Error running SC WW1 Breakthrough with new drivers.. no response otherwise

[Night]

I, and others, have received no response from Battlefront regarding this issue... there was a post made in Mid-August in the Startegic Command forum which has gone unanswered.. I sent in a help ticket and have no received a response,  so I am hoping someone here can help us..

 

After installing a new AMD grapics card and updating the drivers... Startegic Command World War 1 breakthrough no longer will load new or saved games, or any games.  the following message appears:

 

FAILED(initialize_national_tile_surface): 0x80070057 The parameter is incorrect.

 

I have tried a host of solutions from a fresh install, to running it windowed, to running it in 16 bit, to running it compatible with windows 7, and nothing will get the scenarios to load. The game itself will launch, you can access the settings, saved game menu, new game menu, but as soon as it starts to load the actual scenario that message appears and the game crashes.. Please note this is the 4th SC game I have owned, all have worked just fine, this one has also worked fine for months since I bought it, in fact I was playing it on my machine the day before i got the new card, also, the game is fully patched up the current 1.05 version of the expansion and 1.08 of the base game.

After visiting the forums I saw another user had the same problem and he was able to identify it having something to do with the video drivers for new AMD cards... I am obviously  not going to get rid of my brand new RX480, but SC1 is also my favorite single player game to play, I paid good money for it and the expansion, I have paid good money for almost all the SC games going all the way back to the first SC European Theater.

I noticed on AMDs gaming calibration software, the list HAS Strategic Command European Theater (the very first SC game from about a decade or more ago) but it has no others listed... I don't know if that is battlefronts fault or AMDs fault, but someone DUN GOOFED.

I would really appreciate some kind of help on this issue.  I am running Windows 10, quad core i5 2.8 ghz with 8GB ram 700 watt corsair power supply and a new RX480 GPU.   Again, please note that this game has always worked for me on this very machine, the only difference being the new GPU, my old GPU was also an AMD just a very old model. Also, I really think battlefront could do a much better job with tech support.. there is no tech support forum that I could find.. no tech support contact either.. the closest thing is a sale support (which I did contact and did not receive a response)  the FAQ and help desk mention some errors and how to solve them, but very few and this was not one of them. Thanks again!

Edited September 8, 2016 by Night

[Night]

FAILED(initialize_national_tile_surface): 0x80070057 The parameter is incorrect.

 

 

Found something on AMDs forums mentioning this also, apparently since Crimson 16.6 drivers came out... they are past them now but still it doesn't work   help

[Battlefront.com]

Hi there,

Hubert is the only one that checks the tech support stuff on the forum and he's been super plowed under with work lately, so that's definitely not ideal.  As for filing a ticket, if you filed a ticket with the Help Desk I don't believe I've seen it.  It should have come to me pretty quickly.  Some people send an email and think that's the same as the Help Desk, but it is not.

In any case, driver issues are the bane of every game developer's existence.  There's so many out there it's impossible to ensure the game runs with every card, driver, and OS combination.  That said, I am unaware of any across the board problems with SCWW1/Breakthrough.

Are you using v1.08 of SCWW1 and v1.05 of Breakthrough?  If not, definitely patch.

Steve

[Night]

Yes the game is fully patched.... I  mentioned that in the above post...

I am hoping someone can resolve this soon. I also contacted AMD and am waiting for a response but I won't hold my breath.

[Schrullenhaft]

Are you running the 16.9.1 drivers (released Sept. 7, 2016) ? It probably doesn't address the issue, but I was checking to see if you had the latest driver release.  Unfortunately the likely solution to your problem is a driver update from AMD and it may take them awhile to fix this problem. Problems with AMD drivers in the past have taken over 6 months for AMD to address - and that was when they were releasing new drivers almost every month (with some AMD developers contacting Battlefront directly in one particular case, something that rarely happens). In this case it appears that they have broken some sort of graphic routine that the game is depending on. I don't know if Hubert could develop a patch that would work around this error or not. Errors of this nature usually can't be worked around by the game developer because there really is no substitute for certain graphic calls. I would assume almost ALL of the Strategic Command games may have a problem with the latest AMD Crimson drivers since most of them are using similar graphics calls.

