Schrullenhaft
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Posts posted by Schrullenhaft
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Abrams - your video card, probably an Intel i740 AGP or the i810, doesn't support fog tables (at least from the look of what you're seeing).
If you have an Intel 740 here is the latest driver (PV 4.0):
http://developer.intel.com/design/graphics/drivers/
This driver probably will not solve your problem and it may not work with your video card depending on the manufacturer (some card manufacturers modified some hardware/BIOS settings that the driver depends on). So if you do decide to try this newer driver, keep a copy of the CD/diskette to install your old drivers.
It is also possible that you have an Intel 810 (which is built into the chipset of the motherboard) - you may want to check with your system/motherboard documentation or your manufacturer's website to confirm this. This is the latest driver for that (PV 4.1):
http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel810/software.htm
Again, keep an old copy of your current drivers in case something doesn't work.
sniperscope - As far as I'm aware, the fog does not move/drift. It is just a semi-fixed graphical representation (that affects LOS calcs). It may "move" around a bit when your scrolling across the screen, but this is a driver-perspective driven movement.
For those who do searches:
You now have to pick the forum to do the searches in. The main CM forum will get you a lot of answers on all kinds of things. If you have technical questions on the Gold Demo or Full version of CM you may need to search on the Tech Support forum. If you want to get everything in one search (including non-CM games) you can select Search All Forums.
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If you play CM maybe you'll get a different perspective on how combined arms works in an "on-the-job" manner, much like the Americans had to at this point in the war.
If anything, play the Quick Battles and save the scenarios for later after you've done your reading. You may not be able to employ the minutae of detail you may read of in CM, but you should be able to apply many real-world tactics and expect realistic outcomes.
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ASL - it isn't necessarily a case of "incompatibilities". The older ATI cards, such as your Rage Pro, don't have the hardware support for fog. As was stated by Charles in this thread:
http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000054.html
There are two methods to do fog in DirectX. BTS chose the older and more compatible version. Some chipsets don't support one or the other or even both. Some of the newest ATI chipsets apparently don't support the older method of fog (or their drivers don't), but do support the newer method. People who have mentioned other games showing transparencies and fog with their current video card and CM not... are probably seeing support for newer fog tables, but no support for the older ones.
I'm not sure if BTS could support two fog code types in CM. In this case they decided to go with the most compatible version, but it still is a problem with some cards, such as the ATIs. If there is a way to support both versions in the code, then I believe Charles will probably attempt it, but it may not be possible.
BTW - ATI chipsets are very common in many of the Macs out now. How different they are in terms of hardware & driver support from their PC cousins, I don't know. So BTS did do some sort of testing for the ATIs.
jimburb - The first thing I would suggest is to delete the CM prefs file. Restart CM and select a resolution, possibly one that is different from what you were using previously. I don't have a clue as to why CM didn't initialize correctly, but hopefully this is a start. If that doesn't do it you may want to play around with the sliders for "video acceleration" and "audio hardware acceleration". And one question, did you change anything since the last time you played CM with no problems ?
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-30-2000).]
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As indicated by your searches for the file name that came up in the fatal exception. The file appears to be the DirectX associated VXD for your sound card.
If you don't want to edit the registry, at least run any possible uninstallers for your sound cards and then boot up in safe mode and remove all of the audio/joystick related drivers, and finally delete the audio-related inf files in your Windows/Inf directory. With your Yamaha audio drivers extracted to a directory you can find... reboot and see if your sound card is detected and install the drivers. If you actually have to manually run the setup program for the audio card, just cancel any of the audio hardware detection that comes up on boot - the setup program should install the drivers.
If you get any warnings about overwriting files during install - say YES ! Hopefully if there is any conflicting version of the drivers you will have replaced it with a consistent set from one installation.
Unfortunately you just can't turn-off VXDs. They remain loaded up in memory (for most cases, especially hardware) and you can't kill them normally. If that VXD gets loaded up, then any time something makes a call to it (and I assume in this case anytime a program initializes DirectX and starts making calls) - you could have a problem. Turning "off" the sound apparently won't prevent the problem. You have to uninstall the driver.
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Berli - Vosages ?
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You may be having a problem with your video drivers and CM. Several people have reported problems trying to switch back and forth between CM and the desktop.
