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warnewbie
10-22-2003, 12:13
Dear all,

Having real problems with STW and have added my post from another forum below :


Help

Dodgy graphics I can live with (just) but poor mouse control means im losing battles because my troops do not respond quick enough.

I really like this game but its SO frustrating when the mouse cursor sends the troops too far or the wrong way. Also I seem to have only 5% success with drawing the formation of my troops with the mouse, it either doesn't draw anything or draws them way behind enemy lines - instant death

EA tech support have told me to install all the patches and although they solved some graphic issues, they did nothing for the mouse.

I think my only chance of help is from this forum

I have MTW on order and I really hope that it performs better.

Any comments, suggestions ?

Cheers

Mick

Win98se, 96mb ram, 17 tft (75hz), ati 3d rage pro 8mb, sound blaster live card - gives great audio in game.

Soulcrusher
10-22-2003, 12:43
Looking at your pc specs i doubt very much that MTW will even run at all on your system. More ram is definatly needed as is a better graphics card.

BigDave
10-22-2003, 14:14
i've also found that low disk space can slow battles almost to a standstill

warnewbie
10-22-2003, 15:00
Thanks for the replies,

MTW will be going on my higher spec xp pro system.
I originally installed STW on the above machine but it wouldnt run properly on xp pro, even with compatability switched on.

The real issue is my desktop (spec in original post) should be fine for STW and indeed the graphics and sound are ok, its just this annoying mouse control issue that needs to be solved.
I have stacks of disk space and apart from the mouse cursor the game is fine, but for obvious reasons I cannot win battles as my troops dont go where they are told

There is some info on the tw.com forum about anti aliasing causing the mouse problem but my card does not have that feature, and even if it did there is no way to turn it off.

Bottom line is this, it appears that one of my systems maybe under spec and the other system is over spec.
How about that for irony http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Once again, if anyone knows how to fix my mouse issue please feel free to comment.

Cheers

Mick

Jacque Schtrapp
10-22-2003, 15:49
I'm sorry to hear about your mouse problems. I wouldn't be certain that it is 100% the fault of the mouse. It could be related to the graphics card or even the sound card. Sound Blaster Live is notorious around here for the problems it has caused with MTW. Have you tried turning down the graphics and sound details to some of the lower? Try playing with default unit size, or change the in game screen resolution to a lower setting. You've probably already tried all of these things, but I figured it was worth a shot.

I've seen several people complaining of problems operating STW on XP Pro which is strange because I run it on the same OS weekly without any problems at all. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

I'm sure Kraellin will be along shortly to add his expertise to your problem. Good luck m8

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

warnewbie
10-22-2003, 17:40
Thanks JS

I think the mouse problems are directly related to graphics/sound/directx.

Heres the contrast between the 2 systems :

win98se, 196mb ram, 8mb ati card, sb live.

Good overall graphics,great sound, good game speed, awful mouse control of troops.

winxp pro laptop, 512 mb ram, p4 2ghz, ati radeon mobility 7500 (64mb), on board sound card.

Slow game, glitchy graphics, glitchy sound and wait for it........not bad mouse control of troops


Hows the above for a frustrating comparison ?

Strange how you have no trouble with xp pro, the tech support guy at EA said no way will it run on xp pro, not possible because xp does not have a full ms dos setup.

OK, for the next person who replies - can you tell me if my xp pro laptop will run MTW ok ?
Also what is a decent recommended graphics card for running STW on the win98 machine, maybe a bonus if the win 98 machine can be altered to run both games as i would rather not use the laptop for gaming.

Phew, that was long.
If the game wasn't so interesting and appealing I would not be that bothered and just stuff the cd in a drawer along with Unreal 2 and Tournament (both wont run).

I want war, and I cant have it
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

Cheers

Mick

warnewbie
10-22-2003, 20:47
Thats it I give up.

