AGEOD Forums

Hi.

Just bought the game. I had the first tutorial open and was scrolling around the map checking things out when an error popped up (something about 2sheep.png) and the game closed.

I've uploaded the log files (attempted to, anyway. This forum has an odd system for attachments)

[ATTACH]27203[/ATTACH][ATTACH]27204[/ATTACH]

edit: Oh, and I'm playing 1.03 for the record

Loading up the game again, I got another crash, this time "error loading texture whitebirds" and apparently others, since after hitting ok on that error, several other windows flashed briefly as the game was closing. Why is the game failing to load textures?

I've had a few of those myself

Do you have an onboard graphic chipset or a dedicated Video card? It might be handy to get your DxDiag file.

Pocus wrote:Do you have an onboard graphic chipset or a dedicated Video card? It might be handy to get your DxDiag file.

I've got a gtx770 w/ 4 Gigs vram.

my dxdiag:
[ATTACH]27208[/ATTACH]

seems quite powerful enough and maximum texture size is 16384x16384, so ample enough to load these graphics. Lets to a try, please go to

<your install path>\CW2\Graphics\Anims\

Cut & paste the Animals folder elsewhere but not in the game (or it can find them somehow). Like for example in a temporary folder on on your desktop. Then tell me if the game is stable.

Pocus wrote:seems quite powerful enough and maximum texture size is 16384x16384, so ample enough to load these graphics. Lets to a try, please go to

<your install path>\CW2\Graphics\Anims\

Cut & paste the Animals folder elsewhere but not in the game (or it can find them somehow). Like for example in a temporary folder on on your desktop. Then tell me if the game is stable.

Nope. It didn't crash on the map at first, but when I went to exit the game it had "error creating texture splish".

I tried again and one of the region textures failed.

It would mean that any image of 1024 or higher pixels in width or height can cause a crash, despite what your video card should handle. I fear we are in one of these (somehow rare) problem of powerful video cards with drivers who don't provide a 100% support for DirectX9 or lower operations.

Try instead to go into the Options Window, main menu, system tab and put to the rightmost box both 'Max Texture Size' and 'Memory Usage'. See if the game is stable with that. If not, I will have the Matrix helpdesk contact you, as they have encountered this issue before on our games or with others games of different developers.

It might also be interesting to see if running the game in XP compatibility helps, though I doubt that.

Also, there is always the possibility of a refund, if the rest fails, though that's not a good solution as it means you can't play our games.

Pocus wrote:It would mean that any image of 1024 or higher pixels in width or height can cause a crash, despite what your video card should handle. I fear we are in one of these (somehow rare) problem of powerful video cards with drivers who don't provide a 100% support for DirectX9 or lower operations.

Try instead to go into the Options Window, main menu, system tab and put to the rightmost box both 'Max Texture Size' and 'Memory Usage'. See if the game is stable with that. If not, I will have the Matrix helpdesk contact you, as they have encountered this issue before on our games or with others games of different developers.

It might also be interesting to see if running the game in XP compatibility helps, though I doubt that.

Also, there is always the possibility of a refund, if the rest fails, though that's not a good solution as it means you can't play our games.

I already had them both to the right. Compatibility mode did not help.

I'd really, really rather get the game working. Just from the bits I've been able to play I'm interested.

Sorry, I meant 'to the leftmost', i.e lowest settings. I know it sounds weird given the quality of your PC but your video card drivers seems to reject anything above 1024 pixels for older DirectX (9 or under) so I'm really stuck here. I will refrain from suggesting you try an older driver and not the latest one, unless you are at ease with restoration points.

Pocus wrote:Sorry, I meant 'to the leftmost', i.e lowest settings. I know it sounds weird given the quality of your PC but your video card drivers seems to reject anything above 1024 pixels for older DirectX (9 or under) so I'm really stuck here. I will refrain from suggesting you try an older driver and not the latest one, unless you are at ease with restoration points.

I'll check when I get out of work, but.... Some of the textures that have been crashing have been apparently small.

