AGEOD Forums

Started the 2 Player Campaign as I have done many times.

The first thing I did was press F9 for the AI turn.

Then I clicked the opening newspaper to close it and it froze.

No information other than a complete freeze of nothing working. So I did the three finger salute to the Task Manager and closed it.

Laptop Dell 1545 Inspiron Core 2 Duo
2.6 ghz processors
Vista Premium 32 bit with SP2
4 gig ram

Everything is up to date and nothing running in the background.

F9?

F9 is an alternative shortcut key for Pause.
We introduced this shortcut key for those laptops who don't have a Pause key.

From Larry's report it's not clear what happens exactly. Does he un-pause AI and the AI starts thinking? Or the game freezes? Or the AI never finishes thinkinh?

I remember you to run the GC immediately after launching the game executable. This helps. Also, as usual, no UAC and be sure you're logged in with PC Aministrator priviledges.

I hit the F9 key and the AI did it's stuff just fine.

Then the next thing that happened was the newspaper displayed and I read what it had to say. Then I close it and that's when it froze.

I have not had UAC running for almost a year. I hate that thing! Everything I run is under Administrator.

Am I more clear now?

When you get a newspaper up, when the AI was/is very busy, you can experience a short period of serious slowness regarding mouse movement. I know its a stupid question but are you sure it was frozen for good?

It's not a stupid question as you don't know from your end whether I am an idiot or not.

I have played the game since it first came out in 2007. The lags I am very used to.

The mouse cursor was gone, nothing animated, it was frozen. I have seen the lag after I close the newspaper hundreds of times and this was not the same. It was frozen like a sack of peas.

Which is exactly the current turn and game phase?

Edit: if the current game phase is Military, try checking off the options "Give AI full time" and "Use all behaviors". Also, click on the AI trashcan button. This just to understand if the freeze on your CPU is related to AI think time.

Also, what happens if you hitthe Pause button on the keyboard? And then if you hit again?

Edit 2: the lag immediately following the closure of a dialog box is commonly caused by map refresh calculation. During this procedure, RAM allocation takes place, so some external resident program is probably detecting such operations like a threat, so freezing the game. Huge RAM operations are done also by the AI...

calvinus wrote:Which is exactly the current turn and game phase?

It's the very start of the game. The items I described are the very start, the first thing when the scenario starts.

LarryP wrote:It's the very start of the game. The items I described are the very start, the first thing when the scenario starts.

Some tips:
1) Try to pause / un-pause the game
2) Clean the AI cache (trashcan button in Options window)
3) Disable the options "Give AI full time" and "Use all behaviors" options (Options window)
4) Disable "AI Logs" and "Memory AI" options (WW1 Configuration tool)
5) Disable the Antivirus or tell him someway that WW1.exe is not a threat
6) Uninstall and do a fresh install

Considering it occurs in the very beginning of the game, this freeze is extremely weird.

Mmmh... are you the same LarryP who reported a freeze in Tannenberg scenario on Matrix forum?

I really suspect there's something wrong in your game install...

Have you installed the Gold Upgrade Kit over the previous version of WW1?
If so, let's try to uninstall the game and do a fresh install from zero of the WW1 Gold full version: send a PM to PhilThib to have the download link.

Otherwise the cause of such freezes are to be searched in some resident program. Any idea?

Yes I'm the same Larry.

No, I would never install a newer version over an older version of a game. It's a clean install. I do have an idea what may have caused it though but testing it will take a couple of nights.

Are you familiar with avast anti virus? There is a silent game mode and also an option to disable all shields. I have been running it with the silent game mode and NOT the disable all shields mode, and I think this may have caused the problem.

Since I posted this, I disabled all shields and the game runs perfectly. However, a couple of nights more should verify this better. I don't get on the laptop until in the evening. I will give it a good try again tonight.

Great!

I use AVG and I found there's the "Resident Shield" option, where you can set the "exceptions", so telling the antivirus, for instance, that WW1.exe is ok!

AVG is what caused me to go to avast.

I cannot unpause the AI, either with the F9 key or the pause button. Help!