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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [Science Fiction] >> Starships Unlimited v3 >> Crash when starting game

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Crash when starting game - 1/8/2002 10:24:00 PM

zorach

Posts: 17
Joined: 1/8/2002
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Game starts up okay; however, when I try to select either New Game or Game Options from the menu, it displays the appropriate dialogue box with all the options--and promptly crashes. Game hangs with no input; looping the music (with what's in the buffer, I presume). CTRL-ALT-DEL End Task will usually kill it. Of course, this doesn't help much with playing the game. Disabling all hardware acceleration just makes the game crash sooner. Windows 95 OSR2
DX 8
Voodoo3 2000 AGP
256 MB RAM
K6-2 500
all drivers up to date.

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- 1/9/2002 1:08:00 AM

Andrew Ewanchyna

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Joined: 8/24/2001
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To my utter horror, I installed the game on my brothers computer yesterday, to show him the changes (he hadn't seen it since version 1 of the shareware). And the same thing happened. I'm currently at a complete loss why this is but I'm about to go over to do a test. Will keep you promptly informed.

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Post #: 2

- 1/9/2002 1:57:00 AM

zorach

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Joined: 1/8/2002
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quote:

Originally posted by Andrew Ewanchyna:
To my utter horror, I installed the game on my brothers computer yesterday, to show him the changes (he hadn't seen it since version 1 of the shareware). And the same thing happened. I'm currently at a complete loss why this is but I'm about to go over to do a test. Will keep you promptly informed.

Thanks. If I can provide any info, let me know. Something that might be informative is that I'm running with no IE whatsoever--hacking the INF to make sure it doesn't install. Since MS likes to update stuff along with IE, that might be an issue, although I doubt it since you're apparently drawing your own widgets at that point. Thanks for the quick response--always nice when I don't have to play the "press" card.
(glares in the direction of certain companies that have sat on tech support requests for months--and gotten bad reviews because of it).

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Post #: 3

- 1/9/2002 2:42:00 AM

Andrew Ewanchyna

Posts: 229
Joined: 8/24/2001
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I fix bomb outs or worse as I see them. Luckily, I've been able to reproduce the problem quickly (already fixed another bomb out problem). For people that have dealt with me before, they know that I always work like a madman until all major bugs are out. Anyways, did some tests on my brother's computer and things didn't go well. Now I'll have to borrow his computer for a few days, install my development environment and try and trace this problem. Thanks for your understanding.

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Post #: 4

- 1/17/2002 12:31:00 PM

dulanas

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Joined: 1/17/2002
From: m
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I have the same problem as you guys specs on my comp are the following
compinfo -
os Windows98 (4.10 - 2222) mhz 400 [cpu 1-AMD K6/2] display
chip: 3D Prophet 4500 64 meg Hercules Technologies
res: 1280x1024x16@Optimum refresh
ram total 159.52mb hope it helps
marcus

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Post #: 5

- 1/17/2002 9:59:00 PM

zorach

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Joined: 1/8/2002
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quote:

Originally posted by dulanas:

mhz 400 [cpu 1-AMD K6/2]

Interesting. That smells fishy to me; I wonder if it's a K6-related issue. I'll try the 1.1 patch when Matrix releases it just to see if it mixes things around enough to make it work.

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Post #: 6

- 1/17/2002 10:48:00 PM

Andrew Ewanchyna

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Joined: 8/24/2001
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I was able to reproduce the same problem on my brother's Celeron 500. Changed a few things and all works well now. It seems that some configurations take forever to copy an 800x16x16 bit buffer from system memory to video memory. I run on a Pentium 3 500 and it takes about 1/5th the time as on the Celeron. This throws off the game's update schedule and makes the input system really confused.

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Post #: 7

- 1/18/2002 12:33:00 AM

dulanas

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From: m
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any eta on when the patch will be up on the sight

<---cant wait to play the game

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Post #: 8

- 2/5/2002 9:40:00 AM

battleax

Posts: 4
Joined: 2/4/2002
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I'm also having a problem starting a game, both 1.0 & 1.1 versions. I can load it up, but it gets stuck on the inital menu screen-- I can't press any buttons. It works fine on my wife's computer. The difference-- I've got
K6 450
128MB RAM
Radeon 7000 32MB AGP My wife has
PII 400
96MB RAM
ATI Turbo Rage Pro 8MB AGP From this and the previous posts, this suggests an issue with older AMD chips. Cool game, btw.

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Post #: 9

- 2/6/2002 4:26:00 AM

Andrew Ewanchyna

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I think I underestimated how much faster things are with a large cpu cache. What's happening is that inputs get locked, not the computer. More specifically, it's *my* input routines that get messed up. I have to dive deeper to see why that's happening.

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Post #: 10

- 2/7/2002 9:28:00 AM

battleax

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Hmmm... perhaps I can alter my CPU's cache size. Any idea how I do that?

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Post #: 11

- 2/7/2002 9:39:00 AM

battleax

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Hmmm... perhaps I can alter my CPU's cache size. Any idea how I do that?

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Post #: 12

- 2/11/2002 3:20:00 AM

Nitehawk

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Joined: 2/10/2002
From: Pittsburgh
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Battleax: On newer computers cache is usually not upgradable. There are several "levels" of cache. L1 cache is part of the core logic of the processor. Up until recently L2 cache was part of the motherboard (the last processor like this would be the K6-2). On the PII, Athlon and up that L2 is part of the processor itself. This allows the L2 to be way faster (running at the processor's speed). The older celeron's were just like the PII/PIII except that they usually have half as much cache. (which is just as bad as having half as much). Im sure that your problem can be solved by some programming (Andrew is awesome for fixing problems like this) But if you wanted a stopgap measure for your computer you might want to find a K6-3 (the last socket 7 processor). It is basically identical to your K6-2, except that is has L2 cache built on. A K6-2 can be easily swapped out with a K6-3 with no configuration changes to the computer.

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Post #: 13

- 2/12/2002 5:17:00 AM

battleax

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Thanks, Nitehawk. I think I'll gut it out for the next patch. Hopefully it will resolve things.

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Post #: 14