Dominions II: Technical/Hardware Issues

[magnate]

B0rsuk said:
1. Is there any way I can run Dominions2 on machine without hardware acceleration ? I can run (demo) on my home machine, but I have reasonably good, if somewhat old, video card.
The situation has changed and I no longer have internet access on my own machine. Here, there's no opengl, and I don't have root password.
Is there any hope for me ?

Not sure - if you set all the graphics settings to lowest, I don't think it needs hardware accel, but if you're in Linux you do still need the opengl libraries (libmesa). You need them even if you run a graphicless server.

I can run Dom2 on an old 500MHz Celeron with an old 4Mb RageII video card, at the lowest detail settings.

What is Dominions2's threshold when it comes to IP's/cdkey ? How many IP's can be used before copy protection kicks in ? (I presume Dom3 will use similar mechanic)

Now this I do know. Every player has to have a unique CD key - but if you run a separate server, it can have the same key as one of the players.

CC

[Endoperez]

Try running Dominions with a command line parameter -a. This should set all animated background off. In Windows, make a shortcut and chance the 'Target' line like this: C:\YourDominionsFolder\Dominions II\Dom2.exe" -u This will remove the animation from the main screen and laboratory. In battles, you can press 'w' to chance the background into black void. If the grid isn't visible, press 'g' to have some impression of the battleground.

Dominions III will most probably just add things but use (mostly?) the same engine, so you can assume that anything that Dominions II works with, also works with the sequel.

Regarding multiplay with only one copy of the game:
When playing on the same computer, any number of human players can be present. Also, if you open the turn sent by your friend on your computer, and then finish without editing anything, those unchanged orders will be counted as if they were done on your computer. It works that way, but doesn't work that well when playing *against* your friend...

I would recommend having one of you play with the demo against other's full version, but the demo is of an old version with a nasty bug on one of the Jotunheim themes.

[Zen]

Ydirbut wrote in another thread:
When I right click on a unit or enter a battle, Dominions 2 sometimes, but not all the time, just closes and I have to go back and do that turn over again. Has anyone else had this problem

[Beorne]

I have WinXP, and my HD crashed.
I have reinstalled Dom2, all ok.
When I install the lastest patch appears an error:
"sdl.dll: unknown version"
I've never had problems installing and patching Dom2, my old installation had the latest patch.
What's happening?

[Beorne]

I was installing a wrong patch version ... sorry.

[Jamie]

This seems to be related to the above. In order to stop myself playing too much I tend to periodically wipe the game. On the last two reinstalls the game has run *grindingly* slow so as to be unplayable. I'm not talking about the battles, I don't even go there, its on everything. Even the start up screen. Just maximising the window makes the CPU grind away.

I'm running this on a Laptop with SuSE 10.1 that has an ATI Radeon 9000 in it. I have recently installed the new driver in this from ATi which to the best of my knowledge is running fine (e.g. fglrxinfo). It made no difference.

Note also the dom2 has run absolutely perfectly on this machine in the past. Indeed when I had Suse 9.1 on it I managed both states - perfect and grindingly slow without any significant system changes in between.

Hope someone can clarify this or at least give me a systematic way of uncovering the problem.

Jamie

[Endoperez]

Jamie said:
This seems to be related to the above. In order to stop myself playing too much I tend to periodically wipe the game. On the last two reinstalls the game has run *grindingly* slow so as to be unplayable. I'm not talking about the battles, I don't even go there, its on everything. Even the start up screen. Just maximising the window makes the CPU grind away.

I'm running this on a Laptop with SuSE 10.1 that has an ATI Radeon 9000 in it. I have recently installed the new driver in this from ATi which to the best of my knowledge is running fine (e.g. fglrxinfo). It made no difference.

Note also the dom2 has run absolutely perfectly on this machine in the past. Indeed when I had Suse 9.1 on it I managed both states - perfect and grindingly slow without any significant system changes in between.

Hope someone can clarify this or at least give me a systematic way of uncovering the problem.

Jamie

Might be the ATI. Bad openGL support. NVidia cards usually work much better in that regard. Try the troubleshooting threads. If nothing happens, PM me or post to the Dom3 forum. This one has been pretty much abandoned once people started to have Dom3s.

[Chazar]

Hi! I had the same troubles: ATI Graphics, Suse 10.1, Laptop.

The problem seems to be that Domininons uses the MESA libraries, even if the ATI binary driver is installed.

The solution is to bend a link and then Dom2 will be fast. However, this does not work with Dom3 for me , it just makes Dom2 go real fast only (even in a DualHeaded configuration). More information can be found at the end of this thread: Post#455756

The problem is probably ATI/SUSE specific, since I recall that a similar problem existed generally for ATI under SUSE9.3, where the links had to be set manually. Furthermore, I do believe that installing updates generally causes troubles with ATI under Suse:
Go to Yast->Software->SoftwareManagement and search for fglrx.

If you have downloaded and installed the lasted driver, you will see a package like
"fglrx_6_9_0_SUSE101". In this case you should alter the links as described at the end of the above linked post.

Alternatively you should see "x11-video-fglrx" and "ati-fglrx-kmp-default". Using those instead of the above mentioned package should make things work right away, however they use an older binary ATI driver (8.26 instead of 8.29 for me), which may cause troubles elsewhere (TV-Out or DualHead).

Also keep in mind that running YastOnlineUpdate might require you to reinstall the binary driver again. You can add the following YAST software installation source http://www2.ati.com/suse to obtain the above named packages automatically.

Sent me a PM if you need more advice to get Dom2 running under ATI/SUSE10.1.

AND PLEASE sent me a PM if you are able to get Dom3 running under ATI/SUSE10.1!!!!

NOTE:
I also run Suse10.1 on an 6 year old Desktop with an old Nvidia GeForce1. Installing the NVIDIA driver is automatic and Dom2 and Dom3 run fast right away, so it seems that ATI should take the blame here, not Illwinter nor SUSE!

[Jamie]

Thats the one, sorted now -- apologies for not finding it the first time. Very distro specific it appears...

I wish I could help with dom3, but I'm losing quite enough time as it is...