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Author Topic:   SBLive + SMAC v4 = horrible noises

twells posted 07-13-99 06:41 PM ET
I just installed a SB Live card (with the LiveWare v2.1 update) and updated my copy of SMAC to v4 (English) and since then I get something that sounds like an alert played at random intervals, except it is louder and seems to overpower other sounds in the game (it will often "corrupt" the voiceover of some action). Sometimes these alerts will occur in a string of 10-20 in quick succession and sometimes it'll go a few minutes without one. Is this a known issue? Are there any suggestions? Thx.
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS posted 07-14-99 10:10 AM ET
Does it happen if you disable the EAX and DS3D entries in the alpha centauri.ini file? I've personally got a Live in my work system and haven't experienced this.
jkm
firaxis games
twells posted 07-14-99 12:44 PM ET
Well I did some playing around with this and here are my results:
First I set ds3d=0 and that caused the noise problem to go away, but shortly after playing I started having graphics problems (I have a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra, PII 300, Win98, 128Mb of RAM BTW). The white box on the mini-world map showing my current view wouldn't erase from it's old location each time I moved around. Animations (explosions, movement of units and the like) were not redrawing properly. They looked like how a mouse pointer would leave a trail on older laptops. Eventually the game locked up my computer and required a hard reset.
Next, I renamed my Alpha Centauri.ini file altogether and let the game rebuild it. As before it worked for a bit and then the same problems described above occured. The game eventually crashed with an error that it was unable to allocate a memory buffer.
Finally I restored my old ini file, left ds3d=1 and set eax=0 and my problems have gone away (although IMO this kind of defeats the purpose of having a SB Live)
A couple of notes I didn't make in my first post. It's actually a SB Live Value card. The driver version is 4.06.622 dated 6/19/99.
Please let me know if you need any further info. I'd really like to be able to re-enable EAX support. Thanks
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS posted 07-14-99 01:26 PM ET
The v770 ultra is a brand new card, so I'm not certain what problems can be associated with it. The v550 (just TNT), would sometimes die on the movies. Setting the card's hardware accleration to 0 in the system control panel would usually take care of that.
jkm
firaxis games
Shirgall posted 07-14-99 05:32 PM ET
I have a SB Live! (not the Value edition) and I also have lots of problems with Patch 4. My graphics card is a Matrox Millenium G200, and I do not have any graphics artifacts. I will attempt to disable EAX tonight when I'm at home, but like folks are saying, it kinda defeats the purpose of having a SB Live!.
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Author	Topic: SBLive + SMAC v4 = horrible noises
twells	posted 07-13-99 06:41 PM ET I just installed a SB Live card (with the LiveWare v2.1 update) and updated my copy of SