random missing titles

[ghostlight]

After not playing for several months, I booted AACW up again. However, various titles were missing from the game, namely:
Top title on battle screen, saying which side won.
Titles on tabs of option screen
Number of railroad or river transport I bought in Economics

Weird? Have I accidentally deleted a folder?

[Gray_Lensman]

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[dolphin]

Did you reinstall the game itself?

This sounds like a missing/corrupted font issue and should be fixed with a reinstallation of the game. Sometimes, over time, necessary font files become corrupted/destroyed/or missing since Windows initializes them even though you may not be running the game itself for a long period of time.

I am having the exact same problem he is having. I totally unistalled and reinstalled and its the same.

Titles on tabs of option screen missing.

Number of railroad or river transport I bought in Economics missing.

Also missing the current VP and NM totals at top left corner even though the tool tip shows them.

I have not had a battle screen yet, but I expect I will have the same problem he is having.

I have the 1.16rc4a patch installed.

I am running Vista Home Premium (32 bit) on a fairly new computer. The vanilla demo version of the game did not have this problem when I played 3 tutorials over the last few days.


I suspect something a bit off the wall and am doing a little experimenting now and will post my update in a little while.

[dolphin]

Alright everyone. I am going to explain the fluke of circumstances through which I have narrowed down this problem and solved it with a work around.

I am quite certain with this information a patch can be easily made.


I downloaded the demo 3 days ago and played the tutorials. Everything worked fine.

Last night I downloaded the full game from GamersGate and then installed the latest patch 1.16rc4a


Now I have as yet not even played a game as I was just starting one tonight, but I remembered messing around with the interface yesterday and I did not notice these problems.

A little while ago I was ready to start my first game, but before I loaded up I decided to uninstall the demo since I did not need it anymore. My being a stickler for cleaning my computer up I decided to make sure all of it was gone and discovered the uninstall for the demo did not get rid of the parent directory because (you may have guessed it) it had x4 FONTS installed in a FONT subdirectory and they have to be removed using the RUN command with the
%windir%\fonts exe command in order to delete them.

After I deleted the remnants of the DEMO version (1.5b) which had those x4 FONTS I booted up my full install to start my game and that was when I noticed the problem.

I put 2+2 together and reinstalled the demo and then uninstalled it, but this time I left the remnant directory with its single FONT subdirectory and the x4 FONTS inside of it. I then booted up my full install of version 1.16rc4a
and the problem was solved.

Let me warn you that I had previously tried to simply install these x4 FONTS directly into my C:/Windows/Fonts directory and it did not fix the problem. I then removed them just in case.

I also tried to install these x4 FONTS into the full versions FONT directory and got the message that they were already installed with an option to overwrite. Unfortunately I did not overwrite, or I might have solved the problem right there. I did not know for sure I had even found the problem at this point.

At this point I am leaving well enough alone so I can play and have fun.

[SIZE="4"]If you want to solve this problem temporarily install the DEMO version of the game and then just Uninstall it
leaving the remnant folders alone with those x4 FONTS that are inside of it. [/size]

[Gray_Lensman]

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[dolphin]

This is not a normal issue with most others. I've never had a problem with fonts since the installer handles it. The one quirk I've had is if I've actually run the game (started it up), I have to reboot the computer before uninstalling anything to do with AACW or the fonts will not be allowed to be deleted. Once properly uninstalled (fonts and all), there is no issue reinstalling the game from the installer. I've uninstalled and reinstalled AACW so many times (probably well north of a hundred times since 2007.

You might be having issues with the User Account settings in your Operating System. I have mine completely disabled since it's a meddling junk idea from Microsoft that hinders more than helps. I suggest you do the same if you haven't already.

Well for whatever reason when I do a full clean install and add the new 1.16 patch it has the bug unless I have the older DEMO versions of the FONTS from 1.15b still installed which at this point I only know for sure can be installed properly by using the DEMO version of the game and leaving them in their own seperate parent directory that is left after you uninstall the DEMO.

The fact that you have two people with different computers and setups having the exact same bug suggests it is not simply an isolated glitch.

For all I know it may have something to do with the new 1.16 Patch as I never tried it with the 1.15 vanilla install version I got from GamersGate.

