winSPMBT and WinSPWW2 and VISTA

[DRG]

FYI

To date we have not had a single report I am aware of that either game will
NOT run under Vista in Windowed mode. We have had some reports of "sluggish"
response in full screen mode in Vista and also reports that the problem had
been corrected with driver upgrades or procedural changes.

We supply both games in both Windowed and full screen mode to ensure that
one OR the other ( or if we're lucky....both ) modes will run the game in
all the various Windows operating systems. But we do not guarantee the game will
work in both modes under all the various different Windows operating systems and
hardware combinations. In most cases the game will but both modes are provided
to ensure one or the other WILL run the game

If anyone has tried to run the game under Vista in Windowed mode without success
I would like to hear about it please and I would also like to hear from people
sucessfully running the games in full screen mode and Windowed mode in Vista


Thanks


Don

[reverend]

*raises hand*

Originally, fullscreen wouldn't work at all, windowed was okay.

After a driver update to the latest Catalyst (7.8), both fullscreen and windowed mode run fine, I didn't notice any slowdowns.

[Smersh]

I haven't tried recently, with new drivers, but I was getting very sluggish performance in full screen mode.

It's not very important to me since I play the game windowed.

[Shadowcougar]

I have some problems with sluggish play with firing in both windowed or full screen mode. I just live with it as its not so bad to be unplayable.

[DRG]

Shadowcougar said:
I have some problems with sluggish play with firing in both windowed or full screen mode. I just live with it as its not so bad to be unplayable.



Have you upgraded your drivers?

Don

[Smersh]

There are also several tweaks and perference changes you can make to have firing faster. What are your preference settings?

[DRG]

Yes, a change to a new operating system may require tweaking of the individual preferences settings. It would be helpful to know if you have tried altering them in any way. It makes it easier to help others when we know what has or hasn't been tried if problems arise. Every machine if different in it's hardware and softwear combinations.

Don

[Horses]

Some time ago I tried both WinSPMBT and WinSPWW2 under Vista, but on my system they ran only good in windowed mode. Fullscreen was nearly unplayable due to lags/slowdowns.
Meanwhile, I purchased the CD-Version and play in windowed mode, but for me the fonts are quite too small at all resolutions in windowed mode.

[DRG]

Was this machine built for Vista or an upgrade? If an upgrade to Vista from XP did you upgrade your video drivers or try to alter the games graphics delay etc. settings?



Don

[Horses]

It was a complete new clean system installation of Vista.
The Video drivers were the latest from Nvidia. In my opionion, these lags/slowdows are caused by the video drivers.

[DRG]

OK, in the first email you said this was "some time ago" which sounds like very close to when Vista was released . Have you checked for new drivers from Nvidia lately?

Don

[Horses]

Dear Don, sorry for confusing. I tried after release of Vista (End of January/Beginning of February) and approx. 3 weeks ago again. Three weeks ago I tried the latest Nvidia whql and also beta drivers.
In the moment I use again windows XP, because winspmbt and winspww2 are quite important for me !

[DRG]

1] OK after you tried the new drivers and didn't see a change did you try adjusting the games graphics delay etc. settings?

2] You say "for me the fonts are quite too small at all resolutions in windowed mode." What size do you have your game set to in full screen mode that gives you font sizes you like ? In windowed mode, in your case, what you may need to do is set your monitor to that resolution first and then start the game.


Don

[Horses]

1.) Yes of course I tried several settings, e.g. graphics delay,scroll speed etc., but no setting was really satisfying.
2.) Before I bought the cd versions I played always in 800x600 fullscreen and concerning the font size it was perfect.My native LCD Solution is 1280x1024 and this is also the resolution which I play in windowed mode now.

[RVPERTVS]

So, is it or is it not posible to run full screen under Vista? I thought it was only a matter of driver upgrade. I´m asking because I´m thinking about upgrading my OS but I like to play in full screen, so it might influence my purchase.

