Game Crashes and flashing screens

[DRG]

DzrtFox said:
I'm not 100% sure yet but it looks like turning sound off has fixed the problem. I even went back to full-screen mode (which seemed to freeze more frequently) and so far have made it about 20 turns into a battle with no problem. I will follow up if the problem reoccurs, but for now it appears the problem is sound-related. I know I have the latest driver for this chip, as one hasn't been released in quite awhile...

Play a few times with the sound off then save a game and turn the sound back on again. Remember if you do crash the autosave will catch the last full turn so you won't be losing your games completely. If you can establish that sound off = Good and sound on = Bad let us know. You may be one of the few who has a problem with the MP3 sound files. If that does indeed turn out to be the problem the patch ( which will be released in a couple of weeks ) has instructions on how to convert the MP3's in the game to WAV format. This may not sound like a great solution but a full set of WAV files in an equivalent sound quality would be an 80+ MB download so converting is quicker and easier for everyone all the way around

Don

[DzrtFox]

OK I'll let you know how it turns out...

Thanks for the help.

[DzrtFox]

OK I'm almost positive it's the sound now.

With SoundFX off I finished my last scenario and played the first several turns of another scenario with no problem. I turned SoundFX back on and the game froze up within two turns. I rebooted, turned SoundFX back off, loaded my Autosave and finished the rest of the scenario without problem.

[DRG]

While you were playing with sound ON did the sound FX appear to be playing normally up until the freeze up??

Don

[DRG]

Just before your game locks up with sound on did you notice if there was an intensive use of sound just before the crash ?? i.e. gun or tank battles where lots of things were happening at once and did the crashes occur during your turn or the AI's turn ( or both ...)???

Don

[DzrtFox]

Yes, sounds were working perfectly right up until the crash. I've noticed the crash happens on both my turns and the AI's. I don't think that there is anything really intense happening sound-wise when it happens, it seems like it will happen at some random point during the turn but it does seem to happen always like right when a vehicle starts moving. I will try to see if I can cause the error again and I'll try to notice what is going on when it happens...

[DRG]

DzrtFox said:
<snip>it seems like it will happen at some random point during the turn but it does seem to happen always like right when a vehicle starts moving. I will try to see if I can cause the error again and I'll try to notice what is going on when it happens...

If you can cause a repeatable error with a vehicle sound I will need the vehicle, the nation, the year. Then we'll see if anyone else that has had crashes like this can duplicate it

To test this correectly you need to save before moving then save each time you move. Then, after the crash go back and move that same one again. If it crashes three times in a row you've got a repeatable.
Once you establish that you have a repeatable crash try moving something else BEFORE moving the vehicle that cause the crash then try that vehicle again then let me know if that clears the problem or it continues on.

In the DOS version a bad sound file WOULD crash the game faster than you could say *crash*. However, all the old .MEL sounds and their code have been removed and neither Andy or I have had crashes like you describe but neither of us or our playtesters had integrated sound and as I recall someone else had this and solved it by buying a sound card. I'm hoping we can solve this some other way and we seem to have traced most of this to some sytems unable to handle multiple MP3. Other people have reported that converting to WAV has solved their problem but I'd like to follow up the theory that it may be one particular sound even if it's to eliminate that as a cuplrit

Don