Redux & W7...

[Axalon]

A note for all people using gaming/high-performance monitors such as the BenQ XT2411T (or similar)...

I noticed that using high refreshment-rates like 120-144Hz can turn out problematic on MTW-resolutions as it is then drastically reduced (to 1024x768) since the game-engine can't seem to properly cope with it - both for Redux and raw MTW. It seems like 100Hz is the max before the game seriously freaks out like that. For higher resolutions (such as 1280x1024) use refreshment rates below 100Hz, like 75Hz should be safe. Alternatively, change the "True color 32bit" display-settings to "High color 16bit" and it seems MTW/Redux then becomes far more cooperative/agreeable to such newer hardware and its drivers. Thought it might be worthwhile to share that discovery here...

- A

[tmodelsk]

Hi.
My name is Tomasz, from Poland, few days ago I've started to play MTW with Redux 1004.
Medieval TW - it's a master piece of work, and Redux being very good far for now. Axalon & community - thanks for your work and engagement.
But my impression I will write in another thread, I will only let you know guys that in 790 most of the Europe is taken by Muslims !! France is eliminated! Moors are in England! Playing as Poland.


I've got iritating problem on Windows 7 32 bit. My MTW is gold edition, computer T61P, 2x 2.5 GHz 4 GB, video card is NVidia Quadro FX 570M. So for such old game as MTW it's a top level machine.
Battles runs very smoothly, no any lags.

But the problem is suprisingly campaign map. Performance on this map is VERY low.
All unit moves are slow, end of turn AI unit moves animation takes a lot time.
Loading times are also slow.
I've got concurrent MTW installation on some old PC: 1-processor athlon 1,5 Mhz, WinXP, less than 500Mb memory, and campaign map performance is much better, of course there is lag when fighting large battles.
But my feelings are that overal permormance is better on those old PC :-).

So could anyone help me? Maybe someone has similar issues.
I've tried those above resolution fix - game doesn't start with it. But I don't have the resolution problem. I've tried to run in WinXP SP3 compability mode, but without results.

regards, Tomasz.

[Axalon]

Hello Tomas, welcome to this forum and the Redux-area…

From what you are telling me in your post, I guess it is your (legacy?) Nvidia-drivers that are fussing with MTW/Redux. If they don’t get along - and you have no other drivers to try (to get better performance) - I simply suggest that you stick to using that old PC you are talking about. At least while playing Redux/MTW. For some reasons, and this is very common, some 10 year old hardware, typically/often outperforms newer hardware when it comes to MTW. It’s a well established truth since many years. In my experience, the best OS I ever saw for MTW was/is Win2000pro and the drivers made for that. W7 can be very good, assuming we have hardware that gets along with MTW, in the first place (typically this means ATI/AMD cards, among other things)…

The solution (as I understand it) is that you get an ATI/AMD GFX-card for your primary rig, something like HD 58xx or HD 68xx-cards. One of those cards should do just fine on W7-drivers (I got have twin ATI HD5830 cards, although “crossfire-mode” will basically crash MTW). If that is somehow impossible, then get some 2nd hand/used GFX-cards – and make a point of it being ATI/AMD cards (due to drivers and MTW). The last possibility here, as I see it, is that you keep that old PC and have it as a dedicated machine to MTW and perhaps other old games that you like, and keep it around for that very purpose. A “legacy-rig” if you will… As for the battles and lag on that rig… In MTW options, set sound quality to “medium” and the lag in battles should disappear, or at least get much less frequent…

Other then that… Feel free to post up your Redux-experiences over at the main thread, or if there is something else that interest you in the other threads, by all means post there...

- A

[Axalon]

A note for all people using gaming/high-performance monitors such as the BenQ XT2411T (or similar)...

I noticed that using high refreshment-rates like 120-144Hz can turn out problematic on MTW-resolutions as it is then drastically reduced (to 1024x768) since the game-engine can't seem to properly cope with it - both for Redux and raw MTW. It seems like 100Hz is the max before the game seriously freaks out like that. For higher resolutions (such as 1280x1024) use refreshment rates below 100Hz, like 75Hz should be safe. Alternatively, change the "True color 32bit" display-settings to "High color 16bit" and it seems MTW/Redux then becomes far more cooperative/agreeable to such newer hardware and its drivers.

To clarify this stuff somewhat...

Setting color-depth to 16bit will not increase the tolerance-levels of high refresh-rates (like 100-144hz). Max will res still be 1024x764 regardless of anything - and that res will actually look pretty good on Redux, especially on 120hz (full screen on a Benq 2411T, latest W7-drivers). The highest refreshment-rate I managed to test is/was 144hz, and it will work fine, but not look as good as 120hz (and full screen, which was not available for 144hz) do, to me. Ergo, setting color-depth to "High Color 16bit" somehow strikes me as pointless in this context as it will not achieve anything other then just robbing you of possible color-depth.

Also, the Sepheus-fix will not help much in this given context, as it will not change any of the above outlined circumstances (as far as I can tell). The only thing the S-Fix does to RXB1005 is seemingly forcing the use of a low res-campmap texture, and limiting the available ram to 254 Mb (from the otherwise possible max of 3837 Mb. If I got the numbers right).

- A

[jingo7]

Everything is working great for me now with the ddraw, but the province names don't show up on the campaign map.

[Axalon]

Hi Jingo7,

I did not include the province-names in the low-res campmap-texture as I thought it looked poorly, and so I decided to have a blank map instead as (I thought) that looked much better in low res... I guess it is the price you and others will have too pay for using the S-fix on Redux anyway - despite it is not necessary somehow for it in order to function. Redux is and always was intended to use the high-res texture (and this of course has all names as usual) - using the S-fix prevents Redux from using that higher texture altogether. As a result you get the RX low-res texture (and no names)...

- A

[jingo7]

What do you mean? Without the S-fix my game crashed constantly, res was stuck on very tiny. Are you saying it is not nescessary? I think I have misunderstood you.

Anyway, the game is fantastic, and very challenging. The province names is a minor quibble.