NEW Fix for CTD when starting campaign (Nvidia, High End Cards)

[peter_de123]

Hello,

since I got my Nvidia 8800GTS I could not start MTW anymore, which was especially annoying because I bought the Eras Package. I even tried an old MTW version but it also did not work. After reading in various forums I thought it had something to do with the Nvidia Graphics Driver.

When I updated the driver tonight (version 175.16) I decided to give MTW another try. CTD when starting a campaign, just as I was fearing.

However, for some reason I also installed the Napoleon Total War Mod and tried again... SUDDENLY IT STARTED PERFECTLY.

So it could not be a graphics driver issue... I started toying around, removed and cleanly installed MTW, made a backup and tried to find out what made MTW work when I installed the Mod. I succeded to narrow the problem down to TWO FILES:

button_ipnext.BIF and button_ipprev.BIF in the "Medieval - Total War\campmap\buttons" Folder.

I verified it by using the clean, vanilla installation and only replacing those two files with the ones from the Mod.

NO CTD'S UNTIL NOW ANY MORE !!!

So to all those out there who also have the CTD problem when starting a campaign: Please try it out and report if it works for you.


Since this is my first post I am not allowed to enter a direct Link to a zip file containing the two buttons, so please look here: rapidshare.com / files / 115211547 / MTW_Gold_v2.01_CTD_Fix.zip . html (just remove the empty spaces between the words).


Alternatively you can of course install the NTW1 Mod.


-------------------------------edit by drone----------------------------------------------
Rapidshare link seems to have expired, here's one from GameFront until I can get this hosted locally
MTW_Gold_v2.01_CTD_Fix.zip
Local link
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[dknight]

Interesting, this should be included in the general threads about MTW CTD

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79500

I'll PM Martok

[Martok]

Allow me to officially welcome you to the Org, peter_de123! How wonderful that your first post here also contains a possible solution for people having problems running the game. My hat's off to you, sir.

Interesting, this should be included in the general threads about MTW CTD

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79500

I'll PM Martok

Indeed. I've already added it.

[drone]

Is this the isolation of the problem that's usually solved by the 2xAntiAliasing setting, or something beyond that?

I guess the next question is, what's different between the BIF files?

Welcome to the .Org, peter_de123!

[Raz]

Welcome to the org, peter_de.
And I can't thank you enough that you've found a way to fix this issue that has plagued a many MTW players for a very long time.
Although it never affected me personally, it is still a great leap forward for the players of MTW.

[I of the Storm]

That's excellent news. I haven't been affected either, but I'm glad for all the others that there seems to be a workaround. In case this turns out to be a viable solution (let's wait for the reports of other players) this surely deserves an applause.

[Kaidonni]

I'm reinstalling MTW Gold right now to see if this solves the problem for me. If it does...yay. If it doesn't...I sure hope this computer decides to recognise the M2TW DVD, because if it doesn't, I will snap that game in half (when I first had it it played up, damaged DVDs...now, the computer seeks to ruin just about everything for me, be it work or games). Then, I'll just be left with RTW, which I recently uninstalled to make room for M2...

EDIT: Okay, it seemed to fix the campaign map. Nvidia 8600GT or whatever the card is called, used to crash just as the load bar had completed. However, battles are still an issue - units appear ABOVE their cards (when you move the camera view, if any units are at the bottom of the screen, they don't disappear under the cards), and the attack cursor still does not appear when hovering the cursor over enemy units (another issue is units not going where they are supposed to). I'm assuming a similar fix might work for this, though? Could be some files once again?

And yes, I am grateful to you for this - but what about battles? It's just not MTW without those lovely battles...:(

EDIT 2: Just checked the official Total War website, and yeah, it's those mouse-over problems I'm still having.

[Kaidonni]

By the way, I'm messing around today to see if this fix works while playing XL, and I'd just like to point out that, according to the 'date modified' column, it doesn't look like the mod changes the two files. Of course, I installed the fix after XL, so I could be wrong...

NEWSFLASH!!! I just tried battles, and they seem to be fubared regardless of resolution (or mod). Now, I was hoping 2048x1546 or whatever the one resolution is (2048x1536? Think it's double 1024x768) would work, but it meant I had to alt-tab and close MTW from the Windows Task Manager (screen was entirely blank). 640x480 didn't work either (thought it did for a moment). HOWEVER - I tried one thing randomly - clicking on the radar map. That seems to work properly still. I can send my units where I want, and the attack cursor properly appears. Now, it isn't perfect, and might take some getting used to, but it is good enough considering the problems people have been having. I'm going to go and explore a bit more with this, fighting battles and all that, to test it out.

EDIT 2: The only issue using the radar map seems to be that I can't alter the depth of my units in battle. A shame, really, but then again, we might have to do without, because for all intents and purposes, we can play battles again. LOL. Question: Does the computer ever alter the depth of units, or is that an ability reserved only for the Human player? If only the Human can do it, I'll be more than happy to consider an inability to change rank depth something that levels the playing field.

[Kaidonni]

So, I was thinking...anyone up for looking into this further? Peter_de123 has started the ball rolling, and I think we might be able to sort out the battlemap too. One major point there is that, although elements of the battlemap do not line up properly, giving mouse-over problems, other elements do. The radar map allows you to move units to the correct place, albeit in a more difficult manner, and attack enemy units properly, and the other buttons on screen still work. It could be an unresolvable graphics issue, but it seemed like that for the campaign map - maybe, as with the campaign map, certain files don't agree with the Nvidia drivers, and we could tweak them to work?

[houyangwang]

Thank you. Now i can play the campaign map.

[Kaidonni]

So, am I to understand that this is a dead thread, and no one at all is interested in looking any further into this? Peter has given us some important groundwork here, he might have given us the route to stuffing those driver problems once and for all...and he might not have, but I do kinda feel ignored in what I've said, and surprised no one is interested at all...

[drone]

So, am I to understand that this is a dead thread, and no one at all is interested in looking any further into this? Peter has given us some important groundwork here, he might have given us the route to stuffing those driver problems once and for all...and he might not have, but I do kinda feel ignored in what I've said, and surprised no one is interested at all...

Since I run with an ATI card, I don't see the problems. I also am not familiar with what is involved with the BIF files and their format. Maybe this should be brought up in the modding forum, to see if any light bulbs go on there. My guess is that there is a rendering feature causing it that the Napoleon mod guys don't use. But I don't do graphics, that's just an edumacated guess from a software guy.

[Martok]

I don't think it's that no one is interested, so much as it is that not a whole lot of us possess the necessary expertise to be able to mess around and find the solution (goodness knows I certainly don't, anyway ).

As for moving this thread to a more appropriate sub-forum, I'd considered moving it to the Alchemist Lab, except that it's not exactly the busiest of places and might therefore take even longer to get a response there. Perhaps the Apothecary?

[caravel]

button_ipnext.BIF and button_ipprev.BIF are the up and down scroll arrows for the review panel. They are already known to cause visual glitches. If you have an annoying flashing bit at the top of the screen directly above them then this is why. I had no idea they were actually causing the CTD though, so this is an important discovery.

In retrospect this can also explain the corrupted GA cup icon on the review panel and the crash I was having when clicking on constantinople after ending a turn. That was probably also caused by the review panel up/down scroll arrows appearing.

As to the in battle synchonisation issue, AFAIK this is an Nvidia video card driver related problem. I have not seen or heard of this occurring on ATI cards.

In basic terms the mouse clicks are not being translated correctly onto the 3D space. If you can downgrade to older drivers, that may solve it. In my case it did not but changing settings in the Nvidia control panel eliminated the problem entirely. You can try those settings yourself, they are in the CTDs thread in the apothecary.

[Derfasciti]

Ok, I've downloaded and then extracted the files to my desktop but I'm unfortunately pretty darn clueless when it comes to computer stuff... What do I do now? heh.

Do I put these two files into my MTW gold edition folder or what?

[caravel]

Well I'm not sure where the MTW Gold Edition installs to, but it should be something like:

C:\Sega\Medieval - Total War Gold\campmap\buttons

Or:

C:\Medieval - Total War Gold\campmap\buttons

Just copy the files into the \campmap\buttons directory and it should prompt you as to whether you want to overwrite, click yes.

[Derfasciti]

Yup, got it working! Thanks a bunch!

[caravel]

"I came, I saw, I fixed it" ~ peter_de123

[Noddy The Beefy Egg]

Hello,

since I got my Nvidia 8800GTS I could not start MTW anymore, which was especially annoying because I bought the Eras Package. I even tried an old MTW version but it also did not work. After reading in various forums I thought it had something to do with the Nvidia Graphics Driver.

When I updated the driver tonight (version 175.16) I decided to give MTW another try. CTD when starting a campaign, just as I was fearing.

However, for some reason I also installed the Napoleon Total War Mod and tried again... SUDDENLY IT STARTED PERFECTLY.

So it could not be a graphics driver issue... I started toying around, removed and cleanly installed MTW, made a backup and tried to find out what made MTW work when I installed the Mod. I succeded to narrow the problem down to TWO FILES:

button_ipnext.BIF and button_ipprev.BIF in the "Medieval - Total War\campmap\buttons" Folder.

I verified it by using the clean, vanilla installation and only replacing those two files with the ones from the Mod.

NO CTD'S UNTIL NOW ANY MORE !!!

