CMAK problem on new iMac running WinXP

[Lawyer]

Hi,

I installed CMAK on my new 24" Intel iMac running WinXP using Bootcamp. I have the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO card and 2GB RAM on the Mac. CMAK runs, but the text blocks in the game are blank white and the ESC key does not work to quit the game, so I have no way quit mid-game. Basically, CMAK is unplayable.

I read Madmatt's trouble shooting advice about ATI drivers causing the blank text boxes, and that I should disable anti-aliasing to fix the problem. But I don't have a way to do that under Bootcamp, since all I have is the Windows Control Panel display box that only lets me set screen resolution. And I still have no way to quit using the ESC key.

This is all very confusing to me. I really want to keep playing CMAK, and I purchased and installed WinXP to play Battlefront games. Can somebody help me? Is there somewhere I can download a more elaborate control panel for the ATI card installed on my Mac? The Bootcamp install of WinXP went perfectly with the necessary drivers being installed from my Leopard OSX disk, but I don't have the standard video card control program most video cards come with to make detailed settings.

Thanks for any help.

Jake

[sargemy]

Hi,

Please help us, we have the same problem!

I'm trying to play CMBB.

I even installed the newest 7.10 catalyst drivers, the text is still all white out. There is a white box around white text, so you can't see anything!

I have iMac 20" 2.4Ghz with Radeon HD2600 Pro; but it is registered as Mobility Radeon HD2600XT in windows XP (running Natively) and with 7.10 Catalyst drivers (modified using DH mobility modder).

The driver works fine, but is there a fix or any very of the catalyst driver I can use with fix this issue??

Thanks!

[Schrullenhaft]

Here's a snippet from the Troubleshooting Guide for CMAK (in the Support section):

Problem: Text in-game is unreadable (yellow on white) on a Radeon card when Anti-Aliasing is turned on.

Cause/Solution #1: This seems to be a persistent bug with the ATI drivers and anti-aliasing and we usually advise to not use AA while playing however a workaround has been provided by a member of our forum which you may wish to try out.

Download this file http://www.battlefront.com/misc/Radeon_text_fix.zip and follow the directions in the readme.txt to replace 3 small files in your CMAK\BMP folder which may resolve this problem.

Cause/Solution #2: Disable Anti-Aliasing in your drivers control panel. To do that, set the AA level to x0 or select Application Preference which does the same thing.

While the "text fix" isn't the most desirable option, it is the one that works consistently. Unfortunately I believe this is a problem that will remain with the ATI videocards and the CMx1 series indefinitely.

To get the full functionality for controlling the Anti-aliasing and other features, install the ATI drivers, with Catalyst 7.10 being the latest. These drivers will require the .NET software, so you may want to run Windows Update to make sure you have the latest updates for them. Without these drivers, you most likely won't be running any sort of anti-aliasing, so that becomes a moot point for troubleshooting.

[sargemy]

sorry for posting too quick.

in the FAQ section, i found a zip file that has the new bmps what fix this problem.

[Lawyer]

Thanks. The text fix worked for me. I never could get the ATI Catalyst to load because my WinXP with auto update does not have .NET framwork, whatever the hell that is. I've become spoiled by Mac software that automatically loads easily and does not require running around or screwing up the OS on my computer.

I sure hope Battlefront makes its next game compatible with OSX. That's where the action is for home computers these days. And with good reason...

[Hermitage]

Thanks for the tip! I had the same problem; new iMac, but the text fix worked for me.

Is there a similarly simple solution to the aspect ratio problem? Seeing everything stretched sideways is really unpleasant.

[Schrullenhaft]

Hermitage - do you know what resolution CM is running at ? What resolution do you normally run your desktop at ?

Supposedly the 17", 20" and 24" iMacs support a 4:3 aspect ratio with the resolutions of 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768. I assume that if you delete your CM Prefs file and select one of those resolutions that you should get the 4:3 aspect ratio which will show black bars on the left and right of the display (since the LCD is native 16:10 aspect ratio). I'm not absolutely sure of this since I don't have direct access to an iMac.

CM typically supports resolutions of 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 & 1600x1200. However I know it supports a few more between 1024x768 and 1280x1024 and on very rare occasions I've seen it support over 1600x1200. I'm not absolutely sure what triggers the support of some of these resolutions (other than the necessity that the display driver have it as a supported resolution for 3D). Sometimes even when a monitor and display driver support a specific resolution, it will not pop up during CM's resolution selection process. I'm mystified as to why CM works the way it does in certain situations. Typically it will VERY rarely support the 16:10/16:9 resolutions that are native to LCD displays unfortunately.