily disable it with these instructions.
There is an instance of 'msiexec.exe' running, which suggest that something is installing. Does this still appear after a reboot ? There was also an executable/service that was running that involves 'app virtualization' (AppVshNotify.exe), but it appears that it is associated with MS Office.
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What resolution are you running at ? You may want to go into your CM game's 'Options' menu and set it to something other than desktop if you're running something really high. You may have to use the 'display.txt' method of entering a resolution if what you want doesn't appear in the Options listing (only a couple of resolutions appear there, with 'Desktop' being the most convenient). The format of this file would be simply (without quotes) '1920 1080 60', for horizontal, vertical and then vertical refresh rate. You could possibly specify '144' for the vertical refresh rate, as long as the video driver supports it.
Adjusting the resolution most likely won't help with the slow loading times (to my knowledge) and the occasional CTD. I wouldn't think it would be the sound driver, but what sound chip/card do you have installed ?
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I installed CMBS on Ryzen 7 3800X with a Radeon RX5700 XT (32GB RAM, 860 Evo SATA SSD). Using the 20.2.2 driver, running a single display at 1920 x 1200 I got fairly quick load times of less than 1 minute for battles of various sizes. I'm using the default graphical settings within the game and the Radeon Software. So there is no anti-aliasing, vertical sync/FreeSync, etc. For the game I have the default settings for the 'Options', typically 'Balanced'. There wasn't much loaded up in the background (browser, antivirus, SSD util, etc.).
Running FRAPS for framerate counting I got about 21 - 52 fps in the setup of one quick battle (a map with forests and some hills). The larger the resolution, the more trees and buildings and possibly the more varied the terrain elevation, the lower your framerate will be. The in-game camera height/view and the how much of the battlefield is 'in the window' also makes a difference in framerate.
So if you're running a really high resolution (above standard HD, 1920 x 1080), you may want to reduce it in the game 'Options'. 'Balanced' for the 3D Texture and 3D Model Quality might also help. You may also want to turn off Vertical Sync, unless you're certain you're benefiting from it.
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I think part of the 'slow loading' issue may be the fact that you have a Radeon video card. In the past there have been loading issues associated with the Radeon drivers. I don't know how much this changes between driver versions, but in the past there has been a significant speed difference between Radeons and GeForces when it comes to the loading times. I assume, but I don't really have solid knowledge, that the OpenGL drivers from AMD may not be quite as good as the Nvidia ones - in certain respects. Rendering-wise within the game they give similar quality levels.
In-game performance may be a matter of expectations. You'll never get FPS-like performance out of the CM series. The CM games are primarily CPU-bound (and single threaded, for most game functions) and while a Ryzen 5 3600 is fairly fast I don't think any current CPU is fast enough to make the current engine perform like many people may expect. It's possible that the OpenGL 2.x calls have significant limitations performance-wise, but they possibly make graphics development a little more straightforward and possibly help with compatibility. With only one programmer it is pretty amazing what the CM series has in it. Several programmers on hand could definitely help to 'optimize' the graphics performance, which can be a pretty complex task.
As for the CTD's, is there more info about the error (Event Viewer, etc.) ? I suspect this MAY be due to video drivers, but I don't know. I wouldn't know what exact Radeon driver to recommend with CM and your RX 5700 XT. On occasion the latest driver MIGHT NOT be the best. I would suggest trying to minimize anything running in the background. The loading process is actually one of the few spots in the code that can utilize multiple threads.
CMFI won't start - nothing happens
in CM2 General Tech Support
Posted · Edited by Schrullenhaft
When you get the 'blue circle', do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and launch the 'Task Manager'. In the Processes tab look for the CM Fortress Italy.exe file and see if it is present (and whether it is 'Not Responding', etc.). If it is 'Not Responding', then 'End Task' on it. If it is still present, close up the Task Manager and see what happens (wait several minutes). Do you still continue to get the 'blue circle' endlessly or does that stop ? If it stops, go back to the Task Manager and see if CM Fortress Italy.exe is still present (it can be within the Apps section or the 'Background processes' section.
After running the GSClean utility, have you been able to re-activate CMFI (and whatever modules you have) ? If you have activated again, did this require running the game through Steam (to activate) ?
If adding the exclusion didn't work try temporarily disabling 'Real-time protection' in Windows Defender.
I'm not sure why the game performs with so much lag when launched via Steam. Does the text look good or is it blurry like it was if the game was running on the Intel video ? I don't know what parts of the Steam interface would work with the CM games and if the interface would cause draw performance problems for CM. More importantly, I have no idea why the game would launch through Steam, but not directly. Almost as if Steam were running some sort of interference on whatever prevents the game from running directly from the Desktop.
Are you installing CMFI to the default directory or to a custom one ? This shouldn't make any difference to my knowledge. Moving the executable "in and out of the directory" sounds strange and I have no idea why it would have worked in this situation. If it was just the executable I would think that it would have problems finding the other data files to run the game. That particular 'solution' is something I've heard of with Macs, but I'm unfamiliar with it on PC/Windows.
You may want to delete the (Nvidia ?) game profile in your GPU control panel/app and recreate it (with only default settings) and see if that makes any difference. Typically the game does like 'Triple Buffering' (an OpenGL setting), though not having that set should not affect the game launching.
What are the shortcut properties for CMFB (typically in the 'Compatibility' tab) ? Make sure your CMFI shortcut matches those (other than the game directory, etc.).