SPWaW Technical Issues

[FlashfyreSP]

ORIGINAL: teoleo

Hi, sorry for my english:

I have this problem:

the colour of the game is "strange".... I have tried all..... Help me

Could be your video drivers. The game uses a simplified palette of colors, and some of the newer video drivers don't support it.

[teoleo]

i have reinstalled the old video  driver but the problem is the same
 
I have played the game for a long time without any problems...
 
I think the problem is something i have installed on my pc but i have tried to kill all the process with the task manager....
 
One question:  is possible to force the game in a windowed mode?
 
p.s. Sorry for the english

[teoleo]

:O( I want to play this game but with this bug is impossible

[Gunter_Viezenz]

Okey I have a technical issue. Is there widescreen support for SPWAW? I recently got a 19inch widescreen LCD and was I was wondering if there is widescreen support because the game is all stretched out. [:(]

[Alby]

ORIGINAL: teoleo

i have reinstalled the old video driver but the problem is the same

I have played the game for a long time without any problems...

I think the problem is something i have installed on my pc but i have tried to kill all the process with the task manager....

One question: is possible to force the game in a windowed mode?

p.s. Sorry for the english

Have you upgraded any anti virus stuff??
that happened to me, I went to a newer versio of my Anti Virus and that started happening to me.

[chief]

I was playing around a few weeks back and I changed the battle.shp out and replaced it with an older version, and I had evrything fine except the colors were Physcidelic (wierd). I went back to correct version and everything was 4.0 (woops 4.0=OK). Have you been shifting versions ???? JUST A WAQ

[FlashfyreSP]

No widescreen support. The game is hardwired for an 800x600 display (the original size of monitors back in the '90s).

[b_gordy]

Hi, I have the same problem as teoleo. Nothing I have tried seems to fix this. I have the latest drivers for video (ATI Rage 128) and my anti virus is de-activated while I run it. I have even tried not loading AV on a restart. No help there. game loads ok, then after about 2 minits, everything goes to a sort of negative color version.

system is;
Intel celeron @ 1.3Ghz
ATI rage 128
gigabyte mainboard

well thats the basics anyway. Any suggestions other than whats posted? Any help would be appreciated. I'll keep working on it and if I come up with something I'll post that here too.

thanks

[KG Erwin]

ORIGINAL: b_gordy

Hi, I have the same problem as teoleo. Nothing I have tried seems to fix this. I have the latest drivers for video (ATI Rage 128) and my anti virus is de-activated while I run it. I have even tried not loading AV on a restart. No help there. game loads ok, then after about 2 minits, everything goes to a sort of negative color version.

system is;
Intel celeron @ 1.3Ghz
ATI rage 128
gigabyte mainboard

well thats the basics anyway. Any suggestions other than whats posted? Any help would be appreciated. I'll keep working on it and if I come up with something I'll post that here too.

thanks

You might not like it, but you MAY have to rollback your video driver to an older version. This is a common problem with newer NVidia drivers. For ATI, it could be a similar issue.

Look, many guys don't realize that the SPWaW code is old, and was specifically designed for the technology of its time. Many older games are in the same category. Oddly, the newest PC technology, in some ways, is TOO good. Retro-fitting for older software isn't always built in. This point is often overlooked.

[WLBjork]

If you're using XP or Vista and have colour problems, right click your launcher and select "Properties". Now go to the "Compatability" tab, and you can set it to run in 256 colours, which in my experience corrects colour problems.

Not had a proper play yet, but it seems to be running fine on my new mid/high-range machine with Vista.

Edit: Still got that minor problem with having to click in the artillery screen multiple times to see an effect.

[NoX]

Ok, sorry if this was posted here already, but if your game locks up from pressing the "Y" key you can also click on "Turn off advanced text services for this program" option. It stopped the game from crashing on my machine when pressign the "Y" key.

Btw. the bug started happening after I updated to the latest ATI drives, but since I want to play some newer games also I didnt want to roll back to old drives and found this solution to help.

[robot]

Nox where do i find that advanced text service to turn off. I have the same problem of lockin up when I hit the y key accidently while targeting.

[NoX]

My humblest apologies. Firstly the option seems to be showing only on XP Pro not Home editon and secondly after a reboot spwaw is again crashing when I press the "Y" key even whit advanced text off.

I ques I got a little too exited and posted that fix too soon whit too little testing. X(

[vahauser]

Has anybody experienced trying to bail out from a vehicle and instead of getting a crew all you get is an abandoned vehicle and the enemy Tank Toughness goes to 1636% ?

[Goblin]

I've experienced an hour of intense frustration pounding on enemy tanks to no avail (several times), yes. Dunno what caused the shifts to 1636%, since I do not bail crews at all, and don't play anywhere near the limit where a crew would bail after being hit, and there would be no unit slot available for it.

[Straticus]

I have had a curious thing happen on my PC with Windows XP and on an older laptop with Windows 2000. The screen goes just goes blank in the middle of doing something. Usually it's during OP fire. If I hit enter it restores. Moving the mouse around restores that part of the map that was blank pixel-by-pixel. I did clean installs of 8.20 with 8.30 and 8.40 updates.

I know someone is going to say it's your video drivers but I can't keep rolling video drivers backward and forward. I don't play it that often but now it is just a hassle and I'm ready to chuck the game. Too bad it was enjoyable why it lasted and I appreciated all the hard work that went into expanding Steel Panthers to SPWAW.

I don't like the current RT games of tactical combat. Too much crap going on at once to really enjoy them and they are not really thinking games. They are more of a click-fest. SPWAW was a thinking game. That's what I apprectiated about it the most.

[Alby]

I had that problem and got rid of a bunch of stuff that was running in the background, that fixed it.

[StephanFH]

One other issue with ATI, Nox. Did you download the drivers only or did you download the whole ATI Control suite. The ATI control suite is notorious all over the Internet for causing problems with all kinds of things. I run the latest (July, 07) drivers for a Radeon X1300 on an Athlon 64-bit 3.5 GHz machine with 1.5 Gig running XP SP2, and experience no problems with SPWaW at all.
You may not have to roll back your driver. Just do yourself a big favor and drive a stake through the heart of the ATI control panel. It's just sitting there burning cpu cycles. The only thing it can really be used for is to tweak the very highest-end of high-end 3D graphics algorithms. If you are enough of a geek to do that, you should probably solve this one on your own. [:)]

[StephanFH]

Robot,
You can find advanced text services under Control Panel/Date, Time, Etc./Regional and Language options. Why are you looking for it? You need to be cautious making changes there.

[Karnaaj]

After a great long time away fromSPWAW, I return - to video-blackouts and CTDs.

Continuing blackouts (repeatedly redrawing, then blackout again) seem to be related to the ATI Remote Wonder task I had running. (Makes it a lot easier to adjust the volume or change tracks from across the room - the box in question is 24/7, and playing music is manditory for me. <G>) It still wants to blackout, but it comes back and generally stays good.

"Y"-CTDs, well. <insert much cursing here> My latest one was in reponse to "DO YOU WISH TO END THE TURN?"... only time it's happened so far, but it *was* at the end of a very good turn. <sigh>

Maybe someone needs to program a DOSbox-type program to make programs think they're running on a Pentium 3 with a GeForce3 or something? (Oh, wait. At the time I was running that hardware, when the game crashed, it would reset screen resolution too low to be able to adjust; it's the reason I ended up with the taskbar up at the top of the screen, so when the resolution was borked I'd at least be able to cleanly reboot...)

Back to the Eastern Front, and seeing what I can work aroud...