Lock Ups ... the saga continues

[ASL Veteran]

Well, CM is a great game ... now if I could only get past this lock up thing. I have been playing around with my system for a few days now ... trying to force lock ups at various times. Anyway, here we go: lock ups occur to me during rapid panning in playback, during the beginning of the set up phase, during rapid panning in the orders phase, and when the "Loading 3D Graphics" page comes up. I used to play at 1152 by 764 with 16 bit true color but that began to freeze my system too often so I steadily reduced my resolution until I got to 800 by 600 which seemed to work just fine - that is...until I tried to play the scenario "South of Sword". That scenario is a large scenario and it is virtually unplayable for me. I can get into the game if "No Fog of War" is selected (which the game always defaults to, even though I always pick Full Fog of War), but if I change even one thing on the preferences page (to full fog of war for example) ... Bang ... total lock up when the graphics are loading or the setup phase is entered. I also don't see fog, but I can live with that.

Most of the posts on this board seem to be from people who have ATI Rage cards and there are a few with VooDoo cards. Now, ATI may be a piece of crap AGP card, but the VooDoo is supposed to be a top of the line PCI card. I was thinking of getting a new video card. The Annihilator 2 is available from Creative Labs, but I don't know if I can even change my card (proprietary rights?) or if my system will work with it or not. This also raises a question in my mind ... if the game was designed with the "old" way of doing fog (pixel vs linear I think?) then CM must have been designed with lower end systems in mind. Why do I need to upgrade to a 300 dollar (high end) video card in order to run this game? Shouldn't my piece of crap AGP card still be better than the best PCI card? Maybe that's a stupid question - I don't know. Anyway here are the relevant specs

Hewlett Packard Pavilion 8495 (right off the shelf)

550 Mhrz Pentium 3

128 RAM

Direct X 7.0a

ATI Rage 128 VR RL AGP

Drivers dated 3/9/2000 (latest on ATIs site)

Bus type: AGP 1x, AGP 2x

BIOS Version: 001.001.001.012

BIOS Date: 1999/03/17

Memory Size: 8.0M

Memory type: SDR SGRAM 1:1/SDRAM

I have not changed any of settings on my CPU or tried to overclock anything. I wouldn't know how to do that if I tried. I'm just a simple grunt trying to kill Krauts. Meantime, I guess I'll play Shogun until I get a new card (if I can). I might as well double my RAM while I'm at it

[Schrullenhaft]

According to HP's specs on your Pavilion it looks like you have an AGP slot. If you can afford it then the Creative Annihilator 2 is a good buy (one of the least expensive GeForce 2's). Though I have no specifics, I believe it should work with your Pavilion. You will need to either disable your built-in ATI video with a switch/jumper, in the CMOS/BIOS setup or it will disable itself automatically when there is another primary video card (with Windows 98's multi-monitor support I would check to make sure that you can disable the ATI or you may not see the Windows desktop as you would expect to).

According to the HP site there are a number of software/firmware upgrades available for your Pavilion. You may want to consider applying them. The latest audio/modem driver is dated June 2000 :

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/swindexes/hppavilion11042_swen.html

When it comes to your ATI's support of fog tables it's a bit of a mixed matter. Some newer (but maybe not the latest) video hardware sometimes doesn't support the older version of fog tables. Whether this is a driver related issue, a hardware one or a combo of both in certain cases, I'm not sure. It may have been a concious design decision on the software or hardware not to support the older fog table emulation. Why this has to be the case, I don't know. Maybe it speeds development and support time for the manufacturer.

As for you lockups; that's strange. It's interesting that enabling non-default options crashes the game for you. I assume that you've already deleted your prefs file already since you've changed resolutions. You are playing with a "full" install, is that correct ? If you've updated to the v. 1.01 patch have you actually replaced the CM executable ? Are you playing with any mods ? The primary problem with Madmatt's mod pack was primarily audio in nature (and only for some people).

If you've already done all of this (which you may have), then my only suggestion is to wipe out CM on your drive (save any scenarios that you've created or saved, beforehand), run scandisk to check for any messed up clusters and then perform a full reinstall of CM and patch it.

[ASL Veteran]

Well, I definitely admire your attempts to assist the people on this board. I have to say that there are many grogs in your debt for at least posting a response. Yeah, I have downloaded all the stuff on the HP site - I did just see the new modem/audio card drivers on there before I posted the original message. I have to admit that I haven't played the game since I downloaded them, but I think most of the stuff was modem related anyway. It sure did have an effect when I tried to play Close Combat 4 modem to modem. Dang were we having trouble connecting at times. Now it works like a champ.

