Game breakers

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aprezto
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Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

OK, so I have the game and I'll admit I have not read all the rules, but I have read what appears relevant and have watched all the tutorials but these are rather important issues:

I appear to be able to select units on the strategic screen but can't right click to gain info. I don't seem to select provinces with a left click (so that they turn green) and I can't move a unit when I have it selected - moving the mouse to another province does not create a line of arrows coloured green, red or any other colour, so it appears I can't move!
Also:
the minimap is blacked out in the top 3/4rs - I am running two NVidia XT8600 in SLI mode..?
Whenever I close the game it crashes with a debug error in C++

The last is not such an issue, a CTD when I want to stop playing being relatively minor, but the others mean I can't play the game.

I think I have read the relevant locations in the manual - struggling to see what I am doing wrong...

Thanks
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Gil R.
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RE: Game breakers

Post by Gil R. »

By any chance did you start your game and forget to change from "Computer" to "Human" on the setup screen? If no nation is played by a human I believe the game starts, but you can't do anything. What you're describing sounds like you might have done this. (If so, don't feel too bad: I sometimes forget to do this myself!)

The crash on exit you describe is a known issue for some players. It's annoying, obviously, but the good news is that it only happens when exiting the game. I don't think we've determined the cause yet.
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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

No, I chose a human player for england without changing any of the other settings.

It happens every time.
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Gil R.
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RE: Game breakers

Post by Gil R. »

Another thought: on machines with low memory (1GB RAM or less), there is a chance that sometimes pop-ups will appear behind the active screen (i.e., the map map), for Windows-related reasons I'm not tech-savvy enough to understand. Perhaps try ALT-TABbing and see if that brings forward the pop-up. In my experience, which was before I added memory to my own computer, this would happen when I had a bunch of programs running at the same time as the game.

So try that and see if it solves the problem.
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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

Hi Gil;

I dount it but will have a crack - 2 GB of mem in the machine.

I have installed the game on my old computer - still runs the same O/S but only one graphics card, less powerful CPU and only 1 GB of mem - works fine...?

So there is something with the setup of my new machine.

I have both computers running through a KVM switch to share mouse, K/B and monitor and figured it might have been this, but the fact it functions on the old PC without worries seems to discount this.

At least I have it running on one rig!
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Gil R.
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RE: Game breakers

Post by Gil R. »

If you've got 2GB then I'm probably wrong.

I've sent up a smoke signal for Eric, so he'll be on the case soon. We've reached the limits of ability to troubleshoot.
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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

Thanks for the help either way.
 
I wonder whether it might be a windows setting. The machine in question is not attached to the internet so hasn't got XP windows updates passed service release 2. I don't want to have to run anti spy/virus/ad software. Could be I've missed something you're expecting to be there. 
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Gil R.
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RE: Game breakers

Post by Gil R. »

That's very likely to be it -- I just don't know whether it's a video drivers issue or something else. (The map problem might be, but I'm not sure about the issues with clicking and arrows, etc.)
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ericbabe
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RE: Game breakers

Post by ericbabe »

ORIGINAL: aprezto

OK, so I have the game and I'll admit I have not read all the rules, but I have read what appears relevant and have watched all the tutorials but these are rather important issues:

I appear to be able to select units on the strategic screen but can't right click to gain info. I don't seem to select provinces with a left click (so that they turn green) and I can't move a unit when I have it selected - moving the mouse to another province does not create a line of arrows coloured green, red or any other colour, so it appears I can't move!
Also:
the minimap is blacked out in the top 3/4rs - I am running two NVidia XT8600 in SLI mode..?
Whenever I close the game it crashes with a debug error in C++

The last is not such an issue, a CTD when I want to stop playing being relatively minor, but the others mean I can't play the game.

I think I have read the relevant locations in the manual - struggling to see what I am doing wrong...

