.com.unity Forums - 2 Technical Questions

.com.unity Forums (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/index.php)

- Dominions 2: The Ascension Wars (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=55)

- - 2 Technical Questions (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=17516)

Coffeedragon

January 26th, 2004 11:06 PM

2 Technical Questions

-A friend of mine just got the game, and it always crashes after a few seconds. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Any ideas what the reason could be?

-Less important: Is there a hotkey for making screenshots? (Printscreen doesn�t work well; resulting bitmaps are ugly.)

aldin

January 26th, 2004 11:10 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
-A friend of mine just got the game, and it always crashes after a few seconds. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Any ideas what the reason could be?

Try running it without sound.

~Aldin

ceremony

January 26th, 2004 11:19 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
-Less important: Is there a hotkey for making screenshots? (Printscreen doesn�t work well; resulting bitmaps are ugly.)

No dedicated screenshot key, but the bitmap you generate with Print Screen should be identical to the screen image, and uncompressed (meaning all the data is there - it's a bitmap after all), so you can re-save it in any format you like. Perhaps the program you are using to view the bitmap is zooming it out?

Coffeedragon

January 26th, 2004 11:30 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by aldin:
Try running it without sound.

~Aldin

If I understand him correctly, he doesn�t get that far. The game starts to load, but then decides otherwise. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Any known problems?

Coffeedragon

January 26th, 2004 11:32 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by ceremony:
Perhaps the program you are using to view the bitmap is zooming it out?

I opened the bitmap with paint- size was right, but the coulours were wrong.

Lord_Devi

January 26th, 2004 11:37 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Well whenever that happens to me, one of the first things I do myself is try again with my audio hardware mixing turned all the way down. "Start->Run->"dxdiag""

Of course this doesn't work all the time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif But it works frequently enough for me that it's worth trying.

ceremony

January 26th, 2004 11:37 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

I opened the bitmap with paint- size was right, but the coulours were wrong. <hr /></blockquote>Could be a problem with Paint's color table. FWIW, I've pasted the PrntScrn image into Painst Shop Pro as well as Photoshop, and it looked exactly as it should. You could test this by getting a more robust graphics program (you can download a free demo of Paint Shop pro I believe) and see if the error is duplicated.

On the sound issue, I believe aldin meant to turn the sound off using a command-line switch when you start the program. I don't know what that switch is offhand but it should be in the game docs, or maybe posted on this forum.

EDIT: I just found it on the Dominions X site: the switch is --nosound

[ January 26, 2004, 21:40: Message edited by: ceremony ]

Gandalf Parker

January 27th, 2004 12:36 AM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

You might try another paint program. The capture should be perfect but the program might not be saving it well. I use GIMP which is free and powerful but not easy to learn.

Coffeedragon

January 27th, 2004 01:28 AM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by ceremony:

On the sound issue, I believe aldin meant to turn the sound off using a command-line switch when you start the program. I don't know what that switch is offhand but it should be in the game docs, or maybe posted on this forum.

EDIT: I just found it on the Dominions X site: the switch is --nosound

Where do I type that in?

diamondspider

January 27th, 2004 01:33 AM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by ceremony:

On the sound issue, I believe aldin meant to turn the sound off using a command-line switch when you start the program. I don't know what that switch is offhand but it should be in the game docs, or maybe posted on this forum.

EDIT: I just found it on the Dominions X site: the switch is --nosound

Where do I type that in? <hr /></blockquote>Right click on shortcut for Dom2 demo and choose properties.

Click on Shortcut tab.

Type --nosound at the end of the field called Target after this: "C:\Program Files\dominions2demo\dom2demo.exe".

Click OK.

Then double-click on the shortcut.

[ January 26, 2004, 23:37: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

Coffeedragon

January 27th, 2004 01:47 AM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by diamondspider:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by ceremony:

On the sound issue, I believe aldin meant to turn the sound off using a command-line switch when you start the program. I don't know what that switch is offhand but it should be in the game docs, or maybe posted on this forum.

EDIT: I just found it on the Dominions X site: the switch is --nosound

Where do I type that in? <hr /></blockquote>Right click on shortcut for Dom2 demo and choose properties.

Click on Shortcut tab.

Type --nosound at the end of the field called Target after this: "C:\Program Files\dominions2demo\dom2demo.exe".

Click OK.

Then double-click on the shortcut. <hr /></blockquote>We�ll try that; thanks.

Coffeedragon

January 27th, 2004 04:17 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

"--nosound" didn�t work. Any other suggestions?

PC in question is an AMD Athlon, Windows 98, Rage Fury Pro/Xpert 2000 Pro, 32MB.

PDF	January 27th, 2004 04:45 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

CoffeeDragon,
What type of crash do you have ? Exit to desktop ? BSOD ? Comp frozen ?
And when does it happen ? Playing on strat map ? Combat replay ?
Did you try unistall/clen HD/reinstall ?
What graphix drivers and DX Version do you use ?

Arralen

January 27th, 2004 04:51 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Try the following:

1) Use "dom2.exe -smfwx --res 800 600"
Even if it doesn't work, leave it this way.

2) Make shure to use a OpenGL-capable driver.
Check the readme/website docs for details. Not every ATI driver can run OpenGL apps, and even those that are supposed to aren't necessarily very good at it.
I run DOM2 on the the machine I write this on, and it's using a Rage XL chip. It does run, but performace is very poor, despite C-600 and 384 MB.

3) Run DxDiag, post the info here.

A.

Coffeedragon

January 27th, 2004 09:58 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by PDF:
Exit to desktop ? BSOD ? Comp frozen ?
And when does it happen ? Playing on strat map ? Combat replay ?

On my friend�s system I mentioned, CtD immediately when trying to run the game.

Coffeedragon

January 27th, 2004 10:11 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by Arralen:

2) Make sure to use a OpenGL-capable driver.

Should I have an idea or something, what OpenGL is? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

And my friend is much less computer-literate than I, so that bodes ill for my multi-playing with him. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

ceremony

January 28th, 2004 07:21 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

OpenGL is a multi-platform standard for graphics, whereas DirectX limited to Windows and is proprietary to Microsoft. You can learn more about it here:

http://www.opengl.org/about/overview.html

but that's not really that important. The important thing is that since Dominions 2 uses OpenGL, you need a set of drivers for your video card that have good OpenGL support. It's possible that the issue with your friend's machine is that the drivers he is using for his Rage Fury are old, or that the chip itself may not have good OpenGL performance.

Make sure he goes to

http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html

and downloads the latest Win98 drivers available for the card.

Coffeedragon

January 28th, 2004 07:49 PM

Re: 2 Technical Questions

Quote:

Originally posted by ceremony:
OpenGL is a multi-platform standard for graphics, whereas DirectX limited to Windows and is proprietary to Microsoft. You can learn more about it here:

http://www.opengl.org/about/overview.html

but that's not really that important. The important thing is that since Dominions 2 uses OpenGL, you need a set of drivers for your video card that have good OpenGL support. It's possible that the issue with your friend's machine is that the drivers he is using for his Rage Fury are old, or that the chip itself may not have good OpenGL performance.

Make sure he goes to

http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html

and downloads the latest Win98 drivers available for the card.

Sounds like very good advice. Will pass it on.

Btw, the semi-good news are that the game does run on the machine of his pet dragon, err, gf. We will see if he can convince her to temporarily lend him her pc. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 12:16 PM.