Regards
Robert

[DRG]

From the reports we have to date it would seem that it runs fine for some and not for others. WHY that may be is unclear at this time. So far we have heard full screen mode will...

A} run fine with driver upgrades

or

B}that it runs "sluggish"

or

C} that "All the colors are screwed up"

We won't really know why there are three different results until we start getting more reports with detailed info on what is happening ( good or bad ) with detailed info on the systems. At this time neither Andy or I have a "Vista" machine but even if we ran out tomorrow and bought one there is no way to say for sure which of the three main results that have been reported will show up on the machines we have.

Don

[RVPERTVS]

Thanks Don, I guess then is a matter of waiting some time to see.

Regards
Robert

[Horses]

Dear Robert,

obviously nobody can say if it will work on your system or not. Just make a image of your current system and then try vista. That's the way i tried SPWWW2 and SPMBT under Vista OS.

[RVPERTVS]

Ok, but I don`t know what you mean by "make a image on my current system" If you coul explain that please.

Thanks in advance
Robert

[Horses]

Hi Robert,

I mean image/backup of your current os partition. If WinSPMBT/WINSPWW2 does not meet your expectations on Vista os you can switch back to xp in a few minutes.

[RVPERTVS]

Wow, seems interesting, though I´ll have to investigate how to do that because I don´t know much about computers, I mean I don´t have a clue what a os partition is.

Do you mean saving my current xp files and put them on a vista machine to see if they work?

Regards
Robert

[RVPERTVS]

Now I know, I had to ask it around but now seems a good idea, though I decided to stick to xp for some time.

Regards
Robert

[joche]

So, is there no cure?
I'm a rabid fan of this series, but I also enjoy the mindnumbing forrays into FPS, so I dropped a bunch of money on a Quadcore with Nvidia 8800 GTS (dual SLI) and Vista Home premium- I've tried to get used to the super sluggishness of fullscreen, but I just can't handle it. After so many years of playing full screen only, I can't get used to windowed (too small) Are there any theories as to why its working so sluggish or any suggested fixes (I already tried playing with the in game settings and the config files)

[DRG]

Aside from checking for driver upgrades for your video card and doing all the things you've already done we have no other suggestions at this time. You have "category two" issues ( sluggish ) which is somewhat better than "category three" ( scrambled colours )

However, in regards to your comment regarding windowed being "too small" do I assume correctly then that you are using the DL version ? If yes, the solution for your VISTA problems may be the CD version that has the higher resolutions which will give you a "full screen" window.

I never play full screen. I like to have the ability to play windowed which allows me access to other programs while playing the game.

The only other solution at this time is to hope Microsoft addresses some of these problems in it's service packs. As I said earlier, neither Andy or I have a "Vista" machine at this time but even if we ran out tomorrow and bought one there is no way to say for sure which of the three main results that have been reported will show up on the machines we have.


Don

[joche]

Thanks for the quick reply Don,
Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to ask for the cd for x-mas from the wife (after the new PC I really can't ask for anything big this year-heh)

[DRG]

I have been told ( but have not seen this myself yet ) there are settings in Vista ( maybe as program properties?? ) that allow users to set it up as "Windows XP mode" and also to set it up "Single core processor" if you have a dual-core processor.

??

Don

[Panzerpionier]

Possible solution for the messed up gfx in full mode:

I was able to solve that problem on my new pc (intel quadcore/vista home/8800 GTS) by enabling WinSPMBT in compatibility mode for Windows XP plus checking the box that says: "run this program in 256 color mode" (i dont know the exact command as iam using a german version of vista)

You can enable the compatibility mode by right clicking the WinSPMBT.exe file in the game folder and select "properties".

There you can set comp.-mode as well as the 256 colour command by 2 simple clicks.

This has solved the issue of messed up graphics in full mode for me, however, it still laggs terribly (in full mode).

I hope this has helped you in narrowing down the problem the game is currently experiencing with Vista.

[Horses]

Hi Panzerpionier,

I have the same Videocard but I still stick to Windows XP until now. Does the game work in windowed mode without any problems (lags etc.) with your configuration ?

