Loading problem??

[Stalin's Organ]

I load SC from an icon in Win 98 - the first time I load it I get the music & the menu and it freezes solid.

I ctrl-alt-dlt to end the task and load it again - this time it works OK but there's no music at all.

Happens every time - any ideas??

[windstarz]

some games i have played seem to work better if you load from the game folder (exe file). some i couldnt get to load at all from an icon.

[Hubert Cater]

I think I figured out what is happening here for you. On some systems there is a sound card problem that does not allow multiple wav files to be played asyncrhonously, so what appears to be a freeze is rather just the system waiting for the music to stop playing before it can play the button click. Try clicking on a menu button and wait a bit for the music to stop and you will see what I mean. There has been a fix added for the final release that allows you to specifiy sound interruption in an 'SC.ini' file if you have been experiencing this problem.

Also the reason why you lose sound when you kill the game in win98 using the Ctrl-Alt-Delete method is that win98 does not properly handle the termination of the MCI sound system that the game is using. win98 thinks it's still in use and cannot share it any further at that point until the system is rebooted. This is not a problem with win2000/XP as microsoft seems to have fixed the problem.

As a temporary workaround, I know some players have used a shorter intro file by just replacing the current intro.wav if you don't like the current long wait to get into the game

Hope that helps,

Hubert

[Stalin's Organ]

Thanks Hubert - indeed a little patience showed you aer correct!