Demo doesn´t start! What´s wrong??

[homunculus88]

I downloaded the demo and it wouldn´t start on both of my systems. I get a black screen, then back to desktops. I must admit, that my systems are not exactly High-End, but it should at least run very slow or give an error message. These are the specs:

1:

Pentium III @ 500 MHz
256 MB RAM
Geforce 2 MX 32 MB
Win 98 SE

2:

AMD Duron @ 1.0 GHz
256 MB RAM
32 MB On-Board Graphic
Win 98 SE

I would really like to play the demo and buy the game. If anyone has a solution how I can get it to work I would appreciate it.

Greetings, Homunculus88

[Nerfix]

I'm not sure if your comp meets the min requirements. Sorry. =(

[Caduceus]

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/Dom3/8.htm

It says
* 256MB Ram, 500 MB disk space
* A good OpenGL accelerated graphics card (geforce or equivalent is recommended).

Win98 should be supported, but I don't know if it was tested under 98.

Graphics card and memory are probably the two biggies.

[Caduceus]

The Pentium III is under spec.

[homunculus88]

Well, well, probably I SHOULD buy a new comp. If you can´t play turn-based-strategy games anymore it´s time to upgrade http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif . Thanks for the quick replies.

[Manuk]

I have a pIII 700 mhz and demo runs. but it crashes from time to time and cannot use it in windowed mode or use alt+tab (couldn´t with dom2 either).

[tibbs]

It should run on both of those. If its a sys requirement thing the program would just run extremely choppy or slow most likely.

Maybe its due to win98. Anyone else run doms on win98?

[Manuk]

me

[Gandalf Parker]

You might try playing with the switches if you know how.

RIght-Click the icon that starts the demo and add switches to the command line to run it in a lesser mode

[NTJedi]

I have a pentium_3(1.0Ghtz) with 512 megs of ram and 16MB graphics card at work.
The demo took a long long time creating the small map with 2 players.

[DominionsFan]

Try to update the video drivers. [Firstly uninstall the old drivers, and install the new driver after that.] That might help, but I am unsure.

[Johan K]

The geforce system should run at least. Try downloading grahpics drivers from http://www.nvidia.com and make sure you got plenty of free space on drive c: for swap (500 Mb should be enough).

[homunculus88]

Any idea what switches I should use? I tried -w -u -a without effect. I´ll try to upgrade my video drivers later this day.

[Arralen]

drivers:
"Latest drivers" - that would be the Win9x/Me version of Detonator 81.98. Use those, there should be no problem running Dom3.

command line:
use _insert_your_path_\dom3.exe -ifawsm --res 800 600 -ddddd
Try to run the demo and look for a log file and stderr.txt / stdout.txt in the dominions directory.

further help:
START => RUN => "dxdiag.exe" .. save the output as text file and either post it here as attachment or, if you don't want to disclose details 'bout your machine to the public, email it to me and I'll have a look what might wrong with your machines setup.

[homunculus88]

Ok. I updated my drivers and the game starts. But it is so slow, that it is unplayable. What switches could I use to make it a little bit faster? I don´t care about the graphics. Or am I stuck with buying a new machine?

[Arralen]

Does it only run unbearable slow in battles, or overall?

From the in-game preferences, choose a lower resolution (800x600), low filter quality (does not make that much of a difference anyway), turn off "animated background" and "light effects". Set "tree quality" to lowest and GUI opactity to 100%.

In the Battle graphics detail menue, set quality to very low and remove (if its there) the tick from "draw grass".

If this all doesn't help, you might try the command line switch:
"-x --fastgrx Faster graphics (use 3 times for best performance (-xxx))"