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Technical difficulties

Justanotherwargamer
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BRO,JD Member

BRO,JD

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My game runs fine.

However, many of my unit icons don't show up using the 3D icon setting. The unit base is there, but all I can see are a couple of horizontal lines. This happened for all of my German Army units in western Germany; and sometimes it would happen to my naval units after they moved.

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zmoney Senior Member

zmoney

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Originally posted by BRO,JD:

My game runs fine.

However, many of my unit icons don't show up using the 3D icon setting. The unit base is there, but all I can see are a couple of horizontal lines. This happened for all of my German Army units in western Germany; and sometimes it would happen to my naval units after they moved.

Loaded fine but I'm having the same problems as you with my units not showing themselves.
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Hubert Cater Senior Member

Hubert Cater

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Originally posted by Justanotherwargamer:

Yeah had to happen (especially as it was so easy for me to download too).

I get the game going, I select all the usual options, but when game is ready to play, I get this odd message.

failed (lost surfaces): Segmentation Violation

That is pretty much verbatim.

Anyone have any ideas?

There is a known issue on some systems when you attempt to switch focus away, i.e. an ALT-TAB, during the AI animation turn. Can you confirm that this is not the case? In general though if you do not switch focus away during AI replay the game should run fine.

If it is just a general lost surfaces error can you retry the download as perhaps it was corrupt.

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Hubert Cater Senior Member

Hubert Cater

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Originally posted by BRO,JD:

Loaded fine but I'm having the same problems as you with my units not showing themselves.

Since the non 3-D units appear to work Ok it sounds like your video card is not supporting the DirectDraw mirror function properly, i.e. this only appears to happen when your units want to be *flipped* to face the opposite direction.

I would suggest downloading the latest version of DirectX (if you haven't already done so) as well as downloading the latest version of your Video Card's drivers just to see if this helps resolve the issue. In the meantime playing with the non 3-D units appears to be a viable yet temporary workaround.

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Shime Junior Member

Shime

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Concerning the "unit flipping" issue, I seem to have the same problem with the 3D units. I have just updated my DirectX and the driver for my video card (Mobile Intel® 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset) but the problem persists. As you have said Hubert, the units with default facing are OK, and the ones with opposite facing are messed up.

Is there any hope to fix this? How about the option to turn off the mirroring, just keep the default facing?

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mustang96 Member

mustang96

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Hi to all

Great game my only problem is i can't play the demo in 32 bit resolution. It keeps crashing? All my specs are greater than the minimal requirements and my directx is 9.0c. I turned down to 16 bit resolution and the demo works?Will this be a problem with the real game?

Thanks for any comments.

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Lars Senior Member

Lars

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I get a weird deal on the unit sprites.

The game displays all the sprites for every unit in one spot. Happens after the computer move so must be some sort of rendering bug. Goes away after you make a move or two, then the units display correctly. i.e. -just inf, instead of inf,tank,plane,hq,para,etc.

Also, when you drag a unit around to make a move, the square background that you're considering going to turns pure white sometimes. Anybody else seen this?

Running a older geforce3 video card with the latest directx, so everything should be up to snuff there on drivers.

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Yogi Senior Member

Yogi

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Just to clarify, are we just talking the demo here, or have some of you received the actual game? I ordered on day 1 or 2 of pre-order, but haven't received anything yet, nor was I expecting to for another week or two.

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Hubert Cater Senior Member

Hubert Cater

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Originally posted by Shime:

Is there any hope to fix this? How about the option to turn off the mirroring, just keep the default facing?

Unfortunately if it is unsupported by your Video Card technically there is not much I can do to change that. There may be a workaround on my end to completely skip unit mirroring and just have a second set of 3d units available that are already mirrored for rendering which I will investigate shortly... as another option, if you prefer the look of the 3-D units over the 2-D block icons you could simply swap the names of the unit bitmap files.

To do this, navigate to your installation folder, typically this is usually something like:

%root%\Program Files\Battlefront\Strategic Command 2 Demo

From here open up the Bitmaps folder and find the following files:

unit_silhouettes_sprites_3d.bmp

unit_silhouettes_sprites_military.bmp

unit_sprites_3d.bmp

unit_sprites_military.bmp

Essentially all you have to do is swap the names for these files, i.e. all the files that end with _3d should end with _military and all the files that end with _military should end with _3d. You might need to use a temporary location to rename these files and then place them back into the 'Bitmaps' folder.

Now if you select to play with the non 3-D unit icons the game should play with 3-D looking units in place of the block style icons but with no mirroring.

