Game does not work

Eric the Red · #1 February 6th, 2004, 05:54 AM

I'm having the same problem trying to run the demo. Everything works fine up until I pick my name and my ship's name. Then I get a loading screen, and then the access error... tried reinstalling, all drivers are up to date.
I also am using a Dell. Which I suspect may be the problem. I have a Dell Demension 8100, well at least it started out as a Demension 8100... CPU upgraded to P4 2.4, memory upgraded 756mb, video upgraded to 9800 Pro...
But I suspect the problem lies in the OEM sound cards that Dell uses. I have a Sound BLaster Live! 512v, but I can only use the Dell drivers for it. The Creative drivers lockup when I try to install them. The newest driver available from Dell is 2 years old.

Phoenix-D · #2 February 6th, 2004, 06:02 AM

Evil sound card, then.

Hmm. If you want to verifiy it's the sound card causing the problem, you can turn it off.

My Computer-control panel-system-hardware-device manager-sound, video, and game controllers-find the sound card-properties-switch the use this device field to disable. Might want to turn off everything under sound to be sure.

That's for XP, it's slightly different for other OS's. Anyway, once you've done this reboot, then try running SF. If it runs you've found the problem and should pester Dell about new drivers. Good luck, you'll need it.

To undo that, just do the same and change to enable.

Mephisto · #3 February 6th, 2004, 10:11 AM

Remove all the sound and mp3 files from the demo, this should "fix" th problem. It's a problem with the sound bLaster drivers and is fixed in one of the patches for the retail game. Actually, it's not a bug in Starfury but in the sound driver and the patch only does a workaround.

Eric the Red · #4 February 6th, 2004, 03:04 PM

If I disable sound, everything works fine (but with no sound of course...)
Since this is the only game I've ever had a problem with, I doubt Dell is going to do anything about it.

Ed Kolis · #5 February 6th, 2004, 07:35 PM

You never know... they ARE Dell

StormcloudCreations · #6 February 6th, 2004, 08:14 PM

There's been some weird sound related bugs in a number of projects i've seen lately. My game Coliseum also had a few people with sound related crashes too. When I turned off the music, all the people with problems ran fine.

I ended up having to write my own basic custom-contained ActiveX sound playing file (device-independent) to get around the problem and make sure no one else had trouble.

Arrgh. Windows sure is fun sometimes.

markmm · #7 February 6th, 2004, 10:15 PM

For those who read my first message, I did manage to get the game to work by manually changing the screen resolution to 1024 x 768 prior to starting the game.