Thanks.

[Panzerpionier]

Hollo Horses,

In windowed mode (the free DL version+ patch 3.5)the game runs without any delays or other problems.
i have updated my Nvidia drivers to the newest drivers.
Hope this helps

PS:
The hotfix that solved the gfx messup (for me) i posted above will only work if you start the game through the real game.exe not the default game/options launcher.

[DRG]

Here's a post from another thread that may be of interest to anyone with the full screen problem with Vista

Don



Re: Screen Resolution Issue [Re: DRG]
#575412 - 01/12/08 04:23 PM Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply



OK, I think I found how to fix this problem in VISTA. Using VISTA "Display Setting," 'change the "Colors" drop down from "high (32 bit)" to "Medium (16 bit)." I have not had a problem since.

When completing the game and you really need the 'high,' go back and change, accordingly.

Hope this helps.
Totenkopf

[Panzerpionier]

Interestingly this seems to fix the graphic mess bug as well, but the lag is still there in full screen mode...

i wonder why some users dont have that problem....but i assume it is about certain graphic cards or drivers.

well maybe the new drivers from nvidia will solve the problem for me.

[Panzerpionier]

ok this might be pointing out the obvious - but i just discovered that when i set my screen resolution to 800x600 in windows vista i will have a big window when i start winspmbt or winspwwII....

so now i can play in windowed mode but still have "fullscreen"

simple solution but now i can play as before, without lag and without the fear of eye-cancer due to the small window...

[DRG]

The other obvious solution is to buy the CD version and then you'll have all the higher screen resolutions

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Don

[Panzerpionier]

sorry for going off topic

but as a former player of the original steel panthers i was happy to find this highly improved follow up.

thank you for giving us fans the chance to play this free version!

(i know buying the CD would be a better way to thank you...but anyway.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

[cusbut]

Hi

Just wondering if any progress has been made with the sluggish problem when running Winspmbt or Winspww2 in Vista. I have tried everything from drivers to running in different resolutions in both windowed and full screen modes, but the games are unplayable for me. There is a 25second delay between the mouse click and the command being activated. I dont have any graphics problems though. It has got to the stage were I have gone back to playing SPWAW to get my wargaming fix, this seems to run fine in Vista.

I am running Vista home premium (64bit) with a Geforce 8800 GTX

[Double_Deuce]

Both WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT are running fine for me in Windowed Mode running Vista Home Premium well but with a Geforce 7600 card.

[cusbut]

Well what do you know... a cure to my woes... I normally dont mess with in-game preferences but just on the the off-chance I turned of the sound, and to my suprise the game runs smoothly, quietly but smoothly. I can put up with the quiet :-)

[DRG]

There are a couple of threads on both the ww2 and mbt forum where Vista is discussed and you may find a solution there. It's interesting though that turning the sound off solved your "slugishness" problem . I do not recal anyone having a problem with any kind of "slugishness" in Windowed mode, only full screen

Don

[cusbut]

Yeh, its wierd because I can still play the battle FX but as soon as I turn on the sound FX everything slows down. I can play it in full screen mode with sound off but occasionly there will still be a slight slow down in response not as pronounced as when the sound is on, but still noticeable. In windowed mode with sound off it run like a dream.

[DRG]

cusbut said: In windowed mode with sound off it run like a dream.



...but with sound on it runs sluggish even in windowed mode ??

What kind of sound card do you have ??

Don

[cusbut]

Its an onboard soundcard using the latest AC97 drivers

[RobertWink]

DRG.. as a faithful SP guy, I would be happy to submit system specs to you guys to maybe help.

My notebook is a HP TX1320US Tablet .. AMD CPU , 4 GB RAM. Windows Vista Home premium 32-bit

game will not run windowed or otherwise.. regardless of compatibility settings, fullscreen, windowed.. nothing.

get the following..

