Need Technical Assistance

[Valentine]

Kay, so I used to play this game religiously back in 2003-2005, and after that era I shelfed it. Back then my computer was no gem, 2.1 AMD Athlon processor, 512 ram, 64 MB graphics card. It was a bit laggy when clusters happened but all in all it was really fun.

Now I installed it again and had all sorts of issues. I had a CTD from save game issue that I fixed. Game crash issues that I fixed, but there was one problem I have found nothing about.

When I try to load the game to go anywhere where a load screen comes up, it stalls for about 30-40 seconds. The load bar is grey, I can alt tab from the game with it loading like nothing. It doesn't act like it's loading at all, until I see a sliver of red bar come up. After it finally does load I have no problems with anything else except random crashes when I try to minimize sometimes.

But this having to wait more than a minute between battles because of a lagging load bar is a turnoff. Especially since I've got 2 gigs of RAM and a 512 ATI Radeon HP 2400 graphics card now. My processor is still the same.

Anyone have any idea why the load bar stalls for almost a minute on every load screen?

[Martok]

Welcome to the Org, Valentine!

In response to your problem: You wouldn't happen to have an Nvidia 8000 or 9000 series video card, would you?

[caravel]

I feel your pain. I have a Radeon HD 3650 and in my case I have to wait for more than a minute for the load bar to appear. I've tried all different settings, different drivers - I've even tried replacing the loading screen .tga files and that doesn't help either. It means that, for me MTW is essentially unplayable. I don't have this problem with STW.

-Edit: I didn't see Martok's post, when I was posting this. I'd advise you not to "upgrade" to an 8xxx or 9xxx series Nvidia card to resolve the issues you're having with that one as they exhibit even worse problems. I think the latest generation of Nvidia GTX cards don't have this problem though - but need some more confirmation of that.

[Valentine]

Welcome to the Org, Valentine!

In response to your problem: You wouldn't happen to have an Nvidia 8000 or 9000 series video card, would you?

ATI Radeon HP 2400 Pro AGP 512 memory.

[Valentine]

Well I've upgraded the drivers to the best, rolled them back, completely uninstalled them, and so far nada.

[oz_wwjd]

Conformation on whether the same problem of 8-series cards not working exists with Nvidia GTX cards would be Verry nice,as it might be a way for the game to become playable for those of us that have this problem..

[caravel]

Do you have a GTX series card? If so try updating to the latest drivers and see if the game runs ok.

[oz_wwjd]

I currently have a Nvidia 8600 GT card, I was hoping that someone that has a GTX series card would be able to share whether it works for them or not,as I'd buy a GTX series card if MTW actually worked with it..

[caravel]

I see. We've had few reports from owners of these cards so far. Have you tried searching? I do remember at least one member claiming that they'd got it working fine on a GTX series card without the battle map issue?

[dryfjord]

Hello;
I seem to have the exact same probs as Valentine and like him would appreciate any ideas!

I recently upgraded my PC (and originally bought an nVidia 9500GT but persuaded my dealer to change it for an ATi, phew!!!), my current specs are:

MSI P43NEO F motherboard
Intel E7400 dual core
ATI 4650 1GB graphics card (Catalyst 9.8 drivers)
4GB OCZ RAM (system recognizes 3GB)
several HDs
Win XP Home SP3
etc

Like Valentine, although both the campaign map and battle map seem to work well, when either loading a saved game, or after completing a battle, it can take over a minute before the progress bar starts to fill with red. The hard disk doesn't seem to be churning away like it was a disk problem, but seem to load a bit then stop then a bit more etc.)

After battles, some of the time it then crashes rather than take me back to the campaign map.

At least I can play the game now that I got the ATI, but it's a bit frustrating when you've just completed a long and successful battle only for the game to crash.

Any suggestions gratefully received on this one!

Dryfjord

[caravel]

Welcome dryfjord,

Unfortunately I have the same problem and as yet have found no resolution - nor can I determine the cause. I'm in the process of trying to get an older graphics card in order to run the game - this is obviously not an option that most would want to consider.

Sorry that I cannot be of any more assistance.

[dryfjord]

Thanks for the welcome and reply Asai!

Maybe, unlike the nvidia guys, this might be solved by a later Catalyst release.......

In the meantime I can confirm that Shogun plays fine!

