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Author Topic:   Movies Crash or Slow Unacceptably

Fenris posted 02-17-99 10:30 AM ET
This doesn't happen all the time, but with enough frequency that it appears to be a bug. The Secret Project movies have an annoying tendancy to play 3/4 of the way through and then crash. They slow to a crawl (sound too), with each frame taking several seconds to play. When they finish (if I can wait that long) they just hang on the black screen. I've installed v2 and reinstalled the game including movies and sound to my harddrive (and reinstalled v2). I'm running a Compaq Presario 4840 (PII 266) with 96 MB of RAM.
Any suggestions you have on a fix would be appreciated. SMAC is probably the best game I've had the pleasure to own.
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS posted 02-17-99 11:03 AM ET
Thanks for the kind words. Chances are it's either a DX problem or a video driver problem. Visit the compaq web site and make sure there isn't a more recent video driver available for your system. If not, or if that doesn't fix it, head over to www.microsoft.com/directx and get the latest version of DX (6.1). Let me know what happens.
jkm
firaxis games
Fenris posted 02-18-99 12:17 PM ET
Jeffrey:
I wasn't able to download the DirectX 6.1 from Microsoft yesterday...transfer rate was so low it would still be downloading. I'm going to try again tonight. I did, however, download and install all updates that Compaq has for both video and sound. After rebooting I decided to test the fix...I ran 15 SP movies with no ill effects (prior to this I could duplicate the slow down outside of the game). Excitedly, I started up SMAC and got back into the thick of things. As soon as I completed a SP and the movie came up I was back to where I'd been before. The movie would start just fine, but after 5-10 seconds would start to stutter and then play frame by frame verrrrrrrry slowly. I had to escape out of the movie in order to continue. Once I updated my Compaq drivers (which still show as uncertified, though Compaq claims they don't) do I need to reinstall the game? Currently, I've done the full install with movies and sound resident on my harddrive. It hasn't improved anything...
Fenris posted 02-18-99 01:56 PM ET
Forgot to mention that the intro movie doesn't have any of these problems. It just happens to the SP and faction interrogation movies and not all of them or all the time. It generally happens later in the game, however, I've seen it happen to the first SP I build too. I do have a soundcard that uses the ESS chipset and I've followed the instructions in the EA help file. This isn't a massive problem, but it does take away from my enjoyment.
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Author	Topic: Movies Crash or Slow Unacceptably
Fenris	posted 02-17-99 10:30 AM ET This doesn't happen all the time, but with enough frequency that it appears to be a bug. The Secret Project movies have an annoying tendancy to play 3/4 of the way through and then crash. They slow to a crawl (sound too), with each frame taking several seconds to play. When they finish (if I can wait that long) they just hang on the black screen. I've installed v2 and reinstalled the game including movies and sound to my harddrive (and reinstalled v2). I'm running a Compaq Presario 4840 (PII 266) with 96 MB of RAM. Any suggestions you have on a fix would be appreciated. SMAC is probably the best game I've had the pleasure to own.
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS	posted 02-17-99 11:03 AM ET Thanks for the kind words. Chances are it's either a DX problem or a video driver problem. Visit the compaq web site and make sure there isn't a more recent video driver available for your system. If not, or if that doesn't fix it, head over to www.microsoft.com/directx and get the latest version of DX (6.1). Let me know what happens. jkm firaxis games
Fenris	posted 02-18-99 12:17 PM ET Jeffrey: I wasn't able to download the DirectX 6.1 from Microsoft yesterday...transfer rate was so low it would still be downloading. I'm going to try again tonight. I did, however, download and install all updates that Compaq has for both video and sound. After rebooting I decided to test the fix...I ran 15 SP movies with no ill effects (prior to this I could duplicate the slow down outside of the game). Excitedly, I started up SMAC and got back into the thick of things. As soon as I completed a SP and the movie came up I was back to where I'd been before. The movie would start just fine, but after 5-10 seconds would start to stutter and then play frame by frame verrrrrrrry slowly. I had to escape out of the movie in order to continue. Once I updated my Compaq drivers (which still show as uncertified, though Compaq claims they don't) do I need to reinstall the game? Currently, I've done the full install with movies and sound resident on my harddrive. It hasn't improved anything...
Fenris	posted 02-18-99 01:56 PM ET Forgot to mention that the intro movie doesn't have any of these problems. It just happens to the SP and faction interrogation movies and not all of them or all the time. It generally happens later in the game, however, I've seen it happen to the first SP I build too. I do have a soundcard that uses the ESS chipset and I've followed the instructions in the EA help file. This isn't a massive problem, but it does take away from my enjoyment.