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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> Steel Panthers World At War & Mega Campaigns >> various issues being experienced

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various issues being experienced - 2/10/2004 3:38:41 AM

faulty_intelligence

Posts: 8
Joined: 2/10/2004
From: illinois
Status: offline

hello all, first off I'd like to say great game, point for point I think strategy can only really be done in this way, dedication as a labor of love. issues tho that I'm having, hopefully someone can help.. I was running spwaw 8.0 on my old comp and it had issues, game would crash occasionally, ect, so I've transferred my save files to the new computer and now I'm having a host of issues, I've been using mech.exe to start it now as I can no longer start from the auto run page, tells me spwaw.exe is missing...?! which from a clean installation worries me, the only thing I did was replace the save files with mine, previously it would crash on occasion and you would have to reload the game and hope you had saved not long before, now the crashing resets my colors to 256 and I have to restart the machine, which is not good, both machines I've played it on were running win me, but now I cannot save either, an attempt to save causes the colorful crash, the reset to 256 colors and the need to restart, anyway thats what I've worked out at this time and any help would be appreciated, once again great game, and I look foreward to the next patch too...

Post #: 1

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/10/2004 3:40:26 AM

faulty_intelligence

Posts: 8
Joined: 2/10/2004
From: illinois
Status: offline

thinking I also recall tht the opening movie/intro does not play either, if that helps, and thanks yet again

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Post #: 2

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/10/2004 7:46:36 AM

Wild Bill

Posts: 6821
Joined: 4/7/2000
From: Smyrna, Ga, 30080
Status: offline

I've not been able to get the movie to run either, FI. So I only run it when I want to see it using SPWAW.exe. To start the game I use Mech.Exe. That is the startup file I have in my SPWAW icon on my desktop.

Its fine that way because I really have seen the movie, seen the credits and now with Mech.exe I can go straight to the game.

Does the game itself start up when you use mech.exe?

WB

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Post #: 3

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/10/2004 9:01:04 AM

faulty_intelligence

Posts: 8
Joined: 2/10/2004
From: illinois
Status: offline

wow, wild bill himself, who would have expected such a response, great game btw,
yes, using mech.exe I can get into the game, major issues are the game crashing while playing campaign, randomly after a period of time it seems, also I can no longer save, attempting to save causes immediate crash, it does the colors and crashes to desktop, then I have to power down and restart, windows locks up apparantly when it crashes on this machine now, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling and tested it to see if it was the fact that I was importing saved games, It doesn't seem to be the problem though as I started a new wwII random campaign and tried to save and crashed, its frustrating, but I'm still playing with it, hoping to get something working, I miss my panzerkampfgruppe I had made it all the way to the beginning of 43 and was just refitting in a couple sections of early tigers, once again tho, great game, it brought me back to the grognards life, ty

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Post #: 4

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/10/2004 2:18:17 PM

Belisarius

Posts: 4041
Joined: 5/26/2001
From: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: offline

What's your OS? W95/98/SE/2000/XP?

I wonder if it's a DirectX problem, but I don't know if that should cause lockups.

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Post #: 5

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/10/2004 3:55:45 PM

Jim1954

Posts: 1393
Joined: 5/15/2002
From: Dallas
Status: offline

Also what characters are you using when you name a save file? All of this stuff is still based enough on DOS to cause problems if you use any of the "special characters" that DOS doesn't accept in a file name.
They are \ / : * ? " < > | (the last one is the pipe).

Using these WILL cause a CTD.

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Post #: 6

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/10/2004 10:01:18 PM

faulty_intelligence

Posts: 8
Joined: 2/10/2004
From: illinois
Status: offline

ok, system I'
m running here is: p4 1.4, 256 ram, nvidia ge force 2, 20 gig hdd, so that all is beyond spec there, direct x is v 8.1, although checking it just now I found a .dll file that the game had indicated was missing on one startup, so I think I'm going to reinstall that and check... dx seems fine, it will run republic the revolution, so... operating system is win ME, which is going to stay at win me as billy wants 199.99 in the store for a hard instalation copy of xp,
the file names I've used are fairly simple, I worked out a standard save system for my campaigns so I could keep em all straight, the files would look like ger-bri bat22 setup or ger-bri bat22 dec vic
so.. I may have to try looking for a copy of spwaw version 7.1 or so and maybe try that if I can still find one for download, I've got another computer I'm going to reconfigure today and I'll test it too when done, so maybe it'll have to become the spwaw machine,

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Post #: 7

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/11/2004 2:31:04 AM

rich12545

Posts: 1705
Joined: 10/31/2000
From: Palouse, WA
Status: offline

Seems like I saw somewhere that 8.0 needs directx9. You might try upgrading your dx, it's free.

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Post #: 8

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/11/2004 2:53:16 AM

Warhorse

Posts: 5712
Joined: 5/12/2000
From: Birdsboro, PA, USA
Status: offline

I'm running 8.1 with dx 8.1, no problem, so I don't think you really need dx9?! I run the game on Win ME, with a 1.2ghz AMD Athlon, 384mb ram, NEVER crashes!! First, delete the steel.prf file, if you haven't already, also, make sure you aren't running too many programs in the background, WAW eats resources, definitly turn off screensavers, and any firewall/anti-virus, sounds like a memory problem, although, video drivers that are corrupt could do this too. Do other games also crash? Also, how much of the 20gig hard drive is full, remember you need a certain amount for windows to work with free. Sorry if all this is redundant, just trying to think of a few possibilities.

Oh, for any of you Win ME users, that don't know of this, go here-http://www.computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/24159.html, and follow the directions, you WILL notice a HUGE difference in how Win ME operates, I've been running my machine like this for a year or so, and it is a major improvement over how ME wants to run by default!! Computing.net is a great resource, BTW, I check it almost daily, for tips, etc.!! Hope this helps!

