Schrullenhaft
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Posts posted by Schrullenhaft
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Rewriting CM's code for fog is something that is solely up to Charles. He went with Fog Tables instead of Vertex Fog so older cards could support fog. I'm not sure of the quality differences between the two (I'd guess that vertex fog might look nicer, but be more of a CPU hog). I'm not sure how much of a pain it would be to support both types (like CM's support of transparencies).
The choice of fog-tables on PCs has become an issue since a number of (usually newer) video cards have either dropped support of fog tables or their drivers haven't been written to support that feature in the hardware (in favor of vertex based fog). This is the kind of issue Charles is running into. A variety of companies haven't written their drivers to support all DirectX calls correctly. Sometimes it is a hardware issue, but quite often it is a choice of what to support in the driver.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-22-2000).]
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Srider - Do you know what revision of the motherboard your SD11 is (you can usually find it on the back of the motherboard near the last ISA slot - it will usually be the same color as the traces and will not be silk-screened on) ?
Looking at FIC's website the only BIOSs I see posted are for the 1.7/1.8 rev of the motherboard and there doesn't really seem to be much about AGP in any of the updates.
Apparently the SD11 has a VIA southbridge chipset, so downloading and installing some of the VIA drivers may be appropriate:
http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm
The 4-in-1 driver has device drivers for AGP, IDE, IRQ routing, etc. I don't know how much of an improvement the AGP driver may make, but it is worth trying.
The only details in FIC's FAQ for the SD11 that pertained to AGP mentioned that it is only AGP 1.0 complaint and therefore can't work with 32Mb video cards well because of their higher current requirements. However this isn't an issue for you.
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There's no way to run the program from DOS. It is dependent on Windows and DirectX to run.
The "memory program" that was mentioned in another thread (can't seem to recall what it was) might be your best bet.
You may also want to experiment with your virtual memory settings. Go to Control Panel > System control panel > Performance tab > Virtual Memory button > select the "Let me specify my own...". Here you will now be creating a permanent swap file (so the amount you specify as the minimum will be unavailable for file storage on your hard drive). If you have the free space specify a minimum of 200Mb - 400Mb and a maximum of 300Mb - 600Mb. You may want to experiment with these settings to see if you get any different results or not.
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srider - what motherboard are you using ? I don't know if a BIOS upgrade would help or not. Maybe an update might allow for a smaller AGP Aperture setting (most likely not, though).
Basically the biggest thing I could think that would affect you is the settings for the AGP port in the BIOS/CMOS or the video drivers.
Which Diamond Stealth III do you have ? Assuming it is based on the Savage4 there are some slightly newer drivers on the Reactorcritical download page:
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You will have to delete your "cm prefs" file first and (with your desktop set to a higher resolution) when you run CM again you should be able to select the higher resolution.
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According to Diamond/S3's specs the Savage4 (Stealth III S540 Extreme) does support table & vertex fog. So fog issues with this card are a driver issue.
I guess some of these companies don't expect games to be making calls for fog-tables when there is vertex fog available. So if the hardware does support fog-tables, then it is the drivers that don't seem to be written well enough to support the fog-table calls in DirectX.
I'm curious to know what other game titles use fog-tables. I guess the latest games just use vertex fog - which requires you to have a newer video card to get fog.
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thepow - hopefully a clean install will help find the root cause of your problems.
Are you going to be reformatting the drive or are you just going to install over your current copy of Windows ? To be honest it is probably best to reinstall Windows from scratch. If you have the hard disk space and a reformat is too drastic there is another way. You could rename your current Windows directory to "winold" and then reinstall to a different directory ("windows" - when you install it will likely detect "winold" as the directory to install to). When you've got your drivers all installed and updated then install CM before anything else and see how things run. If, after experimenting, you haven't found a solution then you can just delete your current Windows directory and rename your Winold directory back to Windows and you should be ok.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-21-2000).]
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You did perform a full install to your hard drive correct ? If you run off of the CD, you'll get some slow performance.
A shortcut placed on your desktop from a program on your hard drive shouldn't be any problem.
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MDMP-2 is going to have different textures in it I believe. In other words they are complementary and not replacements of what was in MDMP-1. MDMP-1 doesn't have winter textures in it to my knowledge. Those have been created by other people, but there is a large collection of them at CMHQ's "3rd Party MODs" section. Most of the data in MDMP-1 is actually sound (.wav) file replacements that are "High Action" (Madmatt's description).
