Keyboard Goes Dead, Minor Graphical Glitch

[Rob88]

I'm playing my first PBEM game.

Several turns ago, during my orders phase, I all of a sudden noticed my entire keyboard had ceased to function. Shortly after that, the game froze and I had no choice but to reboot my computer.

A couple of turns later, again during my orders phase, I again noticed my keyboard had ceased to function. That time, I was able to finish my turn using only the mouse and saved the game, but I still had no keyboard even after exiting the game and was again forced to reboot.

A second lesser, and probably unrelated problem occured during the orders phase of my last turn. It seems I had ordered one of my tanks to stop moving at precisely the point where a bridge turns into a road. Graphically, the tank appeared to be "buried" inside the bridge, just where the road starts (the tank had crossed the bridge prior to this). This problem did not appear to be serious, as I was still seemingly able to access the tank and give it orders (although I didn't actually give it further orders).

My computer: 800 Mhz AMD Athlon, 128 Megs of RAM. Video: NVIDIA GeForce 256 Sound: Vortex AU8830.

Any thoughts on this?

[Schrullenhaft]

I'm not sure about your keyboard problem. Other than some key-mapping issues with non-US keyboards in TCP/IP games with the v. 1.1 betas, I've never heard of any particular keyboard problems that would be the fault of CM. Is your keyboard a PS/2 or a USB device ? Have you had any problems with your keyboard before (I'd most likely assume not) ? Have you tried ESC'ing or Alt-Tab'ing to the desktop to see if CM would respond to those keys ? Are you running any keyboard or macro software ?

As for the graphically "buried" tank near the bridge, do you recall what terrain it was in (road or open ground) ? You have to remember that CM's graphics are an approximation of the battlefield and not absolute in their representation. If you're close enough to an edge of a bridge, then your unit may appear in the ground or road that appears as part of that tile (the bridge spills over to the next terrain tile if you compare the 3D graphic to the 2D map maker). A unit that appears to be stuck in a bridge is just on the typically steep terrain that the bridge links to and not yet on the bridge (or just were on the bridge).

[ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Rob88]

Is your keyboard a PS/2 or a USB device ?

PS/2, I think. The plug looks almost the same as my mouse's.

Have you had any problems with your keyboard before (I'd most likely assume not) ?

You assume right.

Have you tried ESC'ing or Alt-Tab'ing to the desktop to see if CM would respond to those keys ? Are you running any keyboard or macro software ?

ESC did nothing, but I didn't try ALT-Tab. I did try Ctrl-Alt-Del, which didn't work. I had to >sigh!< pull the plug.

As for the graphically "buried" tank near the bridge, do you recall what terrain it was in (road or open ground) ?

I emailed you a picture.

I read some older messages which talked about problems with the NVIDIA drivers, maybe that's what's causing the graphics glitch.

[ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: Rob88 ]

[Schrullenhaft]

Rob88 - I got your email and what you're seeing is normal and has nothing to with faulty NVidia drivers as far as I'm aware. I'm not sure how CM calculates a vehicle's position and the space it occupies, but it isn't exact (somewhere around the center mass). Your Pz IV was off to the side enough that as soon as it got to the end of the bridge it positioned itself on the open ground/road. It's a graphical anomaly in CM (I'm not sure of the effect on LOS, etc.) that is somewhat necessary. Calculating and defining the exact space a vehicle (or other object) occupies in CM's 3D world would take a lot more calculations than are presently being used and make the game slow and unplayable for most (if not all) users.

As for the keyboard issue I'm not sure what is going on. You say that the game operates fine with the mouse, but absolutely no input from the keyboard (not even error-related sounds from the computer speaker) is recognized ? Has this only happened once or has it occurred several times already ?

[Rob88]

Schrull, I just completed my next turn and my tank moved fine. I was hoping it was just a graphic anomaly, as you described - thank you.

As for the keyboard problem: A few turns ago, the game locked up toward the end of my orders phase. I did hear the typical Windows error sound just prior. Contrary to what I wrote in my earlier post, I don't specifically remember the keyboard having ceased to function prior to the lock up, but I seem to remember it did (sorry). I did have to reboot my computer and go through my orders again, the second time with no problems. As an aside, the first time I was giving orders I did take quite a long time to review my orders, and did some rapid moving around with the viewpoint and some rapid mouseclicks. Maybe this caused the error.

But a turn or two later, I definitely lost function of my entire keyboard and wasn't doing anything that might be considered abnormal.

In any case, I'm not overly worried about any of this. The game plays fine otherwise and these minor glitches seem to be few and far inbetween and are probably the fault of my system, or the way I use it.

It's just that I've been playing the game against the AI for almost a year and have never had any problems until this, my first email game.

Anyway, thanks for your help.

[Maximus]

Very strange indeed.

But do tell me, what would you be doing (in CM) that would necessitate the use of the keyboard, other than hitting the view buttons (1-8), TAB and ESC?

It sounds like maybe your PBEM game has gotten corrupted somehow and its mucking up your computer when you load it.

[Rob88]

But do tell me, what would you be doing (in CM) that would necessitate the use of the keyboard, other than hitting the view buttons (1-8), TAB and ESC?

I actually don't use those alot. I use mostly Shift-F to get rid of those huge objective flags (I think they could/should be considerably smaller, BTW) and Shift-T to change the scenery level. At the end of my turn, I also change the PBEM filename.

It sounds like maybe your PBEM game has gotten corrupted somehow and its mucking up your computer when you load it.

Quite possible, but so far we're still playing it.