Thanks


Try turning SLI mode off perhaps. It could be that when DirectX enters fullscreen mode it's not getting the proper mouse coordinates from Windows; that would explain why your mouse isn't working. Also, if you haven't updated your system in a while, perhaps try updating your video drivers; I had many problems SLI mode on my machine (NVidia 8800's) with the video drivers that came installed on the system.

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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

Hi eric;
 
Thanks for the response. I have the latest drivers for my graphics cards (downloaded and copied across using a mem stick) and have tried turning of SLI - no go I'm afraid. And while I have the game running on my other computer it seems terribly laggy. I see there are some others that have highlighted lag issues so this may not necessarily be 'old rig' related.
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ericbabe
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RE: Game breakers

Post by ericbabe »

I believe we have fixed lag issues in the upcoming patch, so hopefully this will resolve those issues for you soon.

Are you getting any functional mouse activity at all, such as tooltips or scrolling when the mouse is moved to the edges of the screen?
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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

Yes, able to use single left mouse click, but not double to select stacks in a province. I get the mouse pointer change to select (left mouse) - info (right mouse) when I hover over a unit in the strategic map.
I don't get travel arrows when I have a unit selected and I move to another province.
I am able to move and attack in detailed combat when I hit end turn (without moving) and the AI moves into combat with me. I haven't checked if I can get right mouse info when I do this.
 
Obivously it is not helping play of the game [:)]
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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

I've installed the patch, and considering it doesn't have major re-works of the engine involved I didn't hold out much hope. That has been substantiated - the issue still exists. However, in my attempt to get it to go I have stumbled upon one more piece of evidence:
 
When I started the game as Turkey I could right click on my units, click on my provinces and get movement lines from my troops, but only those located in Egypt. This coinsides with the fact I can see Egypt on the minimap (where everywhere else is blacked out). Turkish units in Constantinople are unable to be used - they are in the blacked out area.
 
I looked for any new graphics drivers - none, and tried to update dirextX (somewhat forlornly).
 
Does this, perhaps, jog any memory because I am sorely tested playing the game on my old computer. It is such an old dog that even the fleas don't bother with it any more.
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ericbabe
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RE: Game breakers

Post by ericbabe »

This is a really bizarre issue.  Would you mind terribly posting some screenshots showing the funny looking minimap?  Would you mind also posting a DxDiag diagnostic of your system?
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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

Hi Eric;

Thanks for looking into this. As requested:



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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

And here is the DXdiag
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ericbabe
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RE: Game breakers

Post by ericbabe »

I wonder whether one of the files the game uses is damaged somehow.  Do you have access to another computer to test whether your copy of the game works on another machine?
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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

Hi Eric;
 
Yes I have installed it on an older machine and the game works perfectly, well a couple of CTDs, but no game breakers like this. So you think maybe a reinstall??? Will try and get back to you.

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aprezto
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RE: Game breakers

Post by aprezto »

Oh wait - do you mean a windows file? I did have a blue screen recently, on this PC, that required it to debug a whole lot of files, and it has acted squirrely after that.
 
I can't remember off hand - does Win XP have a repair facility rather than reinstall. This PC is using a raid config for its disks and it was hellish to get working.
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RE: Game breakers

Post by ericbabe »

I meant I thought that there was a game file not reading from the hard drive properly -- in particular, the logical map file, which controls both where the mouse clicks and the drawing of the mini-map (the two things with which you are having issues.)  Since you've gotten the game to work properly on another machine, I don't think that the problem is a corruption in your game files, at least not in the installer.  There may be a problem as the files exist on your raid array.  You might try uninstalling and reinstalling to test whether this is the case.  Also perhaps try running a disk scan utility to see whether there are any errors on your disk.  I'm sorry I can't think of anything more helpful to recommend.  The files I think might have problems are Data/index.map or Data/index.zip if you have a way to test these.  Index.map is fairly large and so might conceivably be broken up across your raid and therefore be causing a problem.

With the original Crown of Glory, we had one person who was also having unusual problems getting the game to work with his raid array.  I know many people who are running on a raid without any problems, including of our server here, so I don't think it's a problem with raid arrays in general.
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