Some people have a preference for one grass type over another (Lo and Hi Res). The Lo Res grass apparently makes elevations a bit easier to distinguish than the Hi Res one's.
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v. 1.02 comes with the "new" explosions. You should be seeing them if:
1) Shift-I (I believe) is set to "high quality"
2) Your display driver can support transparencies properly.
If you've installed the v. 1.01 patch over your 1.02 installation, then you're going to need to reinstall from your CD again.
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Getting CM to run on a PC laptop is going to be hard. Almost all laptops have little or no 3D capability in their video chips. Next most laptops don't have a lot of video memory which slows things down due to textures, etc.
Unfortunately the only place to get a NeoMagic driver for your video card is from Dell. Depending on how old your laptop is there may be no further updates to the driver (maybe for "Windows ME").
What color depth are you running on the laptop ? I'd suggest trying 16-bit and higher. Possibly a different color depth may help. Also close down any applications you have running in the background just in case they are affecting your palette (which usually only happens at 256 colors).
If you can provide more details on your laptop (model#, etc.), there might be some more info for you. But... running CM on a laptop is usually going to be slow, if you can get around the video problems.
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I don't think that CM directly calls "RunDLL". I believe another process is running in the background that may be calling this software (uh... it could be Explorer, USER.EXE, etc.).
A problem with "checking file allocation tables" is usually indicative of a hard drive problem (which shouldn't be CM's fault). I would suggest running a "thorough" check of your drive with scandisk, which should do a surface scan to find possible defects in your drive and map them out.
Depending on your motherboard model you may want to check out a BIOS update (but you'll have to correctly identify the model # and the revision # of the motherboard). Be careful in applying BIOS updates, because if you lock up here then it's going to require a trip to a knowledgeable computer repair shop.
Cyrix CPUs don't really have a great reputation compared to Intel and AMD (they were basically the "cheapest"). Depending on your motherboard and it's revision level you may be able to upgrade to an AMD Socket 7 CPU which will cost less than US$100 (though your motherboard and memory will need to support 100Mhz bus speeds if you want anything over 350Mhz).
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Srider - What video card are you using ? What version of the SB Live drivers are you using ? If you're not using v. 3 then you may run into some sound problems (though I wouldn't expect lockups to be one of them).
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I'd suggest upgrading the video card first since it may make the most noticeable difference in playing CM.
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Xyphorus - Depending on how much you want to spend a GeForce (nVidia chipset) card would be a good buy. There are several types out there: GeForce SDRs, DDRs and GeForce2s and soon GeForce2 MX. The GeForce SDRs would be the cheapest, but usually at least US$200 (I guess). The GeForce2s (which have DDR memory) will be the most expensive. They come in 32Mb and 64Mb versions.
If that's too much to spend then a card based on the TNT2 Ultra would be a good buy (like the Diamond Viper V770 Ultra or the Creative Blaster TNT2 Ultra). These cards you should find for under US$200.
Some people like the new 3dfx Voodoo5 5500, which has two processors on it. There's some trouble with the drivers when you use both processors, but that may be fixed at some point. The Voodoo5s (and the GeForces) support FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Aliasing) which "smoothes the jaggies" on the display. FSAA will usually incur a big hit in video processing and lower your frame-rate, but for some people the quality is worth it. I'm not sure which card is faster at FSAA, possibly the Voodoo5.
As for the ATI problem. Apparently the "fog-table emulation" problem is only an issue with DirectX. I'm not sure what method Charles used for fog on the Mac in RAVE, but the ATIs on the Mac can do fog (possibly because the fog under RAVE doesn't utilize "fog-tables"). Anyway, something to that effect.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-21-2000).]
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I would suggest installing Microsoft's DirectX 7.0a:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?ReleaseID=16819
After installing this you may want to find the latest version of your video card driver (if you don't have it already) and install that. Then try CM.
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I have an ATI Rage Fury (128 Pro).
No luck, no fog effects. As you said, everything else works, but fog. Apparently the ATI Rage family does not support fog-table emulation. The newer ATI Rages support the newer types of fog, but not the type that CM has been programmed for. From what I can tell no driver update will fix this - its a hardware design issue.
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James - If you really want those fog effects and you're not getting them, then you may need to purchase another video card (and remove your current one).
