Movies not playing in menus and at start-up

**Lonely Soldier** · 08-19-2005, 01:01

I have recently re-installed R:TW, and the 1.2 patch (without mods or any other changes to the game), and have found that the Intro movies and in-game event movies do not play - no movies at all

. In-game movies are displayed as a blank box within the information scroll the menu has simply a black background and the Activision logo, intro, and faction intros do not play at all. This was not too bad (and I could get by without them anyway). But, just yesterday in fact, I destroyed a faction and the moment my generl slammed his banner into the settlement the game locked up entirely (except for the music), though the HD activity light kept blinking. It was almost like it was trying to play the movie file but couldn't.

I have the latest version of Windows Media Player installed (and installed the media player 9 format files which come with the game) and the latest version of Winamp (5.09), which seems to be playing movies very jerkily and with a long pause at the start (this may of course be unrelated, but as winamp plays .wmv's as does WMP, there could be a connection.

Any thoughts?

**Encaitar** · 08-19-2005, 01:18

are you running the game with the -nm command line switch?

**Lonely Soldier** · 08-20-2005, 01:13

I havn't modified the .exe with any commandline stuff...

Also, I have uninstalled and re-installed the game (after first uninstalling winamp) - without 1.2 first: still no movies. Then I've installed 1.2: no movies.

In the past I have been asked by some older games for a newer version of the indeo video software (whatever that is), which I thought came with windows... I'm clutching at straws I think.

**Bwian** · 08-20-2005, 08:16

It does rather sound as though the movie format isn't compatable with whatever video playing software you have. Don't know exactly what the requirements are, since neither the manual nor the box cover mention it

**Lonely Soldier** · 08-20-2005, 12:32

Bwian - well the game claims to require windows media 9 format software (which I installed when prompted in the set-up).

**Lonely Soldier** · 08-25-2005, 23:40

I recently played another game (which runs normally in-game) but it displayed an error message saying it could not play the opening logo and intro movie because of a Direct3D error...

Maybe this is the problem?

**maliq** · 08-27-2005, 22:37

I encountered the same problem your having.

What I was able to find out is that my Media player was is not playing the .wmv files where it should. In windows i found that there was 2 media players(found this in win98SE, but seems to be the same case in the newer OS), you can search for it in the Find/Search in the start-up.

I saw that the .wmv plays on mplayer but not on mplayer2 ( dafault player ). So, i went to the game dir > ( I'm sorry I cannot remember the pathway for those wmv files ) once there i simply associated those files to always play on that player ( open-with mplayer, use this program always selection box ). After that everything was working perfectly.

Hope this helps out. I know how frustrating that can be.