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Help with install/crash

bishop
posted 01-03-2001 02:02 PM
Hi, all! I finally laid my hands on Demise for XMas, and I'm really excited about it. I played Mordor from the first Beta on through Mordor II, and finally had to throw my hands up when it went to Win95 before I did. I'm looking forward to being back in it. Alas, the game is unplayable on my computer at the moment. I know this isn't exactly rare, but I figure I'll post my observations here and see what people recommend as my course of action. 1) System specs, I'm pretty much exactly the minimum required system. I've got a 200 MMX and I'm in win 95. Have a fast CD-ROM, but only 32 meg of RAM and a 2meg ATI-Rage-mach64. 2) Installation, I've tried it many times, but the general idea is a) install b) reboot c) play - make character-enter dungeon d) reboot e) patch to 31 f) reboot g) play, right? That's what I did. 3) Symptoms, Boy. Where to begin. It's a mess. I've yet to get the same error message twice, and I usually don't get a message at all, just a crash where the music keeps playing and it won't give up the memory. But I can make characters just fine, and enter thw game just fine, and wander around town just fine. The minute I step into the dungeon, it's all over. Almost every time, I've had a black screen... the initialization takes place, but when it's time for something to actually *happen*, the game dies. Once and only once, I got into the dungeon, but could only take a step about every 5 minutes. I've tried with both OpenGL and DirectX, with similar results, so I suspect that's not the problem. Last night I tried updating the ATI drivers, and that didn't do anything. Anyone care to make a suggestion about what I should try next? Thanks in advance!


Dogg of Demise
posted 01-03-2001 03:27 PM
Well 64 meg and a 4 meg video card is the lowest I've been able to get it to run on and that was pretty badly and I had a celeron 400 at that time this thing realy wants 128 meg of ram to run and a good 3D video card like a tnt 16 meg (OR BETTER)

Decklin
posted 01-03-2001 03:59 PM
Sounds similar to an earlier experience I had. My PC is low end too, a Pentium 200MHz MMX. I had 64m (now at 128m ) RAM but the problem with crashing on entering the dungeon was due to having directX 6. My rec is this .... completely uninstall the game using add/remove programs and then delete the Artifact entertainment directory. If you're confident about using regedit.exe make a backup of the registry for safety's sake then methodically search for references to Mordor (unless you have that on your PC in running order), Infinite Worlds and Demise. Delete every key and sub-key that you find under at least the last two headings. Re-boot. Sign on to Microsoft and up-date your directX - level 8 currently I think. Once that's in correctly repeat the installation. Don't use the automatic installer .... select directX as the optional choice for rendering then play the original game as loaded from the CD at least once to the point where you've created a character, gone into the dungeon, killed a tyke or two then gone back to town, exited to the main menu and done at least one manual backup. If that all works, then run the 1st patch and reboot, repeat the jaunt into the dungeon etc. Finally, the latest patch involves copying the two files into the appropriate directory. Sorry this is long-winded but that should do it ....



bishop
posted 01-04-2001 07:34 AM
Thanks for both replies - I pretty much figured I'd get both kinds of answers, but I'll remain hopeful until forced to do otherwise

Decklin - I'll give it a shot tonight. My only question about your suggestion: what do you mean when you say "don't use the automatic installer"? Can I do the game install by hand? What's the procedure?


Dogg of Demise
posted 01-04-2001 09:36 AM
He means don't use the 353.exe and .dll patch with the installer use the version that doesn't have the installer


bishop
posted 01-04-2001 09:39 AM
Ah, gotcha. I haven't even made it that far in the process, since all the instructions say to take a character into the dungeon, and I'm unable to do that part. Will report back on my progress tonight - I'm sure y'all can hardly wait



Dogg of Demise
posted 01-04-2001 10:50 AM
If you use dimms I'd get some more ram its realy cheap right now! I mean 64 meg for 20 bucks!!!!!
http://www.upgradeplanet.com/shop/default.asp?idGroup=26&mscssid=D64M5TKDU2SR 2MS000J74Q3KPJC012DC


bishop
posted 01-04-2001 07:37 PM
Sigh.... no dice. A little progress, but no dice. When I installed DirectX8, I finally got to see the entry chamber of the dungeon. But every 30 seconds or so I got an error message: "DrawInducedPrimitive Not have enough video memory to perform the operation code 0x9976017c". I was unable to move, and the error message repeated every 30 seconds for about 20 minutes before I gave up and killed the program. I rebooted and applied the patch, and tried to enter the game (and thus dungeon, since I couldn't move to exit before) again... it starts to load, but before it finishes I hear an apparently infinite series of beeps and the scroll bar in the text window scrolls rapidly. No error message actually appears. I tried to load the game using software rendering, and the same think happened. Any further ideas, guys? Oh - the extra RAM is a great idea, but I'm on and older Aptiva. It's by no means cheap - over $100 for 32 meg.


Garth
posted 01-04-2001 11:59 PM
quote: Originally posted by bishop: Sigh.... no dice. A little progress, but no dice. Any further ideas, guys? (1) Have you tried disabling sound effects, music, multiroom generation and other non-essential features? (2) Have you tried decreasing the level of graphic detail?


bishop
posted 01-05-2001 07:23 AM
Yup, tried those... although, admittedly, only after my character was stuck in the nonexistant dungeon. I can re-install and enter the game to set the levels to a minimum, exit and restart to enter the dungeon. Will give it a shot.


Varzil
posted 01-05-2001 08:04 AM
Almost sounds like it is runnig out of video memory. The textures in the game are kind of large. I imagine that your system is PCI only since it is an older Aptiva. By the time you could upgrade your system, you could by a basic system from somewhere. You might want to ask people that you know locally if they have any pulled 8 meg PCI video cards. Even a 4 meg might work enough to run.


Decklin
posted 01-05-2001 03:16 PM
Is your virtual memory being mis-handled by windows or did you set it yourself? It may be worth setting that to at least 64M .... ? I've run Demise on a 2M video card before.


Varzil
posted 01-05-2001 03:22 PM
Set your swap file to 200megs. See if that helps.


bishop
posted 01-08-2001 08:07 AM
Right. I *was* letting Windows handle my virtual memory, but I took control of it and set it to 200 megs. I managed to get the game to run *excruciatingly* slowly in Open GL. Got into the dungeon, took 3 minutes per step, killed an unidentifiable monster (font resolution is degraded, too?!?), exited. Applied the patch, and went back in. Now it just runs very painfully slowly, with about a 45 second delay between steps. I set the virtual memory to 500 megs, but I don't imagine that's going to solve the problem. Any tips left? I'm going to look around for a PCI board, but I'm not too hopeful.


Karelzarath
posted 01-08-2001 11:08 AM
Set your virtual mem to (system_mem * 2) + 19, or in your case 84MB. Anything larger will just wear your HD out faster without giving much of a performance boost. Also, try playing on Software rendering or DirectX, not OpenGL. If you don't have a good 3D card, OpenGL will run painfully slowly. DirectX is your best bet, but you'll need DX7 or 8 to use it. I would suggest buying a Riva TNT or TNT2 card. They're relatively inexpensive, work well, and come in PCI.


bishop
posted 01-22-2001 07:48 AM
Alrighty... I gave up on my ancient computer, and installed the game on a friend's instead. It runs beautifully. Guess I'll be spending some more time at his house Thanks for all your help! I imagine I'll see y'all in the other forums here now that I can actually see the game. Tim / bishop P.S. The fonts are still a bit blurry on the highest resolution.. what's going on there?


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