Spider-man

I've been working with the game all day. After returning to default bios settings, i adjusted each of the AGP settings one at a time again. I have come to the conclusion, again, that 2x/4x, fast writes, interleave, and other settings do not make a difference in BCM stability on my system. I did notice some improvement(!), however, when I set my AGP aperture to 64mb. By improvement I mean: fewer crashes to desktop, lockups, and corrupted save games over a period of eight hours or so. Note that I did have 4 CTD's and 3 lockups but absolutely NO immediate lockup upon attempted restoration of saved games (ie: no corrupted saves?). I am using the 21.83 det drivers still. Plus I AM RUNNING THE GAME WITH ALL GRAPHIC DETAILS ON! I have also been able to restart the game without rebooting my machine more times than not after saving or quitting out completely. Additionally, the "resume" option is not causing game crashes or CTD's every time, either (had one CTD with it). I have a question and then a comment on a new problem that has surfaced. The question is first: What does it mean to have a "corrupted save"? This term has been tossed around the forum a lot and I'm not sure what it means. For instance: Does a "corrupted save" always mean that the save game cannot be loaded (ie: crashes immediately)? Or could a corrupted save cause a delayed crash to desktop or lockup? What I am getting at here is that if there is some mechanism by which people's saves are being corrupted, then this corruption could lead to the crashes to desktop and lockups some of us have been experiencing. If I start a new campaign and continue to play it without saving I seem to have a bit less trouble (fewer CTD's and lockups over time) than if i have saved the game multiple times. Anyway, i'd like to hear how a savegame gets corrupted, what this means, and what can be done to prevent it. The aforementioned "new problem": I have been monitoring my FPS carefully during my testing of the game today. I have noticed that during sustained bouts of play (1.5-2hrs or so), the FPS will gradually decline (goes from a constant 75fps to a 10-15fps). This slowdown is accompanied by a slow down of the game music, voices and other sounds (say "activating tac-ops computer" out loud to yourself over fifteen or twenty seconds). Miraculously the game does not crash and i am able to save/quicksave, quit the game, and restart the game and everything is okay again. I am letting windows manage my virtual memory (i did try to set a 500mb cachefile myself but there was no improvement or worsening of the slowdown effect described above). I do not have anything running in the background besides EXPLORER and SYSTRAY. No other games or applications have ever done this nor are they doing this currently (granted, I have not played anything for longer than an hour except BCM today). Could this slowdown be due to the reduced AGP aperture (i changed it from 128 to 64 as noted above)? It's really the only permanent change I've made. Anyway, I thank everyone for their time and advice, it's been very encouraging. I do have a saved game that will crash every time somewhere between 5sec-90sec of being restored (sometimes CTD, sometimes a hard lockup requiring reboot). If this sounds like something that SC or someone else wants to look at, I'll pack it up and send it. Again, I'd like to know if it is corrupted, if it works for you, or if there is some other problem. [ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: Spider-man ]

Sorry SC, I put the new system specs in my message so that my old ones were still available in the profile. I thought perhaps that this would give you/others more information and would be helpful. new specs have been added to my profile.

quote: I find it rather odd that you spent so much time and effort on such a time consuming and INCONCLUSIVE venture - YET - you don't even know HALF the information required for your hardware system as indicated in your system profile. SC, I noted in my message that my system info had changed. I supplied that information in the content of my post. I will now update my profile. It's going to be hard for me to get help here if you attack me directly. (by the way, there are THREE items missing from my old system profile {mouse/joystick drivers, etc). This is not "half"). [ 01-20-2002: Message edited by: Spider-man ]

good suggestions. I'm not running anything but Explorer and systray and I let win98 manage my virtual memory. I did adjust the bios settings one at a time, but I'll go back to a default state and a clean install. I'll post the results in the next 48 hours or so. I never touched the "Best Image Quality setting" Here's hoping.