Tried everything and i mean everything.
The game is now going in the 'games that dont work drawer'

Cheers

Mick

Jacque Schtrapp
10-22-2003, 21:22
Don't give up yet m8 Wait until the true PC braniacs show up

Kraellin
10-22-2003, 21:23
go into the apothecary and read the windows tweaking thread. also check out the tech library and do a search on mouse or mouse lag. first thing on your win98 machine is to turn off hardware sound acceleration in dxdiag. then run dxdiag and all the tests. most likely it's going to come out ok, but run it anyways and save all information so you have a file to show me later.

with stw and win98, that 8 meg card makes me nervous. that you are getting decent graphics but poor mouse makes me think you've got a resources drain or bottleneck which is causing your mouse problems. remember, windows is a system and will balk on things that may not seem related. it's a system; you have to treat the whole system. you could add ram till you're blue in the face, but if you've got a bottleneck with the vid card, which is what this looks like, all your resources are hanging at the bottleneck. the cpu is working like mad to force all the info through the vid card and then choking on having to handle the mouse also.

best recommendation with just this short post is, dump the 8 meg card and get at least a gf2 32 meg card, preferably something better.

the sb live card is prolly ok, especially if you turn off hardware sound acceleration, but wouldnt hurt to update drivers on it.

you could also try some newer drivers on the vid card, but i wouldnt hold my breath. 'faster' drivers might give you some increase and free up the mouse a bit, but that 8 meg limit is killing you. is it a pci or agp type card? (not sure they even had agp when that card came out). so, if it's a pci card, that's also slowing you down. the pci buss is quite a bit slower than the agp one.

mtw shld work fine on a xp pro. and offhand, on that machine....drivers, drivers, drivers. and after that, start dumping processes and go to www.blackviper.com to learn what you can turn off in xp. it runs WAY too much junk in the background, half of which is worthless crap that microsoft through in there just to be able to say that they have it. then read the windows tweaking thread in the apothecary.

oh, and if you shld upgrade your vid card on the win98 machine....DONT get a gf4 mx 440 buggy little card.

as for dumping the cd, your choice, but i'm guessing if you're willing that we could get one or the other of your machines going with one or both of the games.

also, on the xp machine, dont be afraid to go way retro on drivers. stw is quite old, and mtw is showing it's age a bit too. older drivers are sometimes better for older games, even on newer machines.

K.

warnewbie
10-22-2003, 23:01
Kraellin,

Strange that ive come back looking after saying thats it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

As you have clearly spent some time typing that reply, I think its only fair that I try again. Im not a major gamer but this scenario is all to familiar with games ive bought in the past.

I recently updated the bios and all drivers on the xp pro machine so retro fitting old ones may take a while and im not sure I want to mess with £1500 worth of laptop.

Ideal solution is to get the win98se machine up to spec, I understand everything in your post but I have to say that my win 98 machine is higher spec than the min spec mentioned on the STW cd case. Thats the bit that annoys me the most.
A second hand gf2 card should not cost much.
The ATI card is pci (yikes) but it handled the 1st version of Unreal and Tournament ok and they are much faster/intensive games.

I have already looked at the apothecary forum but will return for a deeper browse.

On the lighter side I nearly won an historic battle today but lost when I realised the dodgy mouse click had sent my general about 500 miles away
Couldnt find him anywhere and then spotted this small group perfectly formed on a hill in the far distance, the enemy couldnt be bothered to chase him and all sat down for a cup of tea and a sandwich instead
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Regards

Mick

Jeebus_Frist
10-22-2003, 23:16
Quote[/b] (warnewbie @ Oct. 22 2003,17:01)]On the lighter side I nearly won an historic battle today but lost when I realised the dodgy mouse click had sent my general about 500 miles away
Couldnt find him anywhere and then spotted this small group perfectly formed on a hill in the far distance, the enemy couldnt be bothered to chase him and all sat down for a cup of tea and a sandwich instead
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif
There's one for the chronicles http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

May I ask whether your mouse is USB or PS2? I had a USB mouse with 98se and had nothing but trials and tribulations when trying to game with it. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

When I got a USB~PS2 adapter and plugged into the PS2 port, all my troubles vanished http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/shock.gif

Such an adapter should only run you a couple of quid at your local pc shop, if indeed you have a USB mouse problem.

Good luck

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

Soulcrusher
10-22-2003, 23:17
On my lower tech pc which runs both MTW an STW without any problem whatsoever I use a G force 2 titanium, which I picked up new in a sale for £30, an absolute bargain.

warnewbie
10-24-2003, 11:45
Update :

Turning off sound hardware accel in win 98se has helped STW mouse control a bit, but still not as it should be.

