Original Shogun - my fix for harvest turn freeze

[Puzz3D]

I fixed the freezing on the harvest turn on my WinXP machine for original Shogun (the one that came in the red box). The game was freezing when it tried to play the first harvest message. Windows reported the module being used as acc_parser.ax which is a DirectShow Filter. I got a free DirectShow Filter Manager from Softella, and removed the acc_parser.ax filter. This filter is not a Microsoft registered filter and was part of the Ace Megacodecs package that I had installed back when I first upgraded to WinXP.

However, the game froze on the second harvest message turn after some garbled speech. When I played these files in Windows Media Player, they played but the progress slider was very jumpy. I remember someone posting that the harvest mp3 files were encoded with an obsolete codec, and the fix was to re-encode them. I used the program Smart Audio Converter, but that program is truncating the files by a few seconds and I haven't yet tried any other converters. The new harvest mp3 files then played smoothly in Windows Media Player and the game works now with no freezing on these messages. Those audio files are in the folder: Voices\Throne\Messenger\Harvest. They are named disastrous.mp3, poor.mp3, average.mp3, good.mp3, bumper.mp3. The Japanese versions of those files are in the folder FVoices\Throne\Messenger\Harvest.