Info: Windows 7 *GUARANTEED* fix

[DRG]

Just so everyone is clear here this beta "fix" is aimed only at players who would prefer to run fullscreen or who run the game fullscreen because they are playing the DL version and 800x600 is a pretty small window in most modern monitors. We know the game runs well in Windowed mode

Furthermore , it's an experiment only. We wanted to get some solid feedback from players and the best way to do that with something like this is to get it into the most number of hands to get the feedback but in that regard the experiment has been a bust with only 9 people DLing it and less than half responding

Perhaps it's just "that time of year.........."

The one piece of useful info this has generated is that Win7 allows the intro to run whereas it wouldn't with Vista which is one aggravation MS has fixed with one of it's service packs at some point.

Don

[secretgeek]

I've got the widescreen beta installed (which works very nicely for when I'm 'working' from home). Tried the win7fix but I keep getting two error message boxes come up and it stops working. Oh and the explorer window that I had open to run the command closes as well.

The boxes are:

SAL Error

IpDD->SetDisplayMode() failed, code 80004001

SAL Error DirectDraw could not be initialized! Error code 80004001


Hope that helps!

[secretgeek]

Actually ignore my post. I've gone back through this thread and came across the solution. I've got the resolution set too high.

Set it to 1024 x 768 and it runs fine.

Only issues now as far as I can see is:

The text is a little blurry.
The two black bars down each side of the screen.
And the fact that my system actually runs at 1280x800 which means I'm only 224 pixels short of being able to play the game at 2 higher levels of resolution! Most frustrating indeed.

Actually, ignore pretty much all of this post too.

Changed the resolution to 'Desktop' and it works fine bar one issue.

I can Alt-tab in and out great with no pallette funkiness but after closing it down i appear to have lost my taskbar. Right-clicking doesn't bring up any options at all on the bit of desktop I can see. I can Alt-tab through windows (which is how i got back here to write this) but even then you can't alt-tab to the dektop.

[secretgeek]

Just final thing (it really is one of those days) logging off and on brought my taskbar back. No need for shutdown restart.

[Imp]

Did you try right clicking & refreshing to bring the taskbar back?

[JamesG]

Just tried the fix and it worked. EXCEPT, when I exited the program I lost all of my desktop and icons and everything I tried failed. The only thing that worked was to restart my system. So, for me this didn't work, is there a way to fix lossing my desktop, what I see is happening is that it's closing explorer and not restarting it. Hope this helps.
my specs.

i7-950
amd 6870
win 7 ult.

[Render]

Don - Just finished downloading and installing everything, including the palette fix.

Works great...No palette issues, no weird lag effect, real full screen.

But I too ran into the exiting or alt-tabbing loses desktop bug.

I screwed up and randomly picked a scenario for the first test run with all installed. Forgot to set fast arty, you just know that randomly selected scenario had a lot of pre-game arty. It was still firing when I got back from the store an hour later...

I'll poke around a bit more tonight

ITS
ALIVE,
R

[Render]

Multiple exits, no issues. Might have been a one time thing.

Haven't tried ALT-tab again, yet. That's next.

Full screen looks great (still can't see some stuff in snow maps).

Some wierd lag like effects in moving the cursor between certain sections of the main screen, also in moving units around (but not as badly as last time I tested). It's really noticible when full map scrolling. The units themselves, including strike and recon units aren't rubberbanding or freezing while moving any longer either.

It's very much playable now (if a bit frustrating with large numbers of units to move around). (edit: THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!)

===

Set up first big test scenario (Nork invasion of RoK). Ran fine (with the above exceptions) for three turns. Then the Nork AI suddenly just quit, without ever moving or losing a unit...

No idea if that was a design flaw on my part or something else.

HERE
WE
GO,
R

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Render

Don - Just finished downloading and installing everything, including the palette fix.

I'm confused, what exactly do you mean by "everything, including the palette fix"

There was only the one beta fix that contained an experimental GameOptions.exe that ran our version of NCrawlers command line file.

Are you refering to the widecreen beta as well as the original NCrawler fix ?

Don

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by JamesG

Just tried the fix and it worked. EXCEPT, when I exited the program I lost all of my desktop and icons and everything I tried failed. The only thing that worked was to restart my system. So, for me this didn't work, is there a way to fix lossing my desktop, what I see is happening is that it's closing explorer and not restarting it. Hope this helps.
my specs.

i7-950
amd 6870
win 7 ult.

All the experimental gameotions fix does is launch ncrawler's .cmd (ie Microsoft's new name for .BAT files)file.

1) It is for FULL SCREEN PALETTE problem fixing/testing. Therefore - running the test gameoptions is worthless in windowed mode.

2) It kills Explorer - deliberately - since Explorer messes with the 256 colour palette in windows 7. (In Windowed mode, the game's graphics library does not use a palletised graphics mode).

3) It relaunches windows exploder after the game is exited. This should restore the desktop icons etc.

4) Therefore - it is a shell to execute the game in full screen, avoiding the Windows 7/Vista problems with hijacking the 256 colour palette. So while running the batch file - do not try to alt-tab out of the game, since explorer is killed while running it, so you will not have any icons etc. to click.
Exit the game, and thus the batch file session if you require to use windows.

All of this can be seen by simply right-clicking on the batch file (Win7SPMBT.cmd) in explorer and selecting the edit option:

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe <-- Nuke Exploder
winSPMBT.exe <-- Run the game
Start explorer.exe <-- restart exploder

Cheers
Andy