Make sure you are in at least 16-bit color (I don't know if CM gives you an error if your color depth is too low). You may want to check and see if there is a newer version of the driver for your video card. If you can provide some "specs" on your computer we may be able to point you to some sources.
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Unfortunately... nothing. The one exception to this may be that you need to allocate more main memory to the video. I believe you can do this in the CMOS > Advanced Chipset Setup. If you set it to the maximum amount of memory (probably 8Mb), then there is a chance you may get the fog/transparency effect. But the SiS 530 chipset (which is built into your motherboard) may not support the type of transparencies that CM is using. The absence of the "fog emulation table" setting in your control panel isn't an absolute indication that fog effects aren't supported, but they may not be.
If you have the latest drivers and DirectX 7.0a and still don't get transparencies (fog effects) then the hardware won't support it (or the drivers haven't been written to support it).
If you really want the transparencies and fog, then you will have to get a dedicated video card. You will need to check your motherboard manual to see what bus types (i.e. - PCI or AGP) are available for a video card. Becareful in reading your manual however since it may describe your current built in video as AGP, when it is an AGP SLOT that you need.
There have been several recommendations on this board for video cards and it really depends on what kind of CPU you have and how much money you are willing to spend. The NVidia TNT2 based video cards are pretty solid and relatively problem free (they are however AGP cards). If you only have a PCI bus then either a Voodoo3 2000 16Mb or a TNT PCI 16Mb would be a good bet. Ask around on the board and you will get some opinions.
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This looks like a VXD for your sound card. It is interesting that there are different sizes for it. The AW724 v.1040 drivers should have had the same VXD as the Yamaha v. 1040 drivers. Hopefully your problem can be resolved by removing (which I will detail below) & reinstalling your drivers. Otherwise there may be the need for newer or older drivers.
The next set of steps are a bit more drastic and involved. We have to get rid of all your AOpen drivers and references to them in the registry, etc.
I'd suggest completely uninstalling your sound drivers. Goto Control Panels > Add,Remove Software control panel > and look through the list for anything associated with your AOpen drivers or your Yamaha drivers > highlight the particular software and click the Add/Remove button. This will take you through a standard uninstall routine and may or may not get all the files and registries. If nothing applicable is in this list then go to your Programs menu item and look for a group associated with your sound (again AOpen or Yamaha). Check inside any of these folders to see if there is an uninstall routine in them. If there isn't then the next step is to reboot the computer into Safe Mode. To do this you need to press the F8 key almost immediately after powering up the computer (after the memory counts or whatever), if you press this key after you see the Windows logo, then it is too late and the computer will boot normally. This should eventually bring up a character-based menu with 6 - 8 options. Select number 3 - Safe Mode (press the number 3 or use the arrow keys). Your computer will now boot up without a lot of its drivers loading up, your screen will appear smaller in resolution, etc.
Now goto the Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager tab > go to the Mutlimedia items and click the plus sign next to them > this will list out all of your drivers for sound, video capture and joystick. Delete everything that you find here (highlight the item and click the Delete key or Remove button).
From here we will start editing items in the registry. This can be very dangerous to your system configuration. If something goes wrong here you will have to reinstall Windows, which I'm pretty sure is something you don't want to do over again. This step isn't absolutely necessary, but it may be a critical factor in completely uninstalling your previous drivers. Again, if you are nervous about editing and deleting enteries in the registry you're probably better off not doing it.
Goto the Start Menu > Run... item > and type in regedit. This will launch the Registry Editor. It looks like Explorer's File Manager and works in a similar manner. Each of the items here is called a key. You can "open" a key by clicking on the plus sign next to it or just double clicking on it.
Goto HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > and look for any entries in the left pane that mention Yamaha or AOpen. You may find nothing here, if however you do, then you will want to delete it. This won't affect much, but we may as well get rid of them. Now goto the Microsoft key under Software > Windows > Current Version > Run key. Look in the right pane and see if there is anything referencing the Yamaha or AOpen software (probably nothing).
Close up the HKEY_CURRENT_USER and goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Enum > PCI (your sound card is a PCI device). Look for anything in here that may refer to your sound card. You will have to open up each of the keys below PCI and then open the subkey beneath that, then look over to the right-hand pane to see if the device is associated with your sound/joystick (look at "Class" and "DeviceDesc"). If it is then select the key in the left frame (the key in the heirarchy below PCI) and delete it.