"MBTv3
The system does not support fullscreen mode. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application"

dunno..

at home I have a custom built that I have run XP Professional 64bit on for a year, and SPMBT on for that long as well.. recentlly brought it up to Vista Ultimate 64Bit and nogo for SPMBT

it is a E6650 Intel CPU
4GB 1066Mhz RAM
Nvidia 680i Motherboard
dual Nvidia 7900GTX 512MB video in SLI
dual Seagate 7200.10 500GB sata2 drives in RAID 0
Soundblaster X-fi audio

all other apps and games 32bit or 64 bit seem to be fine, even older legacy stuff. Havent had much 16 bit stuff to throw at it, none of the hardware changed, just the OS.

The error I get there is "Invalid 32-bit application"..

[DRG]

Try turning "Show introduction" off and let me know if that helps.

Don

[TheDesertFox]

RobertWink said:
DRG.. as a faithful SP guy, I would be happy to submit system specs to you guys to maybe help.

My notebook is a HP TX1320US Tablet .. AMD CPU , 4 GB RAM. Windows Vista Home premium 32-bit

game will not run windowed or otherwise.. regardless of compatibility settings, fullscreen, windowed.. nothing.

get the following..

"MBTv3
The system does not support fullscreen mode. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application"

dunno..

at home I have a custom built that I have run XP Professional 64bit on for a year, and SPMBT on for that long as well.. recentlly brought it up to Vista Ultimate 64Bit and nogo for SPMBT

it is a E6650 Intel CPU
4GB 1066Mhz RAM
Nvidia 680i Motherboard
dual Nvidia 7900GTX 512MB video in SLI
dual Seagate 7200.10 500GB sata2 drives in RAID 0
Soundblaster X-fi audio

all other apps and games 32bit or 64 bit seem to be fine, even older legacy stuff. Havent had much 16 bit stuff to throw at it, none of the hardware changed, just the OS.

The error I get there is "Invalid 32-bit application"..



Robert,

I´m running both SP:WW2/MBT on 3 VISTA machines. Got some problems after installing VISTA-SP-1, however disabling the intro did the trick to get stuff running again. Look here for some details:

Disabling Intro (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=581167&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

Maybe that helps.

cheers

Helge

[RobertWink]

that did the trick DesertFox!

thanks guys! I was going crazy .. did it here at work on the notebook just now, no trouble going into a windowed mode.. wont do fullscreen only.. but thats ok. Will do the PC at home tonight and see.

now to squash some poor undeserving slob with the might of the Abrams MBT!!!

[Suhiir]

Just bought a brand new puter, with *shudder* Vista.

After reading everything I could find in the forums and playing with various settings on Vista I've come up with the following :

1) Right click on your WinSPMBT Icon and go to the "Compatability" tab. Checkmark "Disable desktop composition". This seems to solve the color issues with playing WinSPMBT in full screen mode. When you start WinSPMBT Vista will give you a message "The color scheme has been changed to Windows Vista Basic", once you finish playing Vista will automatically revert to it's normal settings so you don't need to mess with your display settings every time you play WinSPMBT and when you finish playing.

2) make sure you disable the intro movie as mentioned a few times in this thread.

3) On the WinSPMBT "Misc" tab go in and change Graphics Delay to 20 MS and Unit Move Delay to 10 MS. The game still doesn't run as smooth in full screen as it did under XP but it's livable.

Hope this helps.

[Oblak]

hello

i tri many things but SPMBT crash on mi Vista.

core2duo E6850; asus maximus formula SE; 2GB ddr2 PC8500 crucial balistix; vista home premium 32bit;

i have no probleme for lunch the game windowed or full screen but after some minutes SPMBT crash,always.

i have the download version, i tri to change compatibility with xp;98 but that does'nt work.
please help me what i need to do?
Thanks.

[Mobhack]

1) Windows Vista is not one of the supported operating systems for the game, so basically you are on your own if you try to run under an unsupported O/S. All other flavours of Windows after 98 work fine, and also Linux/Wine seems to work too.

