Can I run JC?

[Leglaen]

After reading Marathon's AAR and several reviews, I have been very excited about this game. However, my graphics card does not match up with the required amount of MB. I only have 32 MB as compared to the 64 needed.

So, my question is can I still play the game? I can post my dxdiag file if needed.

Thanks.

[Erik Rutins]

That can be a simple question with a complex answer. We've come across some recent graphics cards with 64Mb or 128Mb memory that it turns out are such low performance chipsets that the amount of RAM is not a good indicator of performance. I have run TS:JC successfully on a five year old 32Mb GeForce 2MX with a 800MHz Pentium III and 256Mb of system memory at the medium texture setting, which should tell you how difficult it can be to determine actual minimum requirements.

Do you know the manufacturer and name/model of your 32Mb card? It can make a big difference, in the end, on how it performs vs. other 32Mb and 64-128Mb cards.

Posting a DxDiag would give us all the information we need.

Regards,

- Erik

[Leglaen]

Okay, here is the dxdiag! Thanks!

[mbelew]

Looks like you have plenty of CPU horse power and memory, but I'm concerned about the date of the driver:

4/24/2003

Another concern is that the description of the Trident CyberALADDiN-P4 is that it is DirectX 7 compatible. If it was DirectX 9 compatible, I would have less worries.

See if you can update the driver through your manufacturer. If you can play the Tin Soldiers: Alexander the Great demo, chances are you can play Tin Soldiers: Julius Caesar.

[Zen]

I, too, wonder if I can run TS: Julius Caeser. I tried to run the TS: Alexander demo and got this error at startup:

TSATG.EXE Common Language Runtime Debugging Services
Application has generated an exception that could not be handled.
Process id=0xfffb2adb (-316709),
Thread id=0xfffb28bb (-317253)

Erik, you may remember my systems specs from working with me on FPG, but I have:

- freshly installed Windows ME, with all updates applied
- NET 1.1 installed from Microsoft auto-update
- the mdxredist102004.msi patch installed
- Managed DirectX installed (I think it was dated April 2005)
- 512 MB RAM
- GeForce 4ti
- The latest version of Java from the Sun website (version 5?)

I said "yes" to anything the demo installer wanted to install. Any ideas why I can't get the Alexander Demo to run? And, I assume that means that TS: JC won't run either?

Zen

[Erik Rutins]

Zen,

Can you see if there's a .log file in the /logs sub-folder of the Alexander demo installation? If so, please post it here.

[Deride]

Based solely on the error message, it sounds like Managed DirectX did not install correctly. TS:ATG requires a different version than TS:JC, so installing the Managed DirectX from the TS:JC won't fix issues with TS:ATG.

I would suggest that you try to run the Managed DirectX install directly from the demo installation. I believe it is under the "Redist" folder, but I am not 100% sure of the folder name. It should be an MSI file.

Deride

[Zen]

Deride,

Whoohoo! I found an app called "mdxredist" in the Updates folder. I ran it, after which the demo worked fine.

Cool game. I may buy it or the JC version. I cracked up when I saw the hand come take a solider away. And the trees are just like the ones on my model railroad with the little plastic bases. Cute, and really emphasizes the table-top theme. Fun.

Zen