Now goto the SW subkey (same heirarchy as PCI). Do the same thing again. You may find a listing in here refering to your sound card, but becareful as some of these settings are set by and provided by Windows. Just delete the items that are associated with AOpen or Yamaha (however your sound card was described in Device Manager, etc.).
Next go to the VIRTUAL subkey. In here you will probably find a listing for your soundcard's support of the game port and/or whatever emulation it may support. Delete these keys.
Coming out of the ENUM key go to the SOFTWARE key. In here delete any keys referring to AOpen or Yamaha. Now go to the Microsoft subkey do as I listed above for the Microsoft subkey. The difference here is that there will be several items to check through... Run, RunOnce, RunOnceEx and RunServices. Again delete anything referring to your sound card.
Next goto System subkey > Services > Class > Media. In here will be subkeys related to your sound & multimedia. Again delete any related to your sound card.
The next subkey is VXD and this one I don't have very accurate instructions for. There may be a VXD for your sound card listed in the subkeys or there may not be one. Usually the key will be named with the VXD's name. You probably won't find anything in this key, but look just in case.
Now go to the CurrentControlSet subkey underneath the Systems key > Control > Media Properties > Midi > Ports. In here you will want to delete everything except Midi Mapper.
Now go up to the Media Resources key > joystick subkey and you may have a joystick key in here that should be deleted. Goto the Mixer subkey and delete the subkey underneath that. Now go to the Wave subkey and delete the subkeys underneath them.
After all of this you can now exit the Registry Editor. All changes that you have made were made "live" and no saving is necessary (which means all mistakes were saved too).
Now go to your File Manager and go to the directory C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER in here we need to find .inf files that reference your sound cards. The names of the .inf files usually should be a good indicator of what they're to be used with. After deleting these .infs (don't delete everything you find here, these .infs are for devices that don't have drivers that Microsoft supports off the Win98 CD).
Make sure that you have extracted the files for your sound card to a directory you are familiar with. Now reboot your computer and it should detect your sound card. It probably won't know what it is so it will ask for drivers. Point Windows to the directory you extracted your drivers to and everything should install from here.
If your problem happens again, then it may be an issue between the latest version of the drivers and CM. In this case you will need to download an older version (I'm not sure if Yamaha has an FTP site with older versions of their card) possibly from AOpen. There can also be the possibility that your audio card is sharing its IRQ and the driver may not cooperate with that scheme.
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Not a lot of confidence in your alma mater ?
Uh.. this is a bit of a mess, but hopefully something here is useful to you. Read through it first before performing the actions.
I assume you are using a PC and have an utility to unzip the mods. I would suggest creating a separate directory for the mods wherever you want. You may want to make subdirectories under this as "new" and "old". Unzip the mod files (I'm not sure what directory structure they have) and copy them into the "new" subdirectory. You should have files that are .bmp's and .wav's, preferably in their own directories.
Here is where the process can become quite manual. If you want to preserve your old sounds and bitmaps you will want to copy them to the "old" subdirectory (in which you will want to create subdirectories of "bmp" and "wav"). Look through all the file names of the mod and look for the matching file name in the bmp or wav directory of CM (the default directory for CM under Windows is "C:PROGRAM FILES\CMBO" under here you will find the bmp and wav subdirectories). Once you've found the matching file copy it to the "old" directory. Once you have completed copying all the old files you can now copy the new mods into the appropriate subdirectories. If you left the old files in their subdirectories (which is "copying" instead of "moving") you will be asked if you want to replace the original file for every file that is copied. Say yes to these dialog boxes.
Be aware that Madmatt has posted a patch for some of the audio sounds that caused some users to lock up. If you downloaded the mod after June 25th, then you should have the file already in the zip.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-29-2000).]
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Be careful..... CM is actually programmed on a Mac and ported to the PC.
Uh... I'm too slow at this...
I'm sure the Mac wargamers out there can't stop praising BTS for creating CM. There really hasn't been anything like it on the Mac outside of TacOps and the Apple IIe's Kampfgruppe.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-29-2000).]
