Correction: New graphics corruption in v7.1

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

Well I'll take the hit; but please as "misguided" as my efforts were they were well intended. I saw the volume of traffic in both forums after the patch and from a certain member of the forums and decided you both were busy enough. I expected that a certain level of support would be available to me from Customer Support as the issue at the time was unreported and in my case possibly affected by the situation I noted in passing in the forum that I had a catastrophic system crash of my PC and had to manually rebuild it. I knew at some point if unresolved they would recommend I post it in the forum or they would contact one or both of you for further action. Neither of which occurred FROM MY PERSPECTIVE. Below is my first and last to support and their replies to me with the same recommendation #2 (I believe Item #2 of that reply as well.) I just had no time to pursue the issue for various other reasons of life, liberty and the pursuit of protecting my PC and maintaining it's operating capability in the XP world. Some of you know...never mind...the events in the news here recently have not been good and brings on it's own set of issues...so I chose what I thought would be the path of least resistance on this issue. It was to me at the time "KISS" moment and not a "I have a secret" one.

#1...
Date: 4.1.14 7:37 AM

>Using fully updated XP SP3 OS. As already noted last week I had problems with my WinSPMBT CD. I had mentioned then I had to reload my computer last week as well and it is working great. I received the above disc and it loaded up perfectly when I added in "\Program Files\" into the file destination prompt. Both 7&8 patches were downloaded as well using the a fore mentioned method with no issues and have already setup a campaign. That was for background. Turning to the issue at hand; I loaded my WinSPWW2 v.1 CD with no problems. Consolidation Patch 5 and Patch 6 were also downloaded with the addition of the above step also with no problems. Followed the same procedure with Patch 7 it downloaded fine it seemed however; when I went to verify the patch as shown on the game Main Menu where the scenarios are shown all I got was half the upper "outer frame/border" showing, the listing of the first 15 scenarios with the 15th ones lettering/description chopped off about 3/4 of the way down and blank after that. The tabs/buttons are not labeled but if you mouse over them the "Build and play a battle" ans "Exit" etc. descriptions do show up in the dialog box at the top. Again none of this occurred in reloading both games or with any other patches applied to them. I made sure with each of the numerous attempts to reload the WinSPWW2 game and Patches that all files/folders were deleted before each reload by using the ADD/REMOVE, Hard Drive and Search options that XP allows. Not sure what to do after everything else applied seems to work and indicate I had the patches loaded properly up to WinSPWW2 Patch v.7. I am in Windowed display mode..
>
>Regards,
>Pat Conklin USN/SS Ret.

Make sure auto hide is off, and the task bar is in the default position at the bottom of the windows desktop.

Customer Support
The Gamers Front
www.GamersFront.com
Shrapnel Games, Inc.
www.ShrapnelGames.com

#2...

Date: 4.3.14 7:08 AM

>I know you guys are working my issue. But something that's been in the back of my mind is that I never saw the dialog box I saw when I installed the patches to my new WinSPMBT disc. The dialog box I refer to is the one before down loading that indicates the patch will overwrite existing files and asks you whether you wish to proceed or not by clicking Yes or No; with the WinSPWW2 patches I never saw this though again the Consolidation 5 and 6 patches seem fine. Just a thought.
>
>Regards,
>Pat Conklin USN/SS Ret.

We have been unable to duplicate your problem on an XP system and this is not a reported error from anyone else.

Some things to try:
1. Check that the installer is installing to your correct hard drive letter and location (the correct install path).
2. Try desktop mode if not already using it and try other resolutions and see if the same thing happens but really this is a long shot.
3. If you can click on a button can you move to a different screen?
4. Because MBT works and WW2 doesn't check that the Properties/ compatibility settings for the winspww2.exe match the winspmbt.exe.
5. Try starting the game with "Show Introduction" in Game Options set to OFF and you should always start the game from Gameoptions not the winspww2.exe directly.

Let me know what happens.

Customer Support
The Gamers Front
www.GamersFront.com
Shrapnel Games, Inc.
www.ShrapnelGames.com

Well at least someone can look back to find some solutions in the future should something like this happen again. I only say that because I'm a "1/2 glass full" kind of guy in answer to a recently asked question in the Tiger Thread here.

Regards,
Pat

[DRG]

The forums exists to deal with issues like this and if you had posted your problem straight away it might even have been fixed for 7.1 because when we get things like that dropped in our lap the first thing we think of IS NOT " gee...... I wonder what resolution he's running" because the first thing we thought of was auto-hide was on and then we might not hear anything back for a couple of days.

The WHOLE POINT of the forums is to get things like this out there so other players can read about it and test to see if it's a universal problem , as this turned out to be... or just somebody putting the patch in the wrong place....again.

Guess where those "some things to try" came from ?........and look at number 2......"Try desktop mode if not already using it "

Don

[DRG]

Anyone who has had trouble running the game at 1600x1200 resolution please try this EXE and let us know if it solves the problem for you. We have tested it on our computers and everything appears to be running normally again.

Don

[RightDeve]

I'm afraid this "sabbatical" thing means more and more incremental patches will be released, which will certainly make people confused as to whether they have the right patch or not, whether they should patch from what version. I'm not talking about those who regularly visit this forum.

Even for me who still regularly visit this forum, the 7.1 and 8(R) patch remained under my radar for too long until I dug through some threads to find out.

[DRG]

The alternative is not fixing the problem which we judged to be the wrong approach. The only people affected by this latest issue are a distint minority of player and if anyone reports it later in it's a simple matter to ask what version they have then recommend they DL the latest version. If you don't run 1600x1200 then you don't need this fix and since the OOB's are the same no matter what PBEM is not affected

MBT 8(R) was a missing SHP file. These ones with SPWW2 are minor and being rectified. In a month they will be non issues ............. or we could have just said "too bad so sad we'll see you in 2016"........ but we didn't so don't complain when we fix things

Don

[RightDeve]

We're all very grateful for you and Andy's tremendous hard work, even on your sabbatical you're still doing this for us. Only very few developers are doing this thing you know, listening to their users and implementing the change...

But maybe a comprehensive information thread containing all current and possibly future incremental patches (including this main EXE update), will keep us all well informed and no longer we fear being "left behind" if we somehow missed some posts or threads.

Cheers

[DRG]

MBT already has an explanation. When we are are sure this fix works for everyone I will explain what's gone on with WW2. This EXE will stay here but once we know it works for everyone there will be a 7.11 patch posted in place of the 7.1 that is there now. Yes, I suppose it could be described as complicated but the alternative is do nothing and leave the bug uncorrected. If anyone has already DL'd this EXE there would be no reason to DL the 7.11 patch as the OOB's are unchanged so no PBEM is affected if someone has 7.1 and the other player 7.11 and the ONLY reason to DL this exe or the 7.11 patch would be if you run the game at 1600x1200 which I'm betting few do so my guess is this change affects maybe 1% of the players so the other 99% have no reason for confusion

Don

[Mobhack]

Well - it does not affect the one resolution, it's any one that gets clipped short at the bottom edge in Windowed mode, so depends on your screen settings.

(One line in the initialisation code went walkies, for unknown reasons (Andy's fat thumbs most likely!) - now it's back).

cheers
Andy

[Tim James]

Fixed for me, thanks.

[DRG]

This issue has now been resolved in the 7.11 version of the patch that replaced previous versions of the 2014 patch this morning. Information about this can be found in the first post of the---
Patch: NEW__WinSPWW2v7.11_(2014)_Upgrade found in the sticky section of this forum ( click here )