Posted to the wrong forum by mistake.

[Gldm]

Sorry for the repost, but this shoulda been put here in support. I don't know how it ended up in the main forum.

I downloaded the demo and have been having nothing but trouble trying to get it to work. I saw the message about video.cfg and since I have a Radeon 9800 on my desktop I tried that, but it still crashes with a similar error. Tried updating drivers, no change. Finally I was able to edit it and got the game to come up in software mode. If I try to switch to 3D accelerated, it crashes out. If I try and play a mission in software mode, it gets as far as displaying the ship, then immediately crashes to desktop. The error log says it's an access violation.

So, I tried to move it onto my laptop, which has a Pentium M and a Geforce FX 5200. There I was able to get it up and running in 3D accelerated mode, and played through one mission. However near the beginning of the second mission it crashed to desktop again, this time with a PRIV_INSTRUCTION error in the log.

I'm really interested in this game and have been dying for something to replace freespace2 and/or independance war 2, but if I can't even get the demo running stable for half an hour I don't think I'll risk buying it until some major patches are out. Any idea if there's something I've overlooked that can fix it? I'll send in error logs if someone just tells me where, I couldn't find a support email adress on the site.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

That seems strange. The release has a bunch of stability improvements over the demo, but I don't know that would fix these problems.

Could you post the error logs? Attachments would be best.

[Gldm]

Ok, have some log files then.

BTW it'd be nice if your attach files thing said "You can only attatch one file" BEFORE you try attatching!

Oh and you'll have to rename the .jpg to .zip so it works right, since the forum's so retarded it doesn't let you attatch a zip file. Hmm let's see, only .txt files, but only one file, yeah THAT's a great idea!

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The magic of the internet.

Could you also submit an error log when you attempt to start the game in DX7, on your PC?

[Gldm]

Sure. It's a pretty short log.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Wow, that's weird.

It's giving the exact same messages as software mode, except for the crashing and the burning et cetera.

*squints*

out of my league...

[Gldm]

So what now? Any idea where else to send it?

[Firefly]

I should hang on until Milo, the developer, gets a chance to look at it.

[John DiCamillo]

Hi Gldm,

Sorry for the delay, I've been in crunch mode trying to get another patch prepared. To answer your meta-level question first, you can always send support requests or comments via email to "milo@starshatter.com" as it suggests in the readme.

The problem you are experiencing is quite unusual. I'm going to need a little more information to help me figure out what is going wrong with the game on your Radeon system. Could you please edit the game shortcut to increase the amount of debug information produced by the Direct3D module? The procedure is as follows:

1. Right click on the shortcut and select "Properties..."
2. Click the Shortcut tab of the Properties dialog box.
3. In the "Target" edit box, add the command line option -d3d5 after Stars.exe
(e.g. "c:\Program Files\Starshatter\Stars.exe -d3d5")
4. Click OK to close the shortcut Properties dialog box.

Now, either delete the video.cfg file or use the one you downloaded from the Starshatter.com site and run the game. When it exits, please either post or email me the error log file.

Thanks,

[Gldm]

No problem, I know all about the pressures of trying to get software working and released. =)

Here's a log from a run after I deleted video.cfg and added -d3d5 on the command line.

[Gldm]

Found it!

I looked through the -d3d5 log and the GUID being all zeros didn't seem quite right, so I went combing through the system looking for things.

The problem is, if you install VNC, it sets up a virtual display device, so under display adapters you'll see "VNC Video Hook Driver". Apparently Starshatter was grabbing this as the first available display device and ignoring the regular video card. I removed it from device manager and restarted and it works now.

However, I use VNC quite a bit when I'm away from home. I'm wondering if there's a way to get it to stop picking that adapter as default. Hmm...

Well that probably solves at least that part of the issue, and I did manage to get into a mission without it throwing an access violation so it seems working on the desktop.

[John DiCamillo]

Curiouser and curiouser. When the game asked DirectDraw7 to enumerate 3D device drivers, it only found a software emulation driver. There should be a section in the error log that looks like this:

Code: Select all

   --- D3D Driver Description #1 ---
    Direct3D HAL
    Microsoft Direct3D Hardware acceleration through Direct3D HAL
    + hardware
    + texture mapping
    + z buffer
    Max exebuf size       = 0
    Max vertex count      = 0
    Exebuf from sysmem    = true
    Exebuf from vidmem    = false
    Textures in sysmem    = false
    Textures in vidmem    = true
 
    Min Texture Size      = 1 x 1
    Max Texture Size      = 2048 x 2048
    Max Texture Repeat    = 0
    Max Texture Aspect    = 0
    Max Texture Stages    = 8
    Max Simultaneous Tex  = 2
 

...but it's absent in yours. Starshatter won't try to use the DirectX software emulation driver, so it gave up and switched to the built-in software renderer (but that doesn't support 32-bit color so it panicked).

Do you have any other Direct3D games that you play on that machine, and do they work properly?

[John DiCamillo]

However, I use VNC quite a bit when I'm away from home. I'm wondering if there's a way to get it to stop picking that adapter as default. Hmm...

On the Video Options screen there is a drop list for "Video Adaptor". It defaults to "Primary". Setting this drop list to "Secondary" may get around this problem.

This feature was originally intended for people who used 3Dfx Voodoo 2 generation cards that are 3D-only. So I can't guarantee that it will work in your case.

Please let me know if you need further assistance.

Thanks,

[Gldm]

Actually I had tried setting it to secondary while in software mode previously, and it didn't fix it. I'm not sure why.

In response to the other post with the log data, I do play other D3D games, such as City of Heroes most recently, and they work fine. I think it may be in how StarShatter is selecting which video card to use, it just doesn't anticipate this device and doesn't have a workaround. I'm betting other games have something like a test for a null GUID or a renderer that doesn't support the required features and then it skips over it and tries the next instead of software mode. Most new games don't have a software mode anymore, so I bet they're trying all the other devices as there's no fallback.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Side note: City of Heroes is an OpenGL game

Which is irritating, because a common card in laptops is a mobile-version of the Radeon 7500, which does not have hardware support for many OpenGL calls and thus is completely incapable of running City of Heroes.

[Gldm]

ORIGINAL: TheDeadlyShoe

Side note: City of Heroes is an OpenGL game

Which is irritating, because a common card in laptops is a mobile-version of the Radeon 7500, which does not have hardware support for many OpenGL calls and thus is completely incapable of running City of Heroes.

Runs fine on my laptop with the GeforceFX 5200. =)

I thought it was DX8, not OpenGL. Oh well, doesn't really matter to me.