I play rather a lot of old/niche/indie type games and haven't seen this before.

Rolling back drivers isn't a game I want to play. It's a bottomless well, for one. For another, practically any time you have a problem in any other game the first thing they tell you is to update your drivers. I'll update them, no problem, soon as a new one comes out.

Come to think of it, I've got Pride of Nations on Steam from years ago (well before I got this GPU). Perhaps I'll try installing that and seeing how it runs. Same engine, right?

Alright. It seems to happen less often with lowered texture size. Have you seen what the map looks like when you do that, though? There aren't even "low-res" placeholders, just holes. (And it doesn't even get rid of some of the same images that caused crashes, like the birds and sheep.)

I loaded Pride of Nations, and it doesn't have this problem. (Though it has its own. Man that game is painful on the user and runs poorly. No wonder I forgot I owned it.) PoN doesn't crash like CW2 when texture size is raised.

Also oddly the map scrolls *worse* with lowered textures. It hitches much more and pauses for longer when you click the minimap to go to another area. It's like the games "forgetting" the images sooner (I never lowered memory, just textures).

Update: I just got a new error. Maybe this'll help?

It says, "DirectX to Renderer Invalid Call (Burst Mode) [ Prep'ing Slave 03379Region.bmp ]"

Here's the log:

[ATTACH]27295[/ATTACH]

Actually Pride of Nations is a special case, it don't run with the same 'DirectX wrapper' than the others AGE game. His map caching is more sophisticated also.

I'm contacting the Matrix Helpdesk. These people have seen a wide range of problems from many more players than me, perhaps they can help here by thinking 'out of the box'. Stay tuned, we will get back to you asap.

Pocus wrote:Actually Pride of Nations is a special case, it don't run with the same 'DirectX wrapper' than the others AGE game. His map caching is more sophisticated also.

I'm contacting the Matrix Helpdesk. These people have seen a wide range of problems from many more players than me, perhaps they can help here by thinking 'out of the box'. Stay tuned, we will get back to you asap.

Thank you. I really do appreciate it.

Hi again,

Here are the two things Matrix Helpdesk could think about. These solutions are probably harmless and worth the try in my humble opinion:

1. Reinstall DirectX. Download it from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109
Run and extract it to a folder of your choice. Open that folder and find a file named "DXSETUP.exe". Run and let it install a full version of DirectX9c. Check if the issue with the game is fixed.

2. Check if Nvidia is the preferred graphic processor:

Check the Nvidia Control Panel and locate the Manage 3D Settings. Change, in both Global and Program, the Preferred Graphics Processor to High Performance NVIDIA Processor.
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=215&t=41987#p395652

Pocus wrote:Hi again,

Here are the two things Matrix Helpdesk could think about. These solutions are probably harmless and worth the try in my humble opinion:

1. Reinstall DirectX. Download it from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109
Run and extract it to a folder of your choice. Open that folder and find a file named "DXSETUP.exe". Run and let it install a full version of DirectX9c. Check if the issue with the game is fixed.

2. Check if Nvidia is the preferred graphic processor:

Check the Nvidia Control Panel and locate the Manage 3D Settings. Change, in both Global and Program, the Preferred Graphics Processor to High Performance NVIDIA Processor.
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=215&t=41987#p395652

The first didn't work. (Not that I thought it would, Steam reinstalls directx every time you install any game)

The second isn't even an option. It's not part of newer drivers, or at least not drivers for higher end GPUs (might be there for laptops, which is what it was intended for I believe). Regardless it's an irrelevancy in my case. My PC is most assuredly *not* using integrated graphics for this game (or anything else). It's definitively running on my GPU, though it's not taxing my GPU at all (like 20% tops).

Oh and I got another new error message while trying the first: "TThing.GetWidth can't retrieve bitmap infos" followed by a message telling me to come here and post my log and save
Here's the log, again. But the save says it's an invalid file when I try uploading. Not that I think it matters, since it's just the autosave when you first load a campaign
[ATTACH]27320[/ATTACH]

Unrelated to my problem and just out of curiosity, is there any way to unlock the framerate? It's locked at 25. Or would that mess things up?

