Help request

Fyron · #1 January 4th, 2006, 04:04 PM

Quote:

I doubt I have MP3 on my Pentium III-733...

What do you mean by this? MP3 is just a file format, readable by any number of programs, such as SE4 1.93+. The only reason why you would be unable to play them is if you have no sound card or speakers.

jim · #2 January 4th, 2006, 10:51 PM

As I said earlier, I have a Pentium III, 733 MHz. I have defragged recently, and have over 3 gig free. I am using Windows 98, and am unsure it can recognize MP3 files but that seems not a problem as I do not want to use music anyway.

I applied the 3.60 TDM patch and the game statup screen shows TDM Modpack. However, when I tried to start a game, the screen showed "AI Settings" errors, indicating all kinds of missing AI settings, like drones storage on planets, move through minefields, etc for I think all of the AIs (or at least 3 of the 4 the game randomly chose at 3000 racial points).

It let me proceed anyway but then choked on the end of the first turn, saying files not found.

Suicide Junkie · #3 January 4th, 2006, 11:10 PM

Sounds like a lot of pre-gold AIs in your gold game.

Does it say which files aren't found?
Have you got SE4's temp folders *not* read-only?

jim · #4 January 4th, 2006, 11:16 PM

3 of the 4 WERE pre-Gold. Do I need to avoid those AIs?

I patched from the not-Gold installed game. Does that make a difference?

Above, I gave examples of the not-found AI Settings.

I do not know what you are talking about on the last point.

Suicide Junkie · #5 January 5th, 2006, 05:41 PM

You will need to update those AIs before you can play against them in a game without errors.

SE4 needs to save temporary files while you play. Make sure that all the folders and directories under SE4 are *not* set to "read-only"

Ed Kolis · #6 January 5th, 2006, 06:49 PM

And if you're on Windows XP, you need an administrator account (or alternatively, permissions to write the SE4 directory and all its contents, if you're running XP Pro)

capnq · #7 January 5th, 2006, 08:14 PM

Instructions for converting old AIs are linked in my sig.

But it would probably be easier to just install an up-to-date version of TDM.

jim · #8 January 9th, 2006, 01:47 AM

Well, I solved it all by brute force.

I just uninstalled and deleted everything: the SEIV, the SEIV Deluxe patch, and everything that looked like TDM Modpack.

Then, I reinstalled from the non-Gold CD, patched to Deluxe, and then installed TDM Modpack 3.60. It seems to work and am trying a test game now. No errors.

I had been able to run non-TDM Deluxe games w/o errors. I think the non-Gold TDM Modpack files were getting referenced somehow or else the new 3.60 was not overwriting the older TDM files. Amyway, brute force works! ;-))

Fyron · #9 January 4th, 2006, 11:19 PM

Pre-gold AIs do not work in Gold/Deluxe without modification.

Quote:

jim said:
As I said earlier, I have a Pentium III, 733 MHz. I have defragged recently, and have over 3 gig free. I am using Windows 98, and am unsure it can recognize MP3 files but that seems not a problem as I do not want to use music anyway.

SE4 does not care if you are on Win98. It will still read the mp3 files and create wav data to send to the soundcard (or DirectSound, I forget the exact sequence).

Playing MP3s does not depend on your OS, but on the software you have installed.

As for read only, right click on the Temp folder in Explorer and select Properties. Read Only is a check box in that window.

Wolfman77 · #10 January 5th, 2006, 10:42 AM

I just put SEIV on a windows 95 machine with no sound card driver, it just gave an error message when starting the game and at the end of turns but it didn't effect the game at all otherwise. The error message went away when I turned the sound off in the options menu.

How many save game files do you have? If you have allot of them in one folder it might slow it down. Try moving them into a backup folder.