I have been playing BCM with the system listed in my profile since 12/24/01. All in all, the game ran fairly well. I ran it with full graphics options on and with full sound and music. One of my saved games from a prior patch was corrupted; ending my first career short. I restarted the game with a larger ship and, now being more familiar with commanding, I finally achieved fleet command and control. Throughout my time playing the game, it would crash to desktop randomly. I booted up fresh each time before playing the game (indeed, it was impossible for me to play the game, quit, and then restart the game without rebooting) and I saved the game often. Occasionally, my saved game would become corrupted (or lock up shortly after loading) and I'd have to revert to a prior save (a bit tedious: reboot, load, play, save, reboot, load play, save, etc.). I read the manual, the appendix and the forums here. It seemed like most of these problems had been experienced in some fashion by a few of the other posters, and each time it was blamed on video card drivers, the hardware, or even the OS. I noticed that although the 23.11 drivers are the "official" drivers on NVidias website, Mr. Smart comments often that they are "buggy." I could also not find a recommendation for a particular system/hardware/driver combination that would work for my old system. (as an aside, it seems that if 3000ad is not going to test drivers,it might make a firm recommendation as to which to try for each card. there are too many to simply go "fishing"). I also thought that my system could be the problem: I was using an old sound card and a bx board. Plus I was still using win98se. Reinstallations of BCM produced the same results listed above, though they were not reproducible except in the instance of saved games that appeared to be corrupted. Other times CTD's and lock ups would happen and not really follow a pattern. I decided to purchase new hardware. My new system is the following: Athlon 1700+ 512mB of Mushkin 2100 DDR ASUS A7V266-E motherboard WD 7200 RPM 60gig hard drive (ata 100)(primary on IDE 1) WD 7200 RPM 18gig hard drive (ata66) (sec on IDE1) 40xCDROM (ide2 primary) HP CDRW (ide2 secondary) Ledtec GeForce 3 at default settings with 21.83 det drivers (note that the 21.83 drivers were the last to be WHQL certified. the 23.11's are not.) C-media onboard sound with the 12/10/2001 drivers Via 4 in one (version 4.37) I have a PCI ethernet device (realtek with 7/17/2000 drivers -- the latest) on a T1 connection. I have a MS SW precision pro joystick with the latest drivers and the fix for the Via Chipset. I have a MS intellieye mouse with the latest drivers from MS website. A CLEAN install of windows 98se. DirectX 8.1 WMP 7.1 No issues on DXdiag!! (same as before actually) All right, so I installed BCM. I figured it would be blazing fast and everything would be cool. It ran slow with the 23.11 drivers even at default system settings. I changed to the 21.83 drivers and noted a huge improvement in my RTCW and Quake 3 framerates (I tried the 22.80's, but i got graphical anomalies in RTCW). I reinstalled BCM (as detailed elsewhere on this website). I was able to successfully play at default system settings (640x480, etc). I played for 2 hours and got a lock up. I uninstalled BCM and reinstalled it (I applied the patch in the BCM directory, of course [every time unless otherwise stated]). I put my old "save" folder back into the BCM directory. (the save folder has my triumphant C&C career saved in eight different places on it -- no files tampered with, just all the contents of "save" replaced with my "save" folder from the previous installation). When I load up my old saved games with default BCM system settings, it plays for a bit and then locks up hard. When I adjust the system settings to 1024x768 (where i was playing on my old system) and all other graphics enhancements on, the game locks as soon as the scripts finish loading and I see nothing but a few white lines across the screen. To recap: 1. I am currently playing BCM on vastly improved hardware and a clean install of the win98se operating system. Note also that I checked for IRQ conflicts and moved my ethernet card to PCI 1 so that it wouldn't conflict with the onboard sound. 2. I am still getting lockups, but am able to play for sometimes 2 hours or so at DEFAULT BCM settings (far below what I should be able to do with this system, I would think). Sound/music on/off makes no difference with BCM stability for me from what I can tell. 3. Saving the game or quitting the game while playing at default settings will not cause CTD's as often as with my old system, but they still occur and I still need to reboot my computer before playing BCM again. It will not run twice consecutively without a reboot. 4. I've made many adjustments with my video card drivers (23.11, 22.80, 21.81, and finally 21.83) and find that the 21.83 (the latest WHQL) are the best, for what it's worth. No dxdiag issues. Plus other Direct X and open GL games run very very nicely. I have installed and uninstalled them properly each time (using the detonator destroyer utility). The drivers are not making a big impact on BCM stability for me. If I saved a game while the 21.81's were installed, will the saved game work later if the 21.83's or other drivers are installed?? 5. I have also adjusted BIOs settings for my AGP card one at a time to see if I could affect BCM stability. NO effect for me. 4x with fast writes is the same as 1x with nothing: still get CTD's and lock ups at default BCM settings and higher. My thoughts on my system and my stability problems: 1. Vastly improved hardware has not made a great impact in improving BCM stability. 2. Changing Video Card drivers has had a MILD impact. 21.83's seem better. 3. Reducing BCM graphical options to default has a mild impact. (fewer CTD's, still LOCKS UP in time, and still can not play the game, quit out, and then restart the game (must reboot)). 4. 640x480 is sh*ttier than 1024x768. And the higher the resolution/graphical options, the more often I get CTD's and lock ups. 5. AGP bios settings don't help at all. 6. Could windows 98se be the culprit? 7. will windows xp be any better ? (shudder) 8. OR COULD THIS BE, possibly, BCM itself? the latest patch, the code, who knows? 9. What other things should I try to do to enjoy this game? Thanks for your time. I love the game, but I am about to give up. It sucks buying new equipment and going through all this time and trouble and getting absolutely disappointing results. [ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: Spider-man ]

ahem, I meant: thank you, commander Cloud.

cool thanks papi!

thank you for the prompt reply. um, how do I get these numbers to go down (the HF for the particular folks on my ship). I have plenty of nutripacks, is there some way to get them to use them? Or do they use them automatically?

what does "HF" stand for? It's above the officers' AI, FF, and LF. Can't find mention of it in the manual or the appendix (though I'm not saying it's not in there). thanks in advance.

ah, thanks again for the summary, $ilk. I forgot about that "the spider" business. makes the last 10 yrs or so kinda worthless. Glad I didn't miss anything, but I was always content just fighting villains. My character doesn't have to "evolve" all the time. the writers should have been more patient. Perhaps the titles' profits wouldn't let them be. Ah well. Is MJ still dead or is she miraculously alive? I thought things got good after the marriage, i guess the writers didn't agree...

I'm a fan, $ilk. And I agree with everything you said (well, except for sympathizing with ben reilly, wasn't even worth it in my opinion). I have read the script for the movie (including the recent drafts) and it looks pretty damn good. Nice synopsis, BTW. I stopped being religious about collecting and keeping up with the titles right around ASM 300 and pptssm 120 or so.