SE5 crashes with Win7 64-bit RC build 7100

prisoner881 · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 15, 2007

I haven't tried Win7 32-bit yet, but SE5 bombs completely on Win7 64-bit right now. I've tried WinXPSP3 and VistaSP1 compatibility modes to no avail. Adding "run as administrator" doesn't help, either.

When you try to run it, you get the game launch menu up, but if you select "Play" it bombs. I've tried various settings in the Setup to see if I could get anything working, but nothing does. Selecting "RGB Emulation" gives you a frozen white screen. Any other setting gives you a frozen black screen. The crash causes one of my CPU cores to go to 100% utilization until I kill the se5.exe process.

This is on an NVIDIA Quadro FX 570 running dual displays. The aforementioned frozen screens only affect screen 1, not screen 2. Driver version was 185.85, the latest WHQL available.

Any official word from MM on Win7 compatibility? Granted, I know it's an RC, but it's darned closed to what we'll be getting as finished code. If SE5 won't work now, I have a sneaky suspicion it won't work when Win7 ships.

ekolis · Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 12:08 am Post subject:

That sounds suspiciously similar to what happens when you run SE5 on Wine... I wonder if Microsoft bought out some Linux code Shocked

bearclaw · Space Emperor Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: BC, Canada

Have you tried with just a single monitor setup? I'm running 64-bit Vista and normally have a dual monitor setup, but SEV wouldn't run that way. Once I changed it to a single monitor attached to my system, then SEV runs fine. Though I haven't tried dual monitors since the latest patch.

prisoner881 · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 15, 2007

I've got SE5 1.79 running fine (if a tad slow) on SLI dual monitors in Vista x64 SP1, so I know that works.

Has anyone else tried Win7?

ByteStorm · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 29, 2009

Gotta turn off the Music in the Settings File, and it'll load, which is fine for me, cause I always listen to Opeth's Damnation whenever I play Space Empires IV or V.

The performance is the same as on Vista, still gotta turn off Clear type Fonts to get it to run smoothly on any of the spreadsheet menus.

prisoner881 · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 15, 2007

You know, I had a sneaky suspicion that it might be the music as well because it crashed right when the "Strategy First" logo and music should appear.

I'll give that a shot! Thanks!

I'm still wishing there was a way to convince Andy to update whatever needs updating to make the game DX9 instead of DX8.1. Then we wouldn't have this slowness because of DX emulation. I'm no DX programmer, but I have to believe there's something less than a full rewrite of the graphics engine involved in porting the darned thing. I'd pay Andy to do it. If we rope together 50-100 people willing to chuck in $25-$50 each, I bet he'd do it.

ByteStorm · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 29, 2009

It isn't the whole DirectX 8.1 emulation thing, he has the game using system fonts. Bad idea in Vista and 7. I turn off the clear type fonts, and install to the Users/Public/Games directory, and I get 60 frames easy, but the moment there are charts, spreadsheets, etc, the FPS tanks.

If he were to create is own fonts and windows, instead of letting the OS do it, this wouldn't be an issue. IMHO

Emperor_Invisible · Space Emperor Joined: Feb 25, 2009

On my system I had the 32bit verison and after I hit play on the desktop startup screen, all I would get is a black screen and thats it, I have to it the restart button on the tower just to get somewhere.

Elethiomel · Space Emperor Joined: Nov 05, 2007

I've turned music off, and I can get through the main menu, but once I get into the game proper (i.e. a system view), it runs for about two seconds then locks up - have to go to task manager to shut it down.

Using windows 7 - build 7100
Nvidia 9800 + 8600

This ran okay on vista... anyone got any ideas to get it working on windows 7?

th3flyboy · Space Emperor Joined: Nov 04, 2008

ByteStorm · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 29, 2009

I am running this exact build of Win7, I have the following config at the beginning of the settings file...

Allow Music := FALSE
Allow Sound := TRUE
Support Multithreading := TRUE
DirectX10 Fix 1 := TRUE
Compress Savegames := TRUE

Everything works.

Try these lines, installing to the Users/Public/Games folder, turn off cleartype, AND load in Window mode at 1024x768. Should work fine.

::EDIT::

So I finally encountered that freeze you were talking about, it occured when I used the DevNull Mod, works fine in Standard Mode.

Elethiomel · Space Emperor Joined: Nov 05, 2007

I've yet to get around that crash...

I tried using the xp seamless virutalisation thing that comes with windows 7, but without 3d acceleration, the game was pretty much unplayable.