What you need to do is find out exactly what video card you have in your computer. There is a chance that it is built-in. This in turn could limit your choices in upgrading your video. One way to find out is to go to Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager tab > click on the plus next to Display Adapters and your video card/video chipset should be listed there. Double click on the name of your video card and go to the Driver tab and then click on the Driver File Details button. You will get a listing of some of the drivers for your video card. Highlighting the first two filenames (one at a time) and reading the line that says File Version will give you a number to compare versions. If you post your info here we can tell you where to go to get an update (if it will help).
If you're lucky, your problem might be solved with newer drivers. But as a number of members on this forum have found out, their video cards/drivers don't support "fog-table emulation". Although these cards can often do fog, it is of the newer type that CM didn't use in order to keep compatibility with older video cards.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-20-2000).]
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Are both your mouse and keyboard infrared devices ? Is it possible for you to borrow a non-infrared keyboard and mouse and see how they react with CM ? You may be able to keep your current drivers (depends on how unique your mouse/keyboard are...), just make sure that you use the same type of mouse (i.e. - if your infrared mouse receiver hooks up to the serial port or the PS/2 port - get a mouse that works on this same port).
I wouldn't think that an infrared device would be much of an issue, since (in this case) the infrared isn't something that normally needs a driver (infrared serial/parallel ports are another matter. Most users who have problems with CM encounter lockups within CM itself or some other type of problem when switching programs.
In fact, can you switch from CM back to the Windows desktop and back into CM ? Do you get the same problem or does that work fine ?
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Steve Grammont was out last week on vacation. He usually does the processing of the orders. So your copy of CM may have just shipped.
Now add the time for Canadian customs (which seems to have held up most of the copies of CM in the first round of shipping). You may have a week or two of waiting to go through.
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My guess is that it is a driver issue.
The Savage 2000 drivers probably aren't doing fog-table emulation correctly. According to Diamond/S3 the Savage 2000 does support "Vertex, per-pixel, range-based and table fog". Unfortunately there doesn't really appear to be a place to post issues with their drivers (other than calling them, which is probably going to be "on-hold Hell").
I have no idea if any of this will help you, you may want to checkout Reactorcritical.com and see if the S3 Tweak offers any features that will help. The Savage 2000 driver listed here is dated a little older than what you claim to have.
Reactorcritical:
http://www.reactorcritical.com/download.shtml
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-20-2000).]
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Have you uninstalled your previous video drivers ? On occasion they could possibly interfere with the newer video card's drivers, especially if they install a lot of additional options.
Get the latest nVidia Detonator Reference Drivers (5.32). You won't get all of the ASUS control panel features with the Reference Detonators, but you'll get the latest (under the TNT/TNT2 section):
http://www.reactorcritical.com/download.shtml
Before installing the latest I'd suggest going to Control Panel > Add/Remove Software control panel > Selecting any installations referring to your old video card and your new one. On reboot you may have to select an SVGA video card. After this reinstall DirectX 7.0a.
After you have DirectX installed then install your Detonator drivers.
Hopefully this will work for you. If not then there's probably a lot more we would have to review with you.
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Do you know what video card/chip you have in your Gateway ? It's possible that a driver update for your video may fix your problem (either from Gateway or the original card/chipset manufacturer). If you're running Windows 2000, then it may be an issue between CM-video driver-Win2K. There may be no immediate fix if it is Win2K (depending on your video card, etc.).
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Small restaurants probably accept AMEX because a lot of businesses still use it as their "corporate" card. It's quite common to use them for business-related meals. If the restaurant didn't accept them, they would more than likely see a difference in their bottom line.
TCP/IP Patch
in Combat Mission Archive #2 (2000)
Posted
My guesses about TCP/IP -
1) It will only support two players. I don't know if there are plans to support more, but probably not until CM2 (since more than two players would probably require quite a few other changes).
2) The TCP/IP support might not make the game any faster than Hotseat play (other than the need for a password at each turn). I'm guessing that the data is going to be similar to PBEM-type files (though you won't have to conciously post them to the other player) with execution being handled by one computer then the other and then allow for simultaneous viewing of the results (with of some sort security implemented).
3) TCP/IP support can be quite a chore to program. Getting everything down the way gamers want it (and cross-platform to boot) will be time consuming.
Everyone was anxious six months ago to get their grimey paws on the game and voted to have TCP/IP support come out in a patch. I still agree with that vote. TCP/IP will be nice once it is available (if your opponents are in a time-zone close to you), but it doesn't ruin the game's appeal for me without it.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-22-2000).]