So to all those out there who also have the CTD problem when starting a campaign: Please try it out and report if it works for you.


Since this is my first post I am not allowed to enter a direct Link to a zip file containing the two buttons, so please look here: rapidshare.com / files / 115211547 / MTW_Gold_v2.01_CTD_Fix.zip . html (just remove the empty spaces between the words).


Alternatively you can of course install the NTW1 Mod.

Well , it did not work. it goes back to the main campagin menu. error!

[Imperiumiv]

Thanks, I got a gaming laptop yesterday and this morning I installed M:TW and was getting the CTD when starting a campaign. I'm already reinstalling it but oh well atleast I will have the problem solved.

[redman223]

Finally. I am able to play this game for the first time. Thank you.

Here is the system I am running it on in case anyone was wondering about compatability:

Vista Ultimate 64-bit
E8600, 780i, 4GB DDR2
GTX 280 (181.20)
X-fi Fatal1ty

[Paudman]

Sadly while replacing the two small files gets the game running to the Campaign calendar part of the game, it doesn't resolve the issue about the mouse not recognising or moving units in real-tile battles. I was so upbeat about having repaired the game until I tried the first battle, and the same fault occurred.
Is it an nVidia driver issue (just downloaded the latest drivers dated 21/1/09 which didn't cure it) or can anyone recommend a few graphics tweaks to cure the problem on an 8800 card?

[caravel]

The two button files will only cure problems with the campaign map, this is because they are physical parts of the campaign map UI (the up/down arrows on the unit/building review panel at the bottom of your screen).

There is no cure for the problem in battles. It is caused by the Nvidia display drivers. I advise that you have a quick skim through the thread below. You will not see any solutions there, but it will give you an idea of the scale and duration of this problem. So far Nvidia have not commented, nor have they done anything to help their customers. You will see that of those that contacted tech support, I think pretty much all were told that the game itself was to blame.

I advise that if you want have any hope at all of running this game, you should invest in an ATI graphics card. It is not guaranteed that it will work, but people are having much more success with ATI than they are with Nvidia 8xxx and 9xxx series graphics cards.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s...9&st=0&start=0

[Ed TW]

Works like a charm, Thanks.

[NEDEUS]

Hello,

since I got my Nvidia 8800GTS I could not start MTW anymore, which was especially annoying because I bought the Eras Package. I even tried an old MTW version but it also did not work. After reading in various forums I thought it had something to do with the Nvidia Graphics Driver.

When I updated the driver tonight (version 175.16) I decided to give MTW another try. CTD when starting a campaign, just as I was fearing.

However, for some reason I also installed the Napoleon Total War Mod and tried again... SUDDENLY IT STARTED PERFECTLY.

So it could not be a graphics driver issue... I started toying around, removed and cleanly installed MTW, made a backup and tried to find out what made MTW work when I installed the Mod. I succeded to narrow the problem down to TWO FILES:

button_ipnext.BIF and button_ipprev.BIF in the "Medieval - Total War\campmap\buttons" Folder.

I verified it by using the clean, vanilla installation and only replacing those two files with the ones from the Mod.

NO CTD'S UNTIL NOW ANY MORE !!!

So to all those out there who also have the CTD problem when starting a campaign: Please try it out and report if it works for you.


Since this is my first post I am not allowed to enter a direct Link to a zip file containing the two buttons, so please look here: rapidshare.com / files / 115211547 / MTW_Gold_v2.01_CTD_Fix.zip . html (just remove the empty spaces between the words).


Alternatively you can of course install the NTW1 Mod.

Friend!!! you are the M.F boss, I'll be grateful for eternity, this crap of modern video cards do not know what a good game, thanks for the solution. MTW forever

[drone]

Welcome to the Org, NEDEUS!

Glad it worked for you. If you don't mind, what are your system specs (OS, video card, memory)? I'm assuming by your tone that you are not having the battlemap issues others have seen with the nVidia 8/9 series cards? I'm trying to get as much data as possible for what works and what doesn't with MTW these days.

[gollum]

Welcome to the org and the main hall NEDEUS, enjoy your stay

[Kopta]

I have strange problem. Everything is working fine, untill i'm trying to start battle on map with river. Somtimes game crashes after seconds, somtimes after couple of minutes. Anyone know why?

[drone]

Don't think I've heard that one before, maybe a rendering issue with water? What are your system specs?

Welcome to the Org, Kopta!

[Xegus]

button_ipnext.BIF and button_ipprev.BIF in the "Medieval - Total War\campmap\buttons" Folder.
+
Hello, My name is Agustin, my pleasure meeting you. I want to use that fix, but cant file those files u ment ion in the xl el folders. u mean i have to get them from a clean instaL of mtw??

thnaks anyway it seems it truly works!