Matrix Games Forums

First time ive tried the game on XP
Everything works pretty well except for the Text in all areas of the game is garbled

Anyone know of a fix?

No one has any ideas?

Makes the game pretty much unplayable

Did you upgrade the same machine that you had used to play WIR on before to run XP? If so, then no idea what could cause this in WIR. I don't run it on XP so no way of even testing for it.

If this is a new machine you are trying the game on, then how about some details on the machine. The only possibility there is a BIOS upgrade in that case, if one is available, adding in certain font support. Compaq laptops had a big problem with corrupted text in the game, and Compaq put out a BIOS update at some point that fixed the problem. Out side of this, no ideas!

Good luck.

Ya it is a new machine


Alienware Area 51-m

2.2 ghz
Windows XP professional
Ati Radeon mobility 7500



Edit:
It appears to be the numbers and spaces between words...if that helps anyone

I have just redownloaded the game and I have XP home. It seems to run fine for me. I have not played to much yet as I have a new machine also. However the text looks fine. I do know that there are alot of graphic settings with xp. You may want to right click on desktop and highlight properties and mess around with graphic setting (such as disable XP environment (not sure of what this is called, change it to Classic might help) or right click on WIR application Icon and mess with compatibility, maybe it needs to run in 95/98 mode for proper graphics on your machine or in 256 color? I did not change any of these settings, however again I have not played extensively yet so I may have problems later. I hope this helps you. When I get home tonight I will mess around and see what I have as settings and play for a while (thats a good excuse to give the wife to be, " i gotta play to help a friend find a problem" ), and then post what my settings are if you still have no luck, or someone else can't help you better.

Hope you get it working.

Have you had any luck getting the text displayed properly? Looking last night the only other thing I could think is on compatilbilty tab I have disable special text checked off. I am not sure what this does to the game if anything. I should have unchecked it and ran the game to see. Also maybe try setting it to 256 color at a different resolution on the compatibility tab. Sorry I do not have more techincal advice to help out with. Again good luck in getting it running.

Ive tried everything...numbers and spaces between words are in messed up text

Could I have a corrupted file?

Originally posted by Fallschirmjager
Ive tried everything...numbers and spaces between words are in messed up text

Could I have a corrupted file?

No, you have a video card / Windows XP combination that doesn't support EGA graphics mode properly. I don't know if its XP or your video card that's to blame, it may be both, but either way, I'm afraid you're probably out of luck trying to run WIR on that machine.

Have tried contacting Alienware for support as it is a new machine. They might have a driver to emulate EGA for your mobile graphics card.

It looks to be an XP problem.

I got the same thing in my laptop.

Fixes? Perhaps a future XP Service Pack.

Actually I am running XP on a desktop and it works fine

You might or might not be aware that the graphics chips in laptops are differnt than the ones found in desktops as they have been redesigned smaller, lighter, and with lower power requirements. This means that they have to run different drivers also. Sometimes these chips will not support some of the old graphics as their current driver will not handle the requirements

True.

Laptops are very picky with graphics. Either the display is not in full screen or just problems.

You may want to check if there is an upgrade for your graphics chip. Or report the problem to the manufacturer.

I did contact them

There reply was (in a nushell)

We can spend hours making our cards ega compatible or spend those hours making ours cards better for 3d use

I tend to see there reasoning there

That pretty much settles it. Don't you think?

I used to play the game on my old P 233 laptop and worked fine. My old laptop, though, went kaput so I had to buy a new one.

It looks like the new laptops have this type of display problems with DOS games.

That really is too bad as it really is just a great game.

It is really dependent upon the generation of your graphics chip as EGA requirements died in current applications and games some years ago.

Desktops/Towers seems to last longer as far as driver support is concerned as even there are no restrictions on the graphics chip such as I mentioned before.

Originally posted by Fallschirmjager
I did contact them

There reply was (in a nushell)

We can spend hours making our cards ega compatible or spend those hours making ours cards better for 3d use

I tend to see there reasoning there

Did you tell them some people actually play strategy games that don't use or require 3D acceleration? You may see some logic there, but for me that response pisses me off. No excuse for *dropping* EGA emulation that they already had!