The good news is MTW turned up in the post and its now running on the xp pro laptop with Great graphics and high resolution
Played all the historic battles and won them all except battle of hastings (scary), the downside is that 'quick battle' always crashes two thirds of the way through ?
If its only quick battle thats affected, then im not bothered.
Havent tried any full campaigns yet.
There are some cyclic static noises from the soundcard but its not really noticeable.
Mouse control on MTW win xp is great, at last my troops are marching in the right direction.

Still want to get both games running on the win98 machine and im now looking for a second hand soundcard. I have an agp slot on the win98 machine but if memory serves me correct I tried to install an agp card in it a long time ago and the bios would not accept it.

Can i get a pci card for the win 98 macine that will handle both games ?

Thanks for all the help so far, MTW is great.

Regards

Mick

Kraellin
10-25-2003, 05:19
ok, i'm going a bit loopy trying to follow what is running on which machine with what tweaks and ....arggggh

apparently you got something going, though. so good :)

now, that your motherboard has an agp slot but the bios cant find it, strikes me VERY strange. that just doesnt happen. if you've got the slot, then the bios shld be tuned well enough to that board to have some sort of switch to allow it to be used. there shld be something in there that may be showing as 'PCI Video' and if you find the right command key, like pageup or pagedown, you can change it to agp. just wouldnt make any sense to have a mobo with an agp slot but no bios configurations for it. you sure it's an agp slot? kinda brownish, longer than a pci, and offset from the pci slots?

anyways, i'm kinda lost at this point in trying to follow who's on first here. could we take one machine and one game on that machine at a time? please? my head's gonna explode :)

K.

warnewbie
10-25-2003, 10:52
Woops,

Sorry for making it confusing http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

Laptop - win xp, 512 ram, ati radeon mobility 7500.

Desktop - win 98se, 196 ram, ati 3d rage pro.

Lets talk about the Desktop and forget the Laptop for now. Motherboard has an agp slot and bios is set to 'init display first - AGP. Bios aperture - 128'.

I think im right in saying that I will need a decent agp card to get both games running on the desktop, when i said the bios didnt detect my last agp card im only repeating the comments from tech support at the cards manufacturers.
It simply would not install, and we tried everything http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

Obviously I would be a bit gutted if I bought a second hand card and couldn't get it working.

Will try and borrow a card and test it first.
In the meantime im using the laptop as an emergency game machine and its working well (card gets v.hot though).
Will keep you informed.

Regards

Mick

p.s. Still cant win battle of hastings http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

Kraellin
10-25-2003, 16:59
ok. that's better :)

first thing, right now, go into bios and change that agp aperture setting to 64 or even 32. you dont need it, especially with the ram you have and having no agp card installed. this is just borrowing system ram to reserve to use with your agp card.

and, having no agp card in there at the moment, change that 'init display first' to pci, since that's the card you do have in there. i believe that setting is like your drive settings, it's telling your system for look first for this type of card or that. set it to the type you have.

the ati 3d rage pro is an older card. how much video ram does it have? and what drivers are you using with it?

and since it's a pci card, go into desktop, properties, settings, advanced and see if you cant find a setting in there for pci texture memory. this is the same as that agp aperture setting in bios, only it's for pci cards. the more you apply to this, the more system ram your vid card will borrow for graphics. tweak it around till you find a good compromise between speed and graphics quality. just remember, though, if you're borrowing system ram for graphics, then you wont have as much effective ram to run the other things your game needs besides graphics. so, this is a bit of a guess and tweak and try type arrangement. normally, the rule of thumb is pci texture memory to 1/2 of whatever your graphics card ram is.

now, with the agp aperture, i'm not sure if it's actually reserving 128 megs of system memory without having the agp card in there, but it might be, and that could be your entire problem if it is. you're sucking up a huge percentage of your system ram and reserving it to graphics use. you have 196 megs of ram, but you're reserving 128 megs of it to graphics work. that's too much. way too much. but, like i say, i'm not sure if that's what's going on or not without an agp card being in there.

as for the last agp card not installing, i'm a bit surprised there. what exactly was going on, or not going on? windows couldnt see it at all and therefore you couldnt install drivers for it? or windows saw it and you installed drivers but couldnt ever get anything to work with it?

K.