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What would be really nice here is to have the system "lie" to you and tell you that you are facing green troops. When you attempt to take advantage of this and subsequently get the proverbial wedgie you would think twice about the data you get from the battlefield.
This would be the only way I could justify having troop quality info being revealed. It's as if one of your units has reported back to you what it thinks it is facing - only to be wrong. Outside of this I would agree that it isn't something that should be so easily revealed; if at all.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-29-2000).]
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I haven't played around with MS Flight Simulator, but it is possible that CM has a lot more polygons and textures on the screen than it does. With this much data being moved back and forth your video is going to draw quite a bit more slowly.
It is possible that MS Flight Simulator has more optimized code than CM, but I'm more under the impression that it has to move less data than CM and can therefore draw to the screen faster. BTS may have had to make compromises in performance for the sake of compatibility - but I think that there are only a few instances of that in the code.
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Your CPU is very busy drawing the screen and menus & mouse movement just compound what it has to do. Although your AMD has the "3D Now" extensions it isn't enough to help in a very significant way (those extensions compete with Intel's MMX SIMD - programs just have to be written to support their functionality). Basically, without a 3D card anything you do on the screen is going to be slow.
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It seems as if people are having problems with the ATI cards primarily with transparency support (which I get with a Rage 128 Pro). They are slower than some of the top of the line cards based on NVidia and 3dfx chips.
The Matrox G400s are pretty good performers, but some people have had problems with transparencies and other occasional problems.
The GeForce may be a bit overpowered for your system. One user on this board claimed that they were getting low frame rates and it may have been due to a CPU that couldn't keep up with the card (transferring data to it). However, if you are thinking of upgrading your CPU/Motherboard in the near future, then the GeForce would be your best bet.
Otherwise I would suggest the Winfast TNT2, which should work with your system with minimal problems. The NVidia reference drivers have been fairly problem free with CM.
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Well, if you only get this problem when you ALT-Tab/Esc out of CM back to the desktop and then back again... Don't switch out of CM.
I don't know how well other 3D games handle swapping from the game and back to the desktop. It seems that the S3 drivers just aren't doing a good job with their 3D video memory management of the VRAM (or something to that effect).
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Did you do a full install of CM ? You may want to check out your "hard drive light" on your case to see if your pauses match your hard drive activity. This wouldn't be an issue with the PBEM password however.
What video card do you have ? Newer drivers or an update to DirectX may help.
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I heartily agree with Captain Foobar's suggestions. I'd like to see a "Target Lock" menu option so you could target an AFV that popped smoke. This would then either allow you to keep your main gun on the AFV (or whatever high priority threat) for when the smoke clears or attempt to fire at the last known location of the target. Hence it could either be a waste of ammo or you would spank an AFV that wasn't smart enough to maneuver after popping smoke.
As it stands now the popping of smoke has a slight "gamey" feel to it that prevents the TacAI from properly engaging targets that would normally pose the highest risk (at least in the player's mind).
It would also be nice to give those Veteran and above crews a bit more "selectiveness" in selecting their targets without getting overloaded with possible targets, which normally results in complete indecision to take any action. A Regular or below crew could possibly suffer indecision as the system is now, but Veteran and above crews should be more familiar with their weapon and its limitations and be more selective with their targets when presented with a "shooting gallery". That is the advantage I'd like to see in crew quality that would work for me in applying any of these items.
Admittedly this will probably be hard to program into the TacAI and still allow it to handle the possibility of threats arising during the 60 seconds it is control. Charles mentioned this when he programmed in the "stickiness" of targets for the v. 1.01 patch.
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Not sure of the exact solution for you. Are there any .inf files in the directory you extracted to ? If there is an .inf file then you can usually install the drivers by going to Control Panels > System > Device Manager tab > click on plus next to Multimedia and select your primary sound device, you may have several items listed (which will probably all need to be updated) > double click on the item or click the Properties button > Drivers tab > Update Driver button > Next button > select "Display List.." radio button > Have Disk button and point to the directory where your updated files are. You will be given a list of drivers there (from the inf files). Select the same device as you are updating (though with a newer date). If you see nothing here then you will be unable to updated your drivers this way. Supposedly this should start updating your drivers, but sometimes it doesn't work completely because an installer is expected to be used.
