Uncle Billy wrote:No follow up to this? I'm guessing brpounds still has the same problems?
I have a similar rig, the boxset version of the game, and similar problems, so I'm adding to this thread. The game as it is is an absolute unplayable, buggy mess, and that's with the patch, on a fresh install. And after I've turned off all the options that might cause it (autosave, sound), except full screen (no way am I playing this in a dinky, off-centered window on my computer, that's ridiculous).
Crash: blue screen of death, memory leak, window's recovering from serious error.
Crash: game freezes moving from one overlay to another, manual restart
Crash: things still move on game, animations etc., but mouse clicks don't select new things, armies never get where they are going and time doesn't actually advance, and I can't open menus
Armies often disappear when they invade new provinces (fog of war?), until I click about looking for them.
This, combined with goofy UI (can't go to main menu from game, can only exit the whole program and restart, checking messages you have to click the down arrow a million times to get to the last message--no scroll bar, no sensible 'show last message first', you can't arrange army units to display a sensible order, only a few army units shown in window but huge armies possible, multiple armies in a province are an absolute pain in the ass to sort through, etc.) should be enough for me to kick this game aside.
But this is my favorite period of history , and I like so many elements of this game I'm willing to not give up yet. I heard how buggy this thing was when it came out, I figured after so much time it must be patched up, right? Nope, but if there is something I can do to make it playable (other than the no full screen setting, that's a deal breaker) I'll do it.
Anything? Any help out there for what should have been a ground breaking game but is still an exercise in frustration over a year of patching later?
Uggis wrote:Thats is it! I'm deleting this piece of c**p from my harddrive. There's 15 Euros I'll never see again... You should delete the following from the game's website:
WARNING: this video game published in 2005 does not guarantee any compatibility with Windows Vista; it works on the other hand perfectly under Windows XP.
It simply isn't true and you should know that. That means you are willfully misleading potential customers and that is illegal in most countries.
Uggis wrote:When I turn off my Internet connection, my Zonealarm firewall and my anti-virusprogram and run the game in windowed mode, it seems to work. Problem is, no matter what I do, I can't see the bottom part of the UI, meaning I can't click on some buttons. Any advice on how to fix this?
When NOT playing in windowed mode, the game ALMOST works (crashes but not nearly as often, doesn't freeze up as often either), provided I turn off the other stuff.
Uggis wrote:About the stability setting - I have found no explanation for this in the documentation and so I don't know what this can do for me. I've tried ALL settings at some point but haven't noticed any difference in game performance. If my computer is a 2.4Ghz Pentium, with Windows XP, 512 MB RAM and a Geoforce 6200 graphics card, then what is it? "Fast", "Very slow" or what?
calvinus wrote:Indeed Uggis you got the point. Now I explain the problem, trying to use no technical terms.
Anti-virus and firewall (resident) programs, and in theory most resident programs, FREQUENTLY generate popup windows, alerts, onscreen animations etc. etc. THAT CAUSE the game application "loose" the focus from the fullscreen mode. This causes the graphic engine of Great Invasion crashes and the behaviour is always so: the DirectX engine tries to "resize" the 3D environment, fails, the game freezes and then crashes. In some PC is terrific, because the whole OS seems blocked...
This problem is known. For this reason, the windowed mode has been supported. And for players that have 1024x768 monitors (where windowed mode hides the bottom part of the UI), the 800x600 resolution has been provided: launch the Setup tool and select the 800x600 resolution.
This is a trick, I agree... and the 800x600 resolution is not so nice, I understand.
This is why, for instance, I TOTALLY REWORKED the Graphic Engine of the current SECRET project I'm currently working on, where we will have a Game Engine that is 100 times more stable than Great Invasions, a Graphic Engine that allows Alt-Tab and Alt-Enter key combinations, that DOES NOT CARE absolutely of the noisy antivirus and firewalls, etc. etc.
In fact, I approached a solution quite similar to that adopted by Pocus in his AGE engine (a maximized window with no boundaries and no caption).
I would like to put all these innovations inside Great Invasions, but now I have no time for that, sorry... leure:
But I promised to myself to do that.
Thanks a lot for your patience.
Calvinus.
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