MCNA Crashes, LV Fine, Sound Cards?

[smaggiotto]

I still 'do' DOS so when it comes to tracking down hardware performance issues related to config stability and OS (Mac, Win, Unix) compatibility it's not easy for me to give up until I resolve a problem. I use my experience to help lots of folks but I'm in need of some myself. Indeed, I was prompted to contribute this post since I've just finished a multi-drive upgrade of my main workstation (*System 3) and did a complete fresh install of Win2k and all components.

I'm running MCNA (Desert Fox, 1941) on three different machines without much success. I'll note those configs at the end. Of course, I went to the armorsite, installed all the updates to both MC's. I've tried the upgrade path with the MCNA ver. of SPWaW and did a separate install of MCLV upgraded fm 7 to 7.1 with patches. I tried pulling a copy of the MCNA dir fm that original installation over to the fresh install of the MCLV w/ upgrade & patches added beforehand, patching MCNA afterwards.

These machines all run the main SpWaW & MCLV just fine. I have no adverse issues with the standard campaigns, scenarios, series, extra maps, dnld stuff, changed OOBs, etc. This CTD behavior only with 1941 happened with the first install of the original game 5.x version up to the latest, 7.1 ver. Of course, I've uninstalled and reinstalled fresh copies w/o any mods or xtras added. Clean installs of the game/OS have no effect in resolving the tendency for 1941 to CTD. I've tried the FAQ hints naturally, killing the *.prf file, turning down hardware accel, etc.

Needless to say, all OS, mobo, video, sound drivers are up-to-date. No background processes running except needed OS services, nothing in SysTray either except volume control icon. No network/modem connection active. I only use AV software in manual mode, if at all. System 3 is an isolated 3D Graphics workstation running no AV software. I've seen no evidence of a memory leak present. This behavior spans DX6+ to 8.1

Sometimes I get an apparent video refresh failure where the game screen goes to black when switching between events (like when the AI is finished with its turn), usually mouse movement will refresh the area it passes over until the whole screen resolves back suddenly. Sometimes, selecting a unit and then clicking on a destination hex will cause a crash. I was able to play almost of all the first main battle (with no options) last nite for about 5 hours until it just dropped out to the desktop. I did a hard boot and opened the saved game to discover that I was back to the beginning of that first battle setup.

Other times, I've played that train scenario option which crashed under various unrepeatable circumstances. It was almost like the game couldn't handle the mouse inputs via the interface or there were corrupt hexes but that didn't make sense. Sometimes just clicking on a unit generated a CTD. The farthest I've gotten along with 1941 is that road scenario where the Brits are trying to withdraw along the road, where the germans setup on the overlooking ridge line.

This is totally opposite to my experience with Lost Victories, having played that through with mulitple players using the same machines. No one has been able to arrive at enough stablity to play more than 4 scenarios of the whole Desert Fox MC.

I've had saved game files get corrupted during crashes so I've been manually back'n up the 3 game files so I can recover to a good set of files. The corrupted files will allow to show the intermediate cut screen without any options other than to back out to the main menu or initiate a 'kill' with Task Mgr.

Is there a debugger I can run to catch any issues? I get no Dr. Watson logs/Win error msgs, etc. that I could use to initiate some kind of troubleshooting attempt.

The only real similarity between these systems in their Sound Blaster cards. I have a Soundblaster AWE64 Gold under Win98SE, and the other two are running SB X-gamer (one is a Live version and the other is from the "platinum era") cards under Win2k and Win98Se respectively.

I read some posts where "GMENFAN" suggests knowledge concerning SB cards known to fail with SPWaW.

Is there specific info available to the community? What cards do work?

I've experienced no other gaming/system issues relative to the VIA chipset/SB soundcard noted on the Creative website that might indicate the presence of driver/system incompatibility issues. I run AOE II/ UT/ Quake/ DiabloII on these machines, run various apps like 3D Studio Max, After Effects, Photoshop, Flash, etc. without experiencing stability issues like this.

Being dedicated to both SP and the work that Matrix has done over the years really inhibits me from generating a req for refund over the 1941 MC, but this behavior would've had me returning the game were it any other publisher.