The lockups may or may not be related to the switching of my preferences - could be just just coincedence. I am not running any modification patches and I am running the 1.01 patch. I am fairly patient and I will go out and get a new video card if it is necessary, but now my friends are asking me if they should get this game. I don't know what to tell them. Will it work on their systems? I don't know. My best friend has a Gateway (just like Historical Kev's) and he is very allergic to crashes. I am afraid that if I tell him "buy this game" and it crashes on him - well he is going to hold me responsible for a very long time He isn't the patient type either. What do I tell him? I think the system requirements on this site should be updated because according to the minimum requirements I should be able to run this game. If all sales are final ... well, you can understand the frustration some people may have (not me though).

Windows 95/98/2000

Pentium (P5) 166MHz w/3D card

Pentium (P5) 200MHz w/o 3D card

32MB of RAM

100MB of Hard Disk Space (est.)

CD ROM drive

DirectX 6.0 compatible video card

DirectX 6.0 compatible sound card

28.8 modem for multiplayer

3D Video Hardware Support

DirectX 6.0

RAVE

3Dfx (if supports one of above)

It is strongly recommended that you have a 3D Video card, preferably with 16MB of VRAM or more. Even a 4MB card will work, but the texture quality and framerate will be marginal compared to better card.

[Guest Steve Makarow]

I really feel that these lockups shouldn't be happening.

My system is way beyond the minimum specs (except for the graphics card, but the 3D runs very smoothly until there's a lockup).

The ATI Rage Mobility-P has been around awhile and was the standard on high end laptops while CM was in production, including those from both Dell and Gateway.

I'll be patient for now.

My system:

Gateway Solo 9300

PIII-650, 128 RAM

ATI Rage Mobility-P 8 MB SGRAM

ESS Maestro 2E sound card

V.90 56K modem

[Guest Big Time Software]

ASL Veteran,

1. Try deleting your "CM Prefs" file. This tells CM to start with a blank slate and go through the search process for video cards/modes again upon the next startup.

2. Have you updated your mouse and sound card drivers?

3. If your CPU or graphics card is "overclocked", be sure to turn that off.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>My best friend has a Gateway (just like Historical Kev's) and he is very allergic to crashes. I am afraid that if I tell him "buy this game" and it crashes on him - well he is going to hold me responsible for a very long time He isn't the patient type either. What do I tell him?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Tell him to download the demo and try that. If it works, he ought not to have any trouble with the full version.

Charles

[Guest Big Time Software]

Also, in the http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000139.html thread, jimburb says that he did the following two things and it seemed to make his ATI 128 work:

changes in CMOS settings:

AGP aperture size -- changed from 128 to 256

Video RAM Cache -- was disabled, now enabled

Charles

[etsjcp]

new, encouraging report:

I found the properties panel for my vidcard, a v770 tnt2, and was able to disable 'fog tables' and to take down the '3D Turbo Gauge" down a notch from 5 to 4.

Since you mentioned fog tables as a suspected problem, I thought I'd try this, and, so far, so good.

Now I'm going to bump up the 'Gauge' to 5, but leave fog tables off..... I'll let you know what I find. BTW, I noticed no changes in CM's appearance. The only difference I noticed is that it's not crashing anymore.

[etsjcp]

To follow on my previous post:

I tried bumping my card's '3D Turbo Gauge' back up to 5, and I had crashing probs.

Next, I'll try enabling fog, and keeping the Gauge set to 4.....

I was able to finish my 1st CM scenario, the house-to-house fighting one, to an eventual draw. That was fun.

[Oldgamer]

Sort of a me too post –

I originally loaded the demo on my Inspiron 5000 (ATI mobility 8mb), and had way too many lockups, very similar to the ones you've described. I do pc support for a living, so assumed I could beat the problem through tweaking, but didn’t get too far before bailing back to my desktop. This is the only game that has ever given my laptop trouble, and I really believe it’s related to the ATI’s handling of the 3D, fog, etc… effects. I suspect you’d see similar problems with high end flight sims which also model similar effects. Part of my reasoning here is that I was also unable to achieve good transparency effects with smoke, buildings and fog.

The silver lining showed on my desktop. I run a PIII 500, 128 ram, and a Voodoo 3000 16mb. Perfect display of fog, rain, smoke, buildings – the whole deal, and it has yet to lockup even after playing for 16 hours straight (dang, where’d my life go???). This ties into your other point about system requirements. It has become the norm for software makers to list “minimum” requirements – which mean exactly that. The game will run reasonably well with very few video extras on the quoted low end machine, but if you want to have all the bells and whistles it will definitely require a beefed up machine. In my opinion, BTS is up front about this, and probably exceeding the industry norm.

I realize this post helps you not in the least regarding your ATI issue, but wanted you to know that it can be very solid with a different vid card. Also, I picked up my Voodoo card recently for around 140-150, and it has been worth the money.