Matrix Games Forums

No luck with the artillery screen bug I'm afraid. [:(]

After reading these posts...
http://enhanced.freeforums.org/windows- ... -t579.html

I wonder if it is a problem with laptop computers and their advanced cpu management routines? Because It appears changing the game to run on the second core worked for the guy who posted the fix there. Maybe he had a desktop computer instead of a laptop?

So it would seem multicore cpus is indeed the problem, but even forcing the game to run on one core will not solve the problem for all systems.

I think this might need a fix in the game code itself. Some tweaking with the values for how the game handles cpu time. That is ofcourse beyond our abilities to do.


Anyway I'm out of options.

ORIGINAL: SP4EVER

No luck with the artillery screen bug I'm afraid. [:(]

After reading these posts...
http://enhanced.freeforums.org/windows- ... -t579.html

I wonder if it is a problem with laptop computers and their advanced cpu management routines? Because It appears changing the game to run on the second core worked for the guy who posted the fix there. Maybe he had a desktop computer instead of a laptop?

So it would seem multicore cpus is indeed the problem, but even forcing the game to run on one core will not solve the problem for all systems.

I think this might need a fix in the game code itself. Some tweaking with the values for how the game handles cpu time. That is ofcourse beyond our abilities to do.


Anyway I'm out of options.

I am not on a laptop, but I can deal with the artilery screen problem, its more of an annoyance than it is a game killer for me.
[:)]

ORIGINAL: SP4EVER
Not sure if it matters at all, but one can update the windx.dll in the game directory with a newer dll from the archive available at the site.
Basicaly you download this archive:
http://www.thegleam.com/ke5fx/misc/vfx119.zip
Then unzip it somewhere in a temporary folder.
Then you should find a folder named "WINVFX16" there and a file called "winvfx16.dll" in it. Then rename that file to "windx.dll" and copy that in your game dir overwriting the old one.

Not a good idea. The windx.dll in SP:WAW IS NOT a winvfx library! It looks like they inline compiled the winvfx??.lib files instead of using the .dll.

ORIGINAL: Alby
It did NOT work for me, running Windows 7.
I am using it in conjunction with the color fix program

I am almost finished with a proxy ddraw.dll that uses GDI to render the graphics on screen which will do away with the 'closing explorer.exe' trick.

ORIGINAL: NCrawler

ORIGINAL: Alby
It did NOT work for me, running Windows 7.
I am using it in conjunction with the color fix program

I am almost finished with a proxy ddraw.dll that uses GDI to render the graphics on screen which will do away with the 'closing explorer.exe' trick.

Sounds good, altho it's all over my head...LOL

ORIGINAL: Alby

ORIGINAL: NCrawler

ORIGINAL: Alby
It did NOT work for me, running Windows 7.
I am using it in conjunction with the color fix program

I am almost finished with a proxy ddraw.dll that uses GDI to render the graphics on screen which will do away with the 'closing explorer.exe' trick.

Sounds good, altho it's all over my head...LOL

It's just a library file (ddraw.dll) which intercepts all calls that the game makes to DirectDraw and allows the programmer to insert his/her own routines before passing control back to the real DirectDraw. Doing it this way, the program can be rendered with OpenGL instead of DD which fixes the weird color issues. So far in my testing, it seems to improve the artillery dialog also. I almost have it at the point where it can be released. I need it tested on different systems so would you mind giving me a hand testing it?

I, for one, am interested in your fix, NCrawler. While the other fix works on colors, my game becomes very sluggish and I can't seem to get sound, where before adding the file I had a good sppedy game with bad colors. Hope you fix comes soon, and thanks for the effort!

ORIGINAL: fmonster

I, for one, am interested in your fix, NCrawler. While the other fix works on colors, my game becomes very sluggish and I can't seem to get sound, where before adding the file I had a good sppedy game with bad colors. Hope you fix comes soon, and thanks for the effort!

PM me your email address and I'll send it to you.

Hi,
I have Ncrawler's fix and it gets the game to run BUT I too have the arty bug AND it makes it almost unplayable as I am unable to select any of the various options in the menu!
I do find the closing of explorer to be a issue too and would like to try your DLL as well.
 
thanks.
 
peter

pbhawkins: I found that if I hit "SHIFT" and hold it, prior to making any selections on the Artillery swcreen that the majority of the problems disappear. HTH you.

Anyone that wants the DLL, just PM me with your email address and I'll send it to you...

Great Gonzo's [X(] After I posted I found this Forum Topic.[8|] Thank you guys so much for finding a fix.[:D] Maybe I can return to the Steel Panthers field of Battle now..[&o]

Hi Guys,

I have the game working fine with the win7 fix for the game in win7.  Do all of you get the same resolution in the game?  It looks like a 800x600, its not really sharp like it was when I had it on an old machine.

LCD screens stink... is that what you have?

Hi Jeb,

You are correct, I have a 24" widescreen ASUS lcd monitor, works great but not as sharp as the old crt monitors on this game.  Do you agree that's what happens?

Absolutely. LCD's only look good at their full resolution.

When the 800x600 resolution is "stretched" to fill the full screen on an LCD, the pixels have to be "interpolated" to the closest approximation of the actual image, so it's a garbled image.

On the CRT, the size of the monitor's pixels actually changes to keep a 1 pixel to 1 pixel relationship for a true 800x600 image, just with larger pixels than what you would have with the monitor set to 1280x1024 for instance.

Plug one of your old CRT's in and see if it works better.

hi jeb,

I do have the game still on my older computer which is set up right behind me. I can't remember now how it looks. It would be great if this game had high resolution to at least 1200x whatever number they use. It doesn't look real bad when I play the game but I always liked the crispness of the game and I don't have that with a 24 inch monitor running at 1920x1080

thanks

I can confirm that setting the core affinity to use the second core of a dual-core cpu seems to alleviate the artillery screen lag on my Win7 laptop. It won't fix it entirely. Just setting it to a singe core affinity or to use the first core won´t help. Using the imagecfg program with the command "imagecfg -a 0x2 mech.exe" edits the executable to run on the second core. You have to do this in the windows command line promt.


As for the color fix the direct draw compatibility tool does fix the colors, but it does not fix the colors immediately upon starting the game. You need to choose single player and go to the edit screen. Then the colors should look normal.


I have not yet tested the dll fix by NCrawler, but it may be the best fix. There have been a couple of dll fixes to other games in the past. I believe they are called direct draw wrappers and use a modified ddraw.dll file... There are source codes availanle for some of those projects.

These won't work on spwaw but may be useful to developing ddraw.dll for spwaw maybe?
http://sol.gfxile.net/ddhack/
http://hifi.iki.fi/cnc-ddraw/#download

Rosollia try holding down the SHIFT Button Prior to selecting ANYTHING from the Artillery screen, that will/should cut down a lot of the delay probs. FWIW

Thank you for the tip planner 3, but I still prefer the core affinity fix. Pressing shift everytime before clicking can get abit tedious.