Right now, there is no option to unlock the frame rate, sorry.

As for your new crash, that's the same problem alas, the game engine fails to get from DirectX a textured graphic, so when it asks for infos, they are not there. I'm sorry to say I see no solution right now, obviously the driver is not 100% compatible with apps not using latest DirectX, and we have no plan to update the game engine to latest Dx either. Aside from a refund, I have nothing else to propose. Again sorry.

Pocus wrote:Right now, there is no option to unlock the frame rate, sorry.

As for your new crash, that's the same problem alas, the game engine fails to get from DirectX a textured graphic, so when it asks for infos, they are not there. I'm sorry to say I see no solution right now, obviously the driver is not 100% compatible with apps not using latest DirectX, and we have no plan to update the game engine to latest Dx either. Aside from a refund, I have nothing else to propose. Again sorry.

That is... disheartening.

I appreciate the attempt to help, very much. How do I go about getting a refund? I mean, like with everything in the last decade it's a download.

It's partially based on trust and the knowledge the game is not playable by you. Unless you are Machiavel reborn, the chance that you pretend the game is not playable just to lead me proposing you a refund is rather slim I would say.

Plus, more practically, we will ban your serial key so you can't use any further patch.

You bought the game from Ageod or Matrix?

Pocus wrote:It's partially based on trust and the knowledge the game is not playable by you. Unless you are Machiavel reborn, the chance that you pretend the game is not playable just to lead me proposing you a refund is rather slim I would say.

Plus, more practically, we will ban your serial key so you can't use any further patch.

You bought the game from Ageod or Matrix?

Matrix

I have sent an email to a person doing the support at Matrix then, with you in copy (I used the email you entered in your forum account)

Pocus wrote:I have sent an email to a person doing the support at Matrix then, with you in copy (I used the email you entered in your forum account)

Yeah, I see it. Much obliged to you.

thebigj_a wrote:Yeah, I see it. Much obliged to you.

Oh and I just wanted to say, though I'll do more research first to make sure it's unlikely to crash on my system, the help you've given makes me more than willing to try any new games you guys put out. You've been great.

Thanks for these words. I'm again sorry it did not work well with this game.

Sorry to break into this thread, but I figured maybe I can try to help - I also have a GTX770, and although I don't own CW2 yet, other AGEOD games work fine for me (although occasionally RUS might crash if I keep playing too long in one session, e.g. maybe 15 turns or more, which can be easily circumvented by restarting the game). Have you tried playing other AGEOD games to see whether your problems can be reproduced there? Maybe try one of the demos if you haven't. I also managed to run AJE and RUS in a VMLite virtual machine with XP Mode, which uses its own virtual graphics adapter, and it might be worth a try to see whether that would make any difference for you.

NB I'm using the 331.65 drivers.

Owl wrote:Sorry to break into this thread, but I figured maybe I can try to help - I also have a GTX770, and although I don't own CW2 yet, other AGEOD games work fine for me (although occasionally RUS might crash if I keep playing too long in one session, e.g. maybe 15 turns or more, which can be easily circumvented by restarting the game). Have you tried playing other AGEOD games to see whether your problems can be reproduced there? Maybe try one of the demos if you haven't. I also managed to run AJE and RUS in a VMLite virtual machine with XP Mode, which uses its own virtual graphics adapter, and it might be worth a try to see whether that would make any difference for you.

NB I'm using the 331.65 drivers.

Like I mentioned, Pride of Nations worked. That's the only other AGEOD game I've got, and besides it only tells me the other game works/doesn't without getting *this* game working.
I tried the various configurations of Compatibility Mode as well. No dice.

It's too late, anyway. I couldn't test a new idea now, I've not got the game anymore. I deleted it as soon as I was told my refund was going through. (Didn't feel right even just leaving it on my hard drive, regardless of my inability to patch it or even play it)

Pride of Nations is running on an alternate DirectX library, so at least here there is some consistency in 'troubles', sort of...