Info: Windows 7 *GUARANTEED* fix

[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

[Render]

Don - This is/was a fresh download, with all the patches, plus the wide screen beta fix.

I may have also DL'ed NCrawlers fix prior to the beta (I'm guessing the beta would overwrite that?). It's not in my notes, so its possible I may have thought about it and then skipped right to the beta.

===

15 years ago I might have been upset at losing the ALT-Tab/boss key. Now I'm just glad its still here to lose. I'm the boss now, don't need the boss key anymore.

HOME
IS
GOOD,
R

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Render

Don - This is/was a fresh download, with all the patches, plus the wide screen beta fix.

I may have also DL'ed NCrawlers fix prior to the beta (I'm guessing the beta would overwrite that?). It's not in my notes, so its possible I may have thought about it and then skipped right to the beta.

The NCrawler uses a different cmd file that starts the games EXE directly but that bypasses the Game Options screen. The BETA fix is a GameOptions.EXE that runs the NCrawler but from slightly altered command file so no, the beta doesn't overwrite the NCrawler CMD file and if you click on it ( or ours ) the game will start without going to game Options first.

Don

[JamesG]

Just an update, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. It seems that I didn't read the posts right, I was trying to run the game with the options screen, instead of the 'new' Batch file. Now everything is excellent! Thanks again.

[DRG]

This is starting to become hopelessly confused. I posted the BETA fix to this thread becasue it was related to the topic but that was obviously a mistake

The BETA fix that we posted contains a GameOptions.exe that runs a CMD file so running from that, the game starts the way we intended it to start, from the game options screen.

Please tell me which post on this thread you thought confused you into thinking it was the other way around. With this BETA fix what should happen is you click on "Play winSPMBT" the CMD file will run in a small black box and the game will start.

Right now it is not clear if you are using our fix or the original NCrawler fix which only uses a CMD file to start the game directly or if you are trying to start the NCrawler fix from game options which will not work. What it sounds like is you have put in the NCrawler cmd file and tried to run the game from Game Options

What is the name of the CMD file you are using to start the game ??

Is it Win7SPMBT.cmd or win7fix.cmd ???

Don

[JamesG]

Sorry for the confusion, when I would run WinSPMBT from the 'new' options file, the game would load and run and when I quit, for some reason the 'run explorer' wouldn't start. I run the progam directly from the
win7fix.cmd. I did see the small box in the background, so I was assuming that when I launched the program from the options screen the program would close correctly. That was not the case, so what I had to do was select my options, then quit options and then run from the 'new' batch file. I hope this helps.

[JamesG]

Oops, I meant that I am using Win7SPMBT.cmd, NOT "win7fix.cmd". Thanks again.