[caravel]

Yes, I have no problem with Shogun either - in fact my only problem with MTW is the slow loading... I find that it ruins the game because it takes about 2-3 minutes on my machine before the red loading bar starts to move.

I don't know if driver updates will fix it, historically newer drivers (and cards) have only made matters worse where MTW is concerned. I have seen this problem on an Nvidia card also so it's not limited to ATI.

Good to hear that you've at least got STW working, though. Feel free to join us in the Sword Dojo (STW subforum).

[uk_john]

I have a 4850 ATI. Changed from NVidia to stop the NVidia mouse control problems and had that solved, but now i have the slow loading of 3-4 minutes! even if I escape from the strategic map to save and then click on 'return to game' it still takes as long!

I noticed in the task manager a .tmp file is run when Medieval_TW.exe runs. I wonder if that's the problem?

[naut]

Hmmm. My laptop has the ATI 3400 series and I have no issues. Maybe I'm just lucky. Although, I doubt my drivers are very up-to-date, infact they probably are very outdated. I haven't tried on my desktop PC, and I doubt I ever will, Windows 7 + MTW = ???. uk_john, I don't know what can be done. It is difficult to tell whether this issue is a graphics card issue or more likely a software issue. And on the software side, it could be a code issue (impossible to fix) or a file issue, again near impossible to nail down the exact cause.

[uk_john]

Whichever way you come at MTW NVidia or ATI, it seems you get a problem, even though they are different. But the fact ZoneAlarm saw Medieval_W.exe trying to launch C:\Temp\#f39a36.tmp, is a worrying issue for the game data side!

[drone]

I've got a Mobility 4850 running under Vista with no problem. I don't think the long load times are related to the graphics card, but something else in the system. Never heard about the .tmp file, that is a new one.

[caravel]

I've got a Mobility 4850 running under Vista with no problem. I don't think the long load times are related to the graphics card, but something else in the system. Never heard about the .tmp file, that is a new one.

I have seen Nvidia and ATI cards with the long load times problem, and when removing the card and using onboard vga, the problem was enitrely gone. This is why I think it has something to do with the graphics card. I have seen this on both PCI-e and AGP as well. It is not clear why some have this problem and others do not. Motherboard perhaps? Or BIOS settings? Though personally I have no BIOS settings to change for PCI-e.

The .tmp file is not a problem. This is normal.

Yohei

[Raz]

Windows 7 + MTW = ???. .

It equals an inablity to use any in game screen resolution above 800x600, regardless of graphics card and actual monitor size. :/

[caravel]

It equals an inablity to use any in game screen resolution above 800x600, regardless of graphics card and actual monitor size. :/

Disable compositing, change the desktop colour depth to 16 bit and reboot. Worth a try.

Yohei

[Raz]

Well, I gave that a try, but to no success. It remained at the minimum resolutions possible.
I believe it is as you said previously and probably something to do with the windows 7 drivers. If that's the case I can't do anything about it for the time being.

Thanks anyway, Yohei.

[caravel]

Most odd, I will look into this some more. It seems like the game is not retrieving the available modes from the directx/driver and is falling back to the default.

Have you tried doing the above again and running the game from a terminal with the 'D' command line argument? Example:

cd /directory/where/game/installed/

"Medieval_TW D"

You should then end up with the game running in an overlay, with the bottom right of the desktop visible. See if any modes can be changed now?

Are both the battle map and campaign map restricted to 800x600? I say this because I think the campaign map is DirectDraw only whereas the battles are Direct3D - this problem might be something to do with the latest DirectX version.

Are there any settings in your nvidia/ati control panel you can change? Maybe turn off EDID and set a specific screen resolution (for example 1024*768), then try again?

Failing that a third party program like ATI tray tools or powerstrip may be of use, but not sure if it runs on Windows 7?? (I'm not a windows user these days so wouldn't know)

[Garnier]

I have seen Nvidia and ATI cards with the long load times problem, and when removing the card and using onboard vga, the problem was enitrely gone. This is why I think it has something to do with the graphics card. I have seen this on both PCI-e and AGP as well. It is not clear why some have this problem and others do not. Motherboard perhaps? Or BIOS settings? Though personally I have no BIOS settings to change for PCI-e.

The .tmp file is not a problem. This is normal.

Yohei

This is good to know, I've had this problem for years and until now I had no idea what aspect of my computer caused it. If it could be solved or worked around without disabling the graphics card that would be great of course, but this is progress anyway.