Perhaps the OP installed the 1.16 patch when he came back after being gone all that time and that is what caused the problem to both of us. Your suggestion to him that his FONTS somehow became corrupted in the interum of his absense is not a likely explanation now that the exact same bug has been duplicated and a solution to fix it has been found.

He did mention that the game was working fine 7 months ago.

[dolphin]

I have to reboot the computer before uninstalling anything to do with AACW or the fonts will not be allowed to be deleted.

You can actually manually delete them as I did using the RUN field by the Start button and inputing the %windir%\fonts command.

It did not occur to me to reboot before uninstalling in order to get rid of them.

Perhaps if I had done it that way my fresh install might have been free of the glitch.

The only way I could know that would be to try various install and uninstall procedures with and without the patch and/or the FREE DEMO Fonts.

It could conceivably cause me to have to uninstall and reinstall at least 4 times using various combinations of patches and procedures to be able to narrow it down further.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[dolphin]

This font issue is NOT associated with the v1.16 patch itself. Sorry. It's machine specific as I posted above. Since I've installed the v1.16 patch on 3 different machines at least a few dozen times over the last year since last May when they first started working on v1.16... One machine was a laptop XP with Service Pack 2... the other was a desktop with XP service pack 3 and just recently the latest is a new laptop with Win7/ 64. The only issue with fonts is as above.

Whataya want to bet that Ghostlite is using VISTA same as me?

Point is it very well could be the operating system and that of course would be a compatability issue and qualify as a bug and further could either be specific to the 1.15, or the 1.16. (If not both)

Bear in mind that after I installed the full vanilla version 1.15 and the 1.16 patch everything worked fine.

Then I uninstalled the FREE DEMO version 1.15b and it still worked fine.

Then I went in and manually deleted the FONTS in the left over directories of the DEMO whereupon the problem surfaced. I then installed those FONTS in the Windows/FONTS directory which did not help. I also tried to copy them into the full games version in its FONT directory overwriting the ones already there and that had no effect.

I then uninstalled the full version and then manually deleted its x6 FONTS x4 of which were the same ones that the DEMO version was using that I had just deleted.

I then reinstalled the full version fresh and clean, but unfortunately did not try and open the game to check before installing the 1.16 patch.

It did not work. I reinstalled the DEMO which fixed it. I then uninstalled the DEMO leaving the isolated FONT directory alone and it is working fine.

I started my game many hours ago. I just reinforced Manassas in fact.


The important thing is I found a fix for it which also can easily point
to the exact problem by backwards engineering various combinations
of set ups and installs to determine exactly where and when it occurs
and what action/aspect is the specific cause.

That is if you want to waste 2 to 3 hours to figure it out exactly.


If I ever do get arround to working on it the first thing I will do is an overwrite reinstallation of both the full version and the DEMO and then reboot the computer before uninstalling both of them as per your suggestion. If that removes the FONTS from both versions without my having to delete them manually then a clean install might work perfectly.

I suppose its possible that the manual deletions of the FONTS I made got rid of the files, but left a ghost remnant of the FONT installs preventing the fresh install of the game from loading them correctly.

If it were not for the OP having the exact same glitch I would be more prone to think it was something I messed up.


Heck; maybe had I simply rebooted the computer everything would have worked fine without reinstalling the DEMO.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[dolphin]

As stated for the 3rd and final time and to make it more clear. An installer cannot remove font files in use by the operating system. The operating system just plain won't allow it. It is up to the end user on his own machine to either remove the fonts himself after rebooting OR reboot the machine prior to running the uninstaller so that the font files are no longer in use by the Operating system in which case the uninstaller will do the removal work for you.

Also, from time to time, it might be necessary to do a system reboot after reinstalling to see the font/titles again. This happens most frequently if you do a reinstall immediately after an uninstall without a system reboot.

Actually this the first and only time you made it clear.

Good job.

I am quite certain that now when someone else has this same problem and finds this thread that they will be able to correct it.

When I installed the full version the FONTS that were included never got installed as it was still using the ones in the DEMO version and when I removed those it had no Fonts installed at all.


P.S. I wonder why I did not think of that.

Oh thats right. I did.

I suppose its possible that the manual deletions of the FONTS I made got rid of the files, but left a ghost remnant of the FONT installs preventing the fresh install of the game from loading them correctly.

I wonder if maybe the OP solved his problem by rebooting?