Hopefully this helps,

Hubert

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Hubert Cater Senior Member

Hubert Cater

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Originally posted by mustang96:

Hi to all

Great game my only problem is i can't play the demo in 32 bit resolution. It keeps crashing? All my specs are greater than the minimal requirements and my directx is 9.0c. I turned down to 16 bit resolution and the demo works?Will this be a problem with the real game?

Thanks for any comments.

Sorry to hear about the trouble and like Blashy all the tests that I have run on several PCs have all been at 32bit resolution and it ran without issue. While it may not have any effect, perhaps try downloading the latest video card driver and DirectX if applicable to see if it resolves the issue.

Hopefully that will help,

Hubert

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Lars Senior Member

Lars

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No, still there. I just ran home and tried it over lunch. Maybe it'll go away tonight. I'll post my specs later.

However, tried the 2-d units and they work fine. Must be the mirroring issue for the 3-d on my system that makes them display all screwed up.

Sniff, going to miss those super-duper all-in-one Tank/Inf/AF/HQ units... ;)

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BRO,JD Member

BRO,JD

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Have updated DirectX and installed the latest driver for my Intel 82915G/GV910GL (and re-booted), but I still have the same problem.

I'm not too concerned because, once I get the actual game, I'm sure I'll use the NATO symbols (3-D icons just don't do anything for me in a strategic-level wargame). Still, I hope that this problem doesn't affect any other part of the game, and I want Hubert to try to ID all of the bugs so that others don't face the same problems down the road.

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Justanotherwargamer Member

Justanotherwargamer

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User's video card seems to have been the initial culprit in my case.

You would have to release these the same day my computer decides to give me a migraine smile.gif

Oh well, saw the game, saw it running, and don't have any comments to offer at this time beyond I conquered getting demo to run HC.

Only remark I can think of, you "might" have gotten too "clever" with the menu functions to the right of screen.

Hubert, the reason your SC1 was awesome, was your game interface was so well made.

I fear you might have fallen into a trap I see many computer wargame designers fall for, that being senseless graphically cute icons, with sound effects, that really, don't contribute to the game really.

But I am sure you will tweak this as well as a few other things.

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Hubert Cater Senior Member

Hubert Cater

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Only remark I can think of, you "might" have gotten too "clever" with the menu functions to the right of screen.

Hubert, the reason your SC1 was awesome, was your game interface was so well made.

I fear you might have fallen into a trap I see many computer wargame designers fall for, that being senseless graphically cute icons, with sound effects, that really, don't contribute to the game really.

Essentially this was just an attempt to maximize the map playing area whereas the SC1 buttons were often criticized for taking up too much space. So in the end, as you've pointed out there is a bit of give and take. The "give" here was iconic like buttons for the menu options and the "take" was more map playing area. I do realize it is a bit different but once you get used to it I think most players will appreciate the extra map space versus the larger buttons of SC1.

In terms of the look of the buttons it was really no extra effort on my part. Essentially buttons have three states, mouse over (highlight), mouse down, and their neutral position. Here the artist chose to represent the buttons with the dials and while I actually like the new look, it can easily be modded to something more conventional (by simply changing the button graphics) like the previous 'mouse over highlight' 'button down' scheme.

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zmoney Senior Member

zmoney

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I'm having the same problem as rambo. The axis units on main-land europe and some ships in the ocean aren't showing up. Does anyone have any ideas on why this is happening?

I could see if it was every unit, but it is just the axis in both scenarios and the ships in the 1940 scenario.

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Shime Junior Member

Shime

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Originally posted by Hubert Cater:

as another option, if you prefer the look of the 3-D units over the 2-D block icons you could simply swap the names of the unit bitmap files.

To do this, navigate to your installation folder, typically this is usually something like:

%root%\Program Files\Battlefront\Strategic Command 2 Demo

From here open up the Bitmaps folder and find the following files:

unit_silhouettes_sprites_3d.bmp

unit_silhouettes_sprites_military.bmp

unit_sprites_3d.bmp

unit_sprites_military.bmp

Essentially all you have to do is swap the names for these files, i.e. all the files that end with _3d should end with _military and all the files that end with _military should end with _3d. You might need to use a temporary location to rename these files and then place them back into the 'Bitmaps' folder.

Now if you select to play with the non 3-D unit icons the game should play with 3-D looking units in place of the block style icons but with no mirroring.

Hopefully this helps,

Hubert [/QB]

That worked out just fine. Thanks Hubert! Great game, BTW, but you already know that smile.gif
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