I Cant start the game at all

[mpooley]

I just got CM2 today, Installed it ok and tried to start a quick game to see what it is like.

setup the game and clicked OK and got a black screen with "Loading 3D Graphics"

it kept thrashing my drive for about 20 mins when i gave up and reset my computer !

anyone know what might be wrong?

I have got an AMD XP16 processor with a Kyro 2 graphics card.

thanks

Mike

[Schrullenhaft]

What OS and what driver version are you running ? Do you know what version of DirectX you have installed ?

I also suggest (initially) using the 'default' settings for DirectX. FSAA combined with some other settings can cause some problems in CM.

Some people have mentioned that the latest drivers have problems, so you may need to try out the second-to-latest version which was 15.0084 I believe.

[mpooley]

Hi

I'm using WinXP and the hercules prophet 4500 tv/out card with old drivers !!

I'll try changing the drivers first but how do i alter the FSAA ?

I've done it before but i cant remember how i did it now!

Thanks

[easytarget]

the oldest drivers i could find for an nvidia chip set card at guru3D were 30.87's

when i installed them yesterday it fixed my issues with AA not working (actually you could turn it on and run the game, it just messed up all the menus) on a Ti200 - give'em a try

and i'd avoid the latest 40's, while using those i had issues

as for AA and anisotropic filtering, you can get

to them by right clicking your desktop, clicking on properties, and then clicking on the respective tabs for: 3D anisotropic filtering, OpenGl settings and Direct3D settings - in these you'll find what you're looking for

btw, since you're running XP you should have directx 8.1 at least installed - depends on how you have XP setup in terms of updates - but you'll have at least 8.1 because it came with it

one further note: what you're describing doesn't sound to me like graphics drivers problems - could be wrong of course - but that sounds more like the game is looking to load something it's not finding and just sits there trying till you reboot or ctl-alt-del

before you go to a lot of trouble with drivers you might want to start with the more obvious option of going to add/remove programs, uninstalling CM2 (even removing the directory left behind manually wouldn't be a bad idea) and starting from scratch on the install

[ December 09, 2002, 08:56 PM: Message edited by: easytarget ]

[mpooley]

Ok thanks - I think switching off FSAA did the trick.

BUT although it is working now the graphics are pretty poor! ie fences flicker and change shape etc.

although I have the graphics on high res 1200 x 1028 i think the graphics look awfull. Jerky too!

is this normal or have i still got to sort out whats wrong.

When i think how slow this game is compared to most I cant believe the graphics are supposed to be as bad as this?

thanks again

Mike

[easytarget]

i think you've still got some debugging to do

if things are working the way they're supposed to you shouldn't see any flickering or jerkiness

did you load up the 30.87's?

[mpooley]

I did install the latest drivers but not those ones as they are for the Nvidia chipset my hercules card has a Kyro 2 chipset.

I have got DirectX 8.1 BTW

any other sugestions?

do you think it might be i have the resolution too high? I cant find anyway to setup the graphics in the game?

[Schrullenhaft]

Uh... loading the latest drivers probably isn't a good idea according to the posts I've read from other Kyro users. The latest drivers caused a number of problems with CM.

I suggest uninstalling all of your video drivers and setting the video to VGASAVE (the safe mode VGA driver that will get installed by default if your card isn't recognized). I don't know if it will help to browse the registry and delete Kyro/PowerVR entries or not.

Find out what chipset your motherboard has and install the appropriate chipset drivers for it (most likely it is a VIA chipset, but it may be something else). This will require a reboot once these are installed.

I suggest trying out the 1.05.15.0084 drivers instead of the latest 1.06.16.'s. PowerVR's site doesn't have the older drivers listed, but you can get them from Guru 3D (go to Videocard Drivers > Kyro & Kryo-II based drivers > select Version 1.5 for Windows XP).

Before installing the drivers, make sure that any anti-virus programs and other utilities in the background are turned off or unloaded. Try to 'clean up' your memory environment and have as little as possible loaded up when performing the install.

I suggest using the default DirectX (or Direct3D) settings initially (part of the Display control panel).

[easytarget]

i've no experience with that chip set, so i'll defer to Schrullenhaft on that

it did occur to me though that you might want to also go into the cmbb directory and delete the preferences file the prog creates when it boots up that stores your rez and refresh preferences (called something like combat mission bynd ovr prefs - or at least that's what it's called in cmbo)

that way at least you could fire it back up and make sure you set it at the rez you want, but more importantly at the highest refresh rate your vid card and monitor can display at - i.e. i run at 1280x1024 at 85hz refresh - and if i had set it at say 60hz refresh by accident or whatever, it would definitely be harder on the eyes