Fog Emulation Problem

[rwcanuck]

I keep getting intermittent problems with the game freezing on me when I have the fog emulation on for battles involving fog.

I have NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 32M card running on my Pentium2 300 w/128M of memory.

I also am using directx7.

I also have installed the latest drivers.

I was wondering is my sound card which is a Yamaha OPL3x?

[Guest Madmatt]

Hmm, I have not ever head of a similar issue and I had a TNT2 Ultra for over a year with CM.

If you think the Yamaha card might be the culprit then test it out by disabling all sound and trying a foggy scenario. See if it still crashes.

How intermittent are the lockups and how do they manifest themselves? Hung system, locked cursor, drop to desktop. Can you Alt Tab out of the game and bring up task manager? If so does it shows CM as Not Responding? You are using the latest 6.31 Detonator 3 Drivers? There have been several beta versions since then that might be worth a try too, I am currently running the new 6.35 ones with my Geforce II. You can always find the latest drivers at www.reactorcritical.com

One other thing to try is to turn off the Fog Graphics (shift-W) and see if you still get all lockups.

Check on the above and report back what you find.

Thanks!

Madmatt

[This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 10-30-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 10-30-2000).]

[Schrullenhaft]

Uh... I sat on this too long...

I haven't heard of any particular problems with the fog-table emulation and locking up. Which Detonators are you using ? I'm not sure if 6.35 has some problems or not. You may want to try 6.34 and see if it helps you or not:

Reactorcritical ("Detonator Win9x 6.34" is in the middle of the green text list of local files):

http://www.reactorcritical.com/

I wouldn't suspect your sound card of causing the lockups that seem related to fog. Nevertheless here are the latest Yamaha drivers for the OPL3x based cards (YMF-719 ?):

http://www.yamaha.com/lsi/dindex.htm

What motherboard do you have ? Though I couldn't tie any particular feature or BIOS version to a problem like you're having, it may be worth knowing.

[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 10-30-2000).]

[rwcanuck]

When the game locks up even the mouse pointer freezes.

I tried disabling the sound card and the game still froze with the fog on.

I'll try using the 0634 drivers as the 0635 drivers even caused lockups in games with NO fog.

I have an ASUS Slot 1 Mainboard P2L97.

RW

[rwcanuck]

Madmatt, when the game locks it just hangs and sometimes by continually hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del the system will reboot or if that fails I have to manually hit reset.

It locks about all the time in Foggy scenarios (sometimes in the beginning or half way through a given turn) and very seldom will lock up with the the FOG turned off. When it does lockup with the Fog off or in other type battles it is because I am using the latest detonator 3 drivers for my NVidia TNT2 Model 64 32M card. Earlier drivers never lock up except for Foggy scenarios with Fog turned on.

This is really baffling me.

[Schrullenhaft]

Do you know what version your BIOS is ? The latest is 1009. Here's the URL for the download (you'll want the AFLASH.EXE utility that comes up in the java window too):

ASUS P2L97 BIOS (about 2/3's down the page):

http://www.asus.com.tw/products/motherboard/bios_slot1.html

If you're feelin' a little experimental you could try the BETA BIOS (though it may never be released). I would suggest downloading the latest RELEASED BIOS or backing up your current one first though:

P2L97 1010 BETA 3 BIOS (download LX1010.ZIP):

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/beta/mb/bios/

To be honest I don't see anything very signficant in the BIOS update that may affect what you're running into (unless one of the CPU microcode updates is REALLY important). One thing to note is that your motherboard is based on the Intel LX chipset, which is a bit dated. I don't know if the video card has any electrical current limits with that particular ASUS board. Some boards do have problems (which can sometimes be related to the hardware revision of the board - something you can't change without getting another motherboard) with high-memory video cards, but not many (a problem more common to AT SuperSocket 7 motherboards).

Looking a bit further at ASUS's website it does reveal a problem with your motherboard and NVidia TNT-based cards (electrical current requirements). You'll need revision 1.05 or later of your motherboard to be fully compatible. You'll need to open your case and look for some white silk-screened text near the ASUS logo and motherboard model number (it will usually be a bit smaller text size):

Motherboard FAQ from ASUS (about half-way down the page is the info about the P2L97 and the "RIVA 128 TNT" cards. The next URL is the specifics):

http://www.asus.com.tw/products/techref/Tech-report/qa-mb1198.html

http://www.asus.com.tw/products/techref/Misc/rivatnt.html

Apparently there's a rework policy from ASUS to update the boards to be compatible (dated Oct of 98 - so the offer may no longer be valid - if it is even an issue for your m/b's revision).

Did you ever have a set of drivers installed that did work with fog on ? Do you get lockups only when fog is actually displayed on the screen (use Shift+W to disable its display) even though the scenario has fog ? What brand of video card are you using (is it ASUS) ?

[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 10-31-2000).]

[rwcanuck]

Thanks for all the help. I will install the latest bios for my Motherboard.

I did install the 0634 drivers for the NVidia card and was successful in one turn with Fog turned on without the screen freezing but this is an intermittent problem so I'm going to be optomistic yet if the problem has been fixed.

BTW my NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 32M card was by Sniper.

RW