Your best chance for a fix is to submit the issue to AMD directly:

http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D23A3DE979

As much as you would like to think that the developers have some sort of direct connection with the video manufacturers/developers, they don't. Only the biggest companies with the most popular games get that kind of attention. The rest of the gaming world is dependent on customers reporting issues to the video developers. If there are enough reports, the issue may get looked at - or in some cases it ends up being tangentially related to a problem another (more popular) game is having.

As for games that are listed in AMD's Gaming Evolved App, that is strictly the domain of the video driver developers. They are NOT going around to game developers asking what their current game titles are, etc. SC 1 appeared on a list somewhere for them and they included it (maybe one of the driver developers played it in the past), Battlefront had no input on what games are listed in that app.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Schrullenhaft

[Night]

Thank you for that information. I'll be honest it is hard to believe that I as a single consumer would have a better chance then a developer, but I will give it a shot of course.

 

Yes I updated the driver the next day it came it, currently I think I may go and try to install old drivers and hope that they work with my other games. Strategic Command is easily one of my favorite games and I am determined to keep playing it. As I said before, I've been playing them since the first strategic command european theater.

[Night]

There are basically no older drivers for this card, it is so new that there is only 1 older version and they don't work either it seems. Also, it seems my license issue is back... this is turning into a real nightmare

 

[Battlefront.com]

Drivers are the bane of a gamer's existence.  They are the bane of our existence too   We documented a hideous bug (two, actually) with ATI drivers that left our customers with horrid mouse control.  We traced the problems to specific calls and fully documented what was going wrong.  We even had a customer on the ATI driver team and it still took a YEAR for them to fix it.

All I can say is that we are unaware of any across the board, or even card specific, problems with this game.  Which usually indicates that it's machine specific and therefore outside of our ability to influence.  Licensing issues, on the other hand, we can help with.

Steve

[Night]

What could be machine specific when nothing has changed on the machine except the card? I've played SC games, including breakthrough, on this machine for years. Besides there have been two other documented cases, one on these forums and one on the AMD forums, so it has to be something with the drivers or card.

In any event it looks like I may have to just uninstall from my machine and reinstall on my laptop since there doesn't seem to be a solution.

Thanks for your help regardless.

[Battlefront.com]

14 minutes ago, Night said:

What could be machine specific when nothing has changed on the machine except the card?

Usually when someone like me says "machine specific" they mean the entire box and all the software in it, not just the basic PC.  The meaning here is that it's not a specific, more-or-less widespread problem that is easily described in broad terms such as X card with Y driver doesn't work with Z game.  It could be a combo of a specific motherboard, video card, driver version, and OS version.  Or a sub component on the mother board made on the third Tuesday of November 2015 or something else.  We've even had wacky things like the control software for a third party mouse screw up a game.  It sucks, but that's what we consumers get for wanting variety and competition.  Honestly, it's surprising things work as well as they do.

14 minutes ago, Night said:

I've played SC games, including breakthrough, on this machine for years. Besides there have been two other documented cases, one on these forums and one on the AMD forums, so it has to be something with the drivers or card.

Oh, I'm in agreement that that is what changed the equation for you.  But it could be that the driver doesn't play well with your motherboard because it's older than they support.  Or something like that.

14 minutes ago, Night said:

In any event it looks like I may have to just uninstall from my machine and reinstall on my laptop since there doesn't seem to be a solution.

Thanks for your help regardless.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more help.  Believe it or not, we software developers prefer problems to be widespread vs. "machine specific".  Widespread likely means we can identify and fix it.  "Machine specific" tends to be out of our hands.

Steve