Warhorse

< Message edited by Warhorse -- 2/11/2004 12:59:39 AM >

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Post #: 9

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/11/2004 11:40:58 AM

hogg

Posts: 30
Joined: 2/10/2004
From: Yorkshire. 'Nuff said!
Status: offline

In my humble experience, any missing .dll files reported usually have 'dd' somewhere in their undecipherable name - it seems to refer to direct draw, part of direct x, and upgrading direct x to it's latest edition usually cures it.

(in reply to Warhorse)

Post #: 10

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/11/2004 12:12:15 PM

su27

Posts: 8
Joined: 2/11/2004
Status: offline

I have similar problems with directx9.0b properly installed.
I started long ww2 campaign with 8.01. The game sometimes switches to 256 colors and ocassionally crashes to desktop at AI moves turn.

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Post #: 11

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/11/2004 12:35:23 PM

Frank W.

Posts: 1958
Joined: 10/18/2001
From: Siegen + Essen / W. Germany
Status: offline

graphics card driver update !

esp. if using ATI, i had some probs with the
3.10 catalyst, but it seems the newest driver
is much better.

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Post #: 12

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/11/2004 5:56:50 PM

plloyd

Posts: 179
Joined: 8/8/2001
From: Colorado, USA
Status: offline

The DirectX version doesn't matter once you get past the intro movie and credits. I run V8.01 on an old 120Mhz laptop with Win98 and no DX update. Your system looks more than adequate. ME should not be a problem, it is just a hastly dressed up version of WIn98. Did you change the properties of you short cut to run Mech.exe instead of of spwaw.exe or autorun.exe?

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Post #: 13

RE: various issues being experienced - 2/12/2004 9:00:32 AM

faulty_intelligence

Posts: 8
Joined: 2/10/2004
From: illinois
Status: offline

thank you all!!!!!!!
I got it worked out, with the exception of the occasional ctd during ai turn, directx 9.0b was required to start from spwaw.exe through the desktop link provided, it apparantly is needed to view the movie, created the mech.exe icon to start with, the major isues with imported save games apparantly was caused by steel.prf, deleted it and I can load up my 43 gruppe again, but more importantly actually save it again without the major system fubar, which makes me happy, so the major issues are down, just that occasional pesky ctd, I'd like to thank you all for helping me with this, I had just reformatted and reinstalled everything anyway.. and also thanks for the link for the me tweaking warhorse, I tend to be good with computers, intuitive I guess you'd say, but I tend to also be very adverse to playing with system settings, microsofts always been a time bomb with me so, thank you all, I'll get back to my gaming now,

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Post #: 14

RE: various issues being experienced - 5/10/2005 3:37:33 PM

nudgegoonies

Posts: 1
Joined: 3/10/2005
Status: offline

Hi,
i also have a problem with the startvideos (with standard start) altough i installed the latest version of Ligos (was before Intel) Indeo and the two avi's play well in media player. The screen keeps black an nothing happens. When i blindly click in the black i get to the main screen just like using the quick start shortcut wich i use now.

I play SPWAW since last year and now i got my first crash. I was clicking start turn (4) in the artillery training scenario (single, scenario, two humans, no password) and nothing happened except that a part of the overview map became visible. After pressing the magic keys to open taskmanager it showed doesn't react (reagiert nicht in german) and i only had the chance to kill the task. Otherwise my machine is quite stable.

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
My Specs:
Board: Amptron PM9900 (Chipset: VIA MVP3, Cache: 1MB), CPU: AMD K6-2 500, RAM: 2 Infineon 128MB (1 PC133-333, 1 PC133-222) SD-RAM, Video: 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, TV: LifeView FlyKit (Chipset: BT848, Tuner: No), SCSI: Adaptec AHA 2940AU, Sound: Creative Labs Soundblaster AWE64, NET: DEC Etherworks 3 Turbo

OS: Windows 98SE, IE6, DX9C, MP9, .NET, all WU. Latest Videodriver and Codecs

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Post #: 15

RE: various issues being experienced - 5/10/2005 4:19:36 PM

omegaall

Posts: 317
Joined: 7/28/2003
Status: offline

Hogg, What has happened to you!! Where is the pointy hat etc.. This avatar just does not suit your image at all

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Post #: 16

RE: various issues being experienced - 5/11/2005 5:23:02 AM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
Joined: 7/25/2000
From: Cross Lanes WV USA
Status: offline

I do NOT understand all these technical glitches with starting SPWaW in WinXP. Simply make a shortcut to your desktop from the mech.exe, make sure you set the compatibility mode to win98, and all should be fine.

If you want to see the intro video, just open it to play in Windows Media Player.

< Message edited by KG Erwin -- 5/11/2005 5:26:52 AM >

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Post #: 17

RE: various issues being experienced - 5/11/2005 2:03:01 PM

Warrior

Posts: 1808
Joined: 11/2/2000
From: West Palm Beach, FL USA
Status: offline

There is a free program to make sure you have enough memory available. I use it before I play and have never had problems with crashing since. You can download it below:

http://www.meikel.com/en/products/freemem/comparison.php

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Post #: 18

RE: various issues being experienced - 5/13/2005 11:59:02 AM

RockinHarry

Posts: 2963
Joined: 1/18/2001
From: Germany
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

If you want to see the intro video, just open it to play in Windows Media Player.

Yes that usually works. I always suspected a communication problem between the SPWAW start application (SPWAW.exe) and possibly one of the used AVI file play codecs. Might be the SPWAW.exe application uses its own internal codec that somehow interferes with the OS use of codecs when playing certain file types registered under any WIN version.

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Post #: 19