Several of our playtesters and end users do have it running on Vista. Try searching this forum and the (WW2 one) for "Vista" and read the posts from those who have got the game to run under the new Microsoft operating system.

2) Ensure you have patched to the latest release level - apply each and every patch in the correct order. (Try turning all sound OFF in the preferences screen and also the mouse click off in the game options "misc" tab. If the game then runs fine you either have a sound card/Codec problem, and/or you did not patch the game fully since one of these patches replaced the MP3 sound with WAV format.)

3) Ensure you have all the latest vista patches applied for your video card and sound card drivers.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

If it's running fine on launch but crashing later you may have other programs running that conflict. There are a number of "VISTA" threads on this and the WW2 forum that have helped most people using Vista

Don

[Marks]

I have no problems with either SPMBT or SPWW2 on either of my machines.
I did have to turn off the introduction.

Mark

[DRG]

I have no problems with either SPMBT or SPWW2 on either of my machines.
I did have to turn off the introduction.

Mark

Are you running Sevice Pack 1 ?

Don

[Dick131]

Can anyone advise me? I have recently changed to a Vista PC, and now I can not run PBEM games. I find that when I save the PBEM game, I can save it to a game name, but the SPEML files do not appear in the PBEM folder. I have done searched but they turn up nothing.

[Wdll]

Have you turned on compatibility option for the game?
Does the file appear from within the game?

[DRG]

Can anyone advise me? I have recently changed to a Vista PC, and now I can not run PBEM games. I find that when I save the PBEM game, I can save it to a game name, but the SPEML files do not appear in the PBEM folder. I have done searched but they turn up nothing.


We just had a similar post recently and you can find further info in the "No sound " thread on the main forum. Read through that

Basically Vista is "managing" your files in ways that cause the game not to work. The problem appears to be centered around having the game installed in program files. Try re-installing the game outside program files like c:/The Camo workshop/ WinSPMBT.

This seems to solve a number of problems Vista users have had

Let us know if this works for you

Don

[Dick131]

Wow the worked - kind of.

I now get the files in the PBEM folder. However, the trouble is, when my opponent tries to play them he gets "Player 1 ORBAT file different or corrupt".

(I am on Vista, but he is still on old Windows.)

Does anyone have any further advice?

Thanks a million for your help so far.

[DRG]

You're getting that message becasue I'm betting you're both using different versions of the game. It's got nothing to do with what operating system you both have. When you re-installed you may have missed a patch

Did you start a new game AFTER re-installing ??? Or did you just put the turn into the new location you moved the game to ?? You cannot do that if you did as the security is put in place to prevent that. You'll need to start the game all over right from the beginning using your new game location

Don

[Imp]

In case you become intreasted in at some point guy just installed on Vista
In full mode map & unit pallette is quite good, the odd bits of building (grey) is off & smoke is technicolour think mainly whites some greys effected. Think small section of greys become purple. Whole display very slightly lighter like washed out. All other screens like info main game garbled greys again but dotted with mainly orange, you get the same effect if you make a screen shot in full mode using a screen capture utility on XP. Doing the same in windowed mode on XP is fine.
In windowed mode on Vista display is fine but if you click on a unit first screen is fine, 2nd info screen (pressed continue) shows a very slight shimer like its cycling the pallette. Bottom 2/3rds has waves heading up the info window & disapering, just very slightly lighter shades of grey again.
Not virus checker related from what I can tell as that was mentioned did not uninstall but disabled causing no diffrence, Kapersky as well not Avast.

[Suhiir]

I'm running Vista and WinSPMBT runs OK, not as well as it did on XP tho.
There is a slight hesitation whenever I hit a key or mouse button but I've just gotten use to giving the game a half-second to process my input before I hit the next key.

[DRG]

I assume ( yeah, yeah.....) you've tried all the tricks mentioned to eliminate this ? ( run from c:/ not from program files, set compatibility of the game EXE ..not the game options exe ! to XP or W98 etc etc )

??

Are you running windows or full screen ??

Don