I've also just tried using Sun's VirtualBox 3, as this can provide hardware directx support in the guest OS, but although I managed to get this set up okay and tested using dxdiag, the SE5 config menu won't give me any option other than "RGB emulation", meaning 7fps in game and unplayable in combat.

Elethiomel · Space Emperor Joined: Nov 05, 2007

Right, I think I have a solution for this, seems to work for me, just wondering if anyone else can verify it.

Knowing that vanilla SEV worked, just not Kwok's marvelous balance mod, I created a new blank mod and started copying files from the balance mod across until it broke again.

After a lot of experimentation, I found it was just the settings file that caused the crash, so starting with the default settings file, I started integrating changes from the balance mod until this broke too.

I've got a very slightly changed settings file which seems to prevent the crash. There are only a couple of changes, none of which seem to be game changing.

http://files.spaceempires.net/user/1887/settings.zip

Can anyone on windows 7 corroborate that this settings file prevents the crash? If so, we can ask Kwok to review the changes and advise what their effects might be and perhaps incorporate them into the official balance mod release...

daRecall · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 13, 2009

Elethiomel, youre my man of the day Wink

The only Setting, you have to change, is to turn the music off.
I already turned it in the main settings off, you have to do it for every mod in its settings.txt again!

It seems, as if in RC1 the music subsystem is somewhat broken. I read today at the official SEV Forum, that someone ugraded from vista to Win7 build 7264. I first thought, that was a fake, because RC1 is build 7100, but i then read, that build 7600 is for the final version.
He told me, that he had absolutely no problems with vanilla SEV and with mods, so i hope, microsoft doesn't break it again in the final Version Wink

Happy Gaming

Elethiomel · Space Emperor Joined: Nov 05, 2007

I was convinced that it wasn't the music toggle - I had already disabled this and was still experiencing the crash...

(although, now I am beginning to doubt... did I disable it in the mod I was using, or the default game settings file?)

MisterBenn · Space Emperor Joined: Nov 17, 2006

Vash8472 · Space Emperor Joined: Aug 18, 2009

I was reading through this tread because i was having the exact same problem. Then i realized that i had a mod running and switched to standard mode and the game ran fine. You can run mods too you just have to go into their settings.txt file and change the music to FALSE as well! I've only tried it with the balance mod so far but it seems to work.

sellorio · Space Emperor Joined: Oct 15, 2011

I HAVE THE SOLUTION TO ALL YOUR PROBLEMS!

Well, maybe not all, but i know how to stop the crashes while KEEPING MUSIC!

Install K-Lite_Codec_Pack and i'll explain as u do:
In windows 7 several audio dlls were changed. This caused games like Oblivion and X3/X3TC to have no working music. The above software fixes this problem. I found it while looking for a fix for the X3TC problem, so i tried SE5 after intalling it, and it worked Very Happy

ENJOY!

Artful_Bodger · Space Emperor Joined: Aug 23, 2009

Launch a strategic strike on Redmond & the Gate's Bunker.

Then time warp back a decade & a half and be creative ...

Forcing the majority of users onto a system which fails to implement decent legacy support.

I know.
Other threads have been here.

I can still scream ARRRGH!

gurachn · Space Emperor Joined: Aug 03, 2010 Location: Osaka, Japan

Just recently got a new Win7 laptop (i5-2550, 8GB ram, Intel 3000 graphics, Intel 310 SSD) and decided to install SEV.
I'm a bit lazy and have a ton of customized content, so I just copied over the whole directory, and started it up.

Runs flawlessly. Smooth and fast on a dual monitor setup.

I am running 7Pro 64, build 7601 with latest drivers and the K-Lite Mega pack.

Actually, I have been pleasantly surprised with Win7.
I've had no problems getting it to handle any of my older legacy software.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

same here. I do have a minor issue where the desktop sometimes tries to show me pop-up window while the game is running, but it's usually not a serious problem.

Veni_Vidi_Vici · Space Emperor Joined: Oct 18, 2009

It seems the compatibility issues many of us are having in Win 7, Vista etc. aren't due to the windows drivers but the 3rd party graphics and sound drivers forcing the old graphics to do bad things.

As of right now it seems that ATI and AMD graphics cards are culprits. ATI is fixable, AMD isn't yet, but the development team was forwarded a request to fix it.

PPN13 · Space Emperor Joined: Dec 30, 2010

Well I also had this problem but now with the latest amd drivers i can play SEV again on my hd4870 in win7 64bit. So probably all you people can also play sev again Very Happy

gurachn · Space Emperor Joined: Aug 03, 2010 Location: Osaka, Japan

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Hmm... how do you do windowed mode again? That would also solve the issue with it crashing if I click before the splash screen comes up.