Your sound card is based on the Yamaha 724 chip, which is quite common. If the AOpen drivers don't work for you, then you can download the v. 1040 drivers directly from this link to Yamaha (download the yamaha_dsxg_driver.exe file for Win9x):
http://www.yamaha.com/lsi/dindex.htm
With the Yamaha driver your card will no longer be identified as an AOpen AW724, but as just a Yamaha sound card. Some utilities that came with your sound card may change or not work.
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It seems they solved a sort of problem with the latest WHQL Certified Matrox drivers. Whether this means that they just don't have lockups any more or if they solved the transparency issue, I don't know.
G400 Thread: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000021.html
Matrox WHQL Drivers (pick v. 5.20.013):
http://www.matrox.com/mga/drivers/certified_drivers/home.htm
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I'll offer my opinion on this.
A lot of problems end up being hardware and drivers that BTS can't control. Even the Mac side has a lot of variations in hardware, OS and other software that make tracking down problems a true pain. BTS has had to program around a lot of hardware issues already with CM, but this just isn't possible all of the time. To support one piece of hardware may require giving up features that the rest can support. It can become quite endless... and BTS was already being criticized by people on this board for "tweaking" the software for too long.
There are bugs/features that BTS will address that are definitely resolvable within their code. The unfortunate fact comes down to buying more compatible/reliable hardware or software for a number of the problems that people see on this board.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-27-2000).]
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EZJCA - unfortunately pford means that he is reading the book and not the screen. There apparently isn't a fix for the Voodoo2 RAVE drivers and the screen text.
Supposedly someone from 3dfx is in contact with Charles about some of their driver incompatibilities. Whether this is something that they'll address or not in the next set of RAVE drivers they offer is yet to be determined.
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Since GLIDE is a proprietary API that can legally only be used on 3dfx hardware, it is unlikely that BTS will rewrite all the graphics code to the GLIDE API (for a sizeable, but very limited audience). Especially considering the amount of problems they've had with the Voodoos supporting DirectX or RAVE. If BTS decides to support another API in future releases it will most likely be OpenGL, but that whole issue is a developer's nightmare when it comes to a cross-platform game like CM.
It's hard to believe that your games look better on a Voodoo2 SLI than on a GeForce 256. The GeForce can do 32-bit color while the Voodoos (1 & 2) are limited to 16-bit color in their API/hardware (to my knowledge). Maybe the games you have were initially and primarily developed for GLIDE. The DirectX versions probably didn't get the development time so they may not look as good or play as fast since DirectX is a bit of a "slow gorilla" (but has more features). That would be a developer decision.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-27-2000).]
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When you lock up is the sound still coming from your speakers ? You may want to play with the "audio acceleration" slider in your Multimedia control panel (Multimedia control panel > audio tab > Advanced properties button in Playback area > Performance tab > Hardware acceleration slider in Audio Playback section).
If you know what audio card/sound chip you have you may want to check and see if there are any driver updates (which may fix or make your problems worse - crapshot on that one).
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What do the graphics look like when you come back in ? What color depth are you running at ? I'd suggest trying 24/32 bit color (assuming that you're seeing "psychadelic" colors). Do you ever have other programs open when you go back into CM ?
CRLDS3D.VXD?
in Combat Mission - Tech Support
Posted
I wonder if you're having heat-related problems. If you have a can of pressurized air you may want to go inside your computer (with it powered off) and blowout any dust that may have acculumated on the CPU fan, video card, power supply fan, etc. Make sure to "ground" yourself by touching something metallic before touching anything inside the case.
However a heat-related problem will usually lockup your system regardless of what program you're running.
Maybe we should check out your IRQs. Goto Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager tab > double click on the Computer icon (top-most device). The first tabbed dialog box that comes up is the listing of your system's IRQ usage. Look through the list and find out what IRQ(s) your sound card is using. Check to see if any other device happens to be using the same IRQ (you may get "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering", but check for devices other than that). If we find that one of the IRQs is being used by another device (like your video card), then your audio driver may not be able to handle the sharing of the IRQs. Next check to see if there are any IRQ numbers between 3-15 that are available (i.e.- not listed). Also tell me if you have an modem and what COM port it is on. And tell me if you are using a serial or PS/2 mouse.
Let me know what you find out.
[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-30-2000).]