I spoke with an MS devlpr who noted that the DX implementation in Win2k isn't optimized as well as the attention they put into the kernel of WinXP, naturally.

I'm building a new Athlon XP 1800 system based on an Asus A7V333 mobo using 512mb ram running standard IDE config with a Gainward Geforce4 4200 vid card with the native mobo sound chipset which will be using the WinXP OS, so I'll see how that goes.

Sorry for the long post. Hope the info helps. I'll hang onto the save/.prf files in case you want them passed along.

System 1:
DOS/WinNT/Win98SE
PII 400
Intel SE440BX-2 mobo
384mb Crucial ram
ELSA Synergy II vid card
394U2W Adaptec HA
Firewire Host Adapter
SB AWE 64 Gold
USR internal 56k modem
DX: 8.1
WinMP 7.1
IE: 5.5
Netscape 4.7

System 2:
Win98SE
PIII 800
Asus P3V4X mobo
384mb Crucial ram
ATI Radeon 32mb vid card
using onboard ATA controllers
SB X-gamer Live
USR internal modem
DX: 8.1
WinMP 7.1
IE: 5.5

System 3:
Win2k Sp2
Athlon 1.4ghz (not XP)
Asus A7M266 mobo
512mb Crucial ram
ELSA Gloria II (Quadro chipset)
39160 Adaptec HA
Firewire HA
SB X-gamer Live
USR USB modem
DX: 8.1
WinMP 7.1
IE: 5.5
Netscape 4.7

[chief]

Smaggiotto: I don't know if this will be of help but....did you install MCNA prior to MCLV ? The reason I ask is that MCNA is a ver. 5.x and should be installed first. Then I believe you can safely install the other MC since it is ver 7.x. There is a lot on this in the forum and a search might be in order. I am not a computer guru but I hope this helps.

[Supervisor]

The problems with souncards are not SB as a whole, it's the SB Live cards that seem to have unexplained issues but not always. And it seems to be a combination of certain SB live drivers and some DirectX versions(although this only speculation of the problems within) Am I reading this correct in that you are trying to manually import MCNA into current installs of SPWAW with LV. This could be the problem, during the installation of MCNA with SPWAW the game needs to associate itself to it, also without the intial install of MCNA installed you would also be lacking all the sounds associated to MCNA. And as you probably read sounds are the biggest issue with SPWAW crashes. Hoops of us have MCNA and can get through without any issues. The proper installation sequence that works is a clean install of MCNA followed by the SPWAW/LV full installation this install both SPWAW 7.0 and LV over the existing version of SPWAW. Install upgrade to SPWAW 7.1 then apply all Mega Patches. Please give this sequence a try on one of your machines, because without a proper installation sequence IAW Matrix guidelines I can't offer much help.(I'm not saying I wont help, but I need a proper clean installation sequence to work with to base my trouble shooting tips on). Also look in the MatrixGames\SPWAW\save directory (were the steel.prf file is) and see if you have a file holder.txt if you do delete it, this file although it's harmless the removal of it has help those with SB Live setups eliminate crashes for another unexplaind reason. Please keep us informed.

[smaggiotto]

Thx for the assist guys...sorry for the ambiguity...

I did try to work around the 'correct' installation procedure after trying the normal upgrade path from ver.5.x to 7.1 by manually putting the MCNA dir into a working 7.1 MCLV installation. Since that was stable I couldn't see any reason not to drop the MCNA dir into that config. I assumed that these MC's are independent, since they have their own saved game file format and location. I assumed the game engine in 7.1 was the polished version and was trying to avoid any file insertion fingerprinting from an older ver. of the game engine into the OS.

I'll go ahead with your assistance and uninstall my current installation and try the MCNA then MCLV then patches. Will pull the holder.txt file as well. I've reset all hardware and OS configs back to standard config.

The tough thing is I can play this thing for 5min or 5hrs before I get a CTD event. I'll go ahead and have my other players do the same with the other machines to get everyone on the same page. Hopefully, I can be one of the loads of people playing MCNA successfully.

I'll keep you posted.

[Supervisor]

Yes the Megas are independent, but they all share the same save folder MatrixGames\SPWAW\MegaCam\save so make sure you name each Mega save something different from the others as to not overwrite each other.

[Grenadier]

What are you doing with 3 computers playing MC's? I would love to drop by and see your setup. Im only a few miles away from you

[smaggiotto]

I use them for testing both hardware and content creation stuff that I'm posting to websites. That is, when I can wrangle the one fm my sister who's playing DiabloII online.

It allows me to have various OS's available with different browsers to see how things behave. I usually move the hardware to a friends' house to do any LAN gaming since I have a small bedroom, cramped is being generous.

Since I have the machines, I put them to use. My one brother loves the MC's like me and he's the driving force behind me trying to stabilize MCNA so he can finish it. I got him hooked, way back when, on SP so I feel it's only right that I continue to feed his addicition. What with film shoots, school and deadlines, I had to defer from doing any more troubleshoot with MCNA until I graduated in May. Now, I'm lucky to get a few days off every so often, which I use to stay up until 5am...my panzers rollin' across the countryside until the sun comes up.

With all my current committments, I'm afraid to start a scenario since I know I won't think of anything else besides bringin' my troops home in good shape. Ya know, I buy games, play them but when the thrill wanes, I always come back home to SP. Thk God for WaW! Those other games will be long gone from my HDD.

I can't wait for the holographic technology to mature so we can set a live scale map on the floor of the biggest room in the house and have "real" panzers rolling out from the maintenance depot! I read where a couple of brothers in England solved the line-of-sight z-axis perception issue for holo images. Think of the battles we could have at Leisure World!! (a retirement community here on the W. Coast) No need to visit Grandpa kids...senility is no excuse!

I did get a chance to run the 'train' scenario the other night without crashing out. I did experience a crash when I tried to leave the encyclopedia shortly after starting up the scenario the first time. I hit the 'esc' key to get back to the map screen (instead of using the 'exit' button) and it bounced out on me. Subsequent attempts to dupe that behavior failed so I think it was just some anomolous behavior.

I plan to play a round of 'catch the british tiger' tonite so I'll see how that goes. I'm playin on the Win2k *sys3 machine. I'm gonna install MCNA to *sys2 this weekend and hand that off to my brother and see how that goes. So far, (I'm not seeing the weird behavior that plagued my upgrade pathed installations) so good.

I'll send you a sep email Brent.\\Gmenfan: I'll save out each MC with a different char name. I'm lookn fwd to replayin LV with the patches in place.

[smaggiotto]

just a quick update...

I played the the Tunisia mini-campaign "Preparing the Way" in the second scenario towards the end, got a CTD when a Tiger shot at the paras. There was an animation and sound accompanying animation of the shots from the Tiger. Just as the sequence was almost finished, down she went.

Now this is the first time I've seen a crash like this outside a MC.
I've got to assume that it has something to do with how Win2k is handled ACPI on IRQ9 for both the video and sound cards. Since I'm running DX8.1 on Win2k and the video card/drivers are older, I think the issue has to be related to how Win2k is handling DX calls to the hardware.

It played fine for 3 hours or so and then went down. I haven't had time to play any MC battles since my last post. Will go ahead now and step through the FAQ procedures to see if I can't settle it down. If I hadn't been getting this kind of thing before on other machines, I'd have thought the above right away. Sure want to pin this animal down just once.

[chief]

Smaggiotto: I'm no comp guru but from what I've been reading the past few months on this forum SPWaW dosen't seem to like Direct X 8.1, on some setups it works fine, but in another setup or combination, intermittent CTD's. You might give that a look see and satisfy an old man and a few others who are having this problem. HTH

[smaggiotto]

Thx Chief,

Asus just sent me a replacement board today and I'm gonna setup a new machine from scratch. I have all the old hardware and versions of DX so I guess I'll setup a test bench suite and incrementally work from DX6.

I'll use an older video card I know to be stable...in fact I think I'll setup the system with PCI video and bypass AGP altogether. I'll kill every non-essential service except for the base machine w/ sound. I outta get another mfg.'s soundcard but it's been my experience that everyone else has to emulate the SB protocol anyway so why not just get SB in the first place.

I'll setup a multiple boot config so I can do Win98Se/NT/Win2k all on the same machine. Then I'll step up each time to later DX versions. Now all I need is a game tester.

Here's where my brother earns his keep