Game Hangs on Initial Screen

Gray_Lensman · Post by **Gray_Lensman** » Thu Apr 10, 2003 3:41 pm

Tried to install SUDG on my laptop, a Compaq Presario 1240, however after getting thru the initial credit and logo screens, it hangs on the initial game start screen. I'm hoping it is just hanging on maybe some startup initialization, and maybe the tech support here can give me some clues to bypass all the credit/logo stuff in order to eliminate them as a possible source of the hanging problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew Ewanchyna · Post by **Andrew Ewanchyna** » Thu Apr 10, 2003 6:16 pm

Just go to the Movies subfolder and either move or rename the *.avi files to get rid of the intro movies. This has been mentioned before on the forum. You should ensure that your notebook matches the specs, including the version of DirectX.

Gray_Lensman · Post by **Gray_Lensman** » Fri Apr 11, 2003 12:18 am

OK, tried deleting the *.avi files, which skipped over all the superfluous screens, however still hanging at the initial screen. What I am calling the initial screen is the one with the red/brown background, and all the icons across the top, and Starships Unlimited/Divided Galaxies tm logo in the middle. The top right three icons are colored in, with all the rest grayed out. Clicking on any of these icons does nothing at all. In fact to exit from here, I have to <Ctll><ALt><del>.

My laptop meets all the specs except speed, but I've run into that before, and sometimes it slows things down, but never actually prevents the software from running. Plenty of hard disk space, even after installation, especially considering I removed MOO3 and rebooted prior to this games' installation. By the way, I have also tried reinstalling the game twice.

I'm going to try setting the music to false inside the *.ini file, just to see if for some reason the music is hanging it. I have not heard the music with this screen yet.

Andrew Ewanchyna · Post by **Andrew Ewanchyna** » Fri Apr 11, 2003 10:29 pm

The game is pretty sensitive to the CPU speed and cache size. The problem you're running into is related to this. It's like there's not enough time for it to process any inputs. A difficult problem to debug as I can't reproduce it on my machine (and I've tried in the past). I doubt changing the music will affect things.

Gray_Lensman · Post by **Gray_Lensman** » Sat Apr 12, 2003 2:36 am

This is a little disappointing to me, as believe it or not, this moderately slow laptop does run Civ III, MOO3, and GalCiv which from what I understand, each of these requires more resources and speed. They all run somewhat slower, but they DO run.

SUDG on the other hand, per the stated requirements, was what I perceived to be the least demanding of the games listed above. I hope maybe you can shed some light on why this is the only game that hangs like this. At least I can play it on my desktop, but since I make occasional business trips, one of which is 3 weeks in duration coming up in May, I would have liked this game to run on my laptop.

Laptop upgrade scheduled for this time next year.

BTW, this is a great game other than the laptop hanging problem I'm having. Thanks for the help and any more help or suggestions you can come up with.

Marc von Martial · Post by **Marc von Martial** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 3:39 pm

Just curious, are you starting the game from the "gamemenu" or directly via the EXE in the SUDG root folder?

Gray_Lensman · Post by **Gray_Lensman** » Thu Apr 17, 2003 4:18 pm

To satisfy your curiosity, I have tried to run the game in every way possible including disabling the .avi files. Nothing works. Yes, I have even tried to run the SUDG.exe file directly, but no go.

Like I said before, this baffles me, since I have been able to run just about every strategy game that has come out in recent years, although some, (Civ III) at an incredibly slower speed. This has never really phased me as I am an avid chess player who likes to study each and every move, no matter what the game, LOL. When you're a business traveler, in a motel, time killers are a must sometimes.

Thanks for showing a little interest in my problem, however.

Marc von Martial · Post by **Marc von Martial** » Thu Apr 17, 2003 4:59 pm

Do me a favor and send me your DirectX dialog file via email to:

marcs@matrixgames.com

Gray_Lensman · Post by **Gray_Lensman** » Fri Apr 18, 2003 3:37 am

It'll be on it's way shortly. BTW, I have DirectX v9 installed, before your game was installed. I think that was from the previous MOO3 installation.

Again, thanks for your interest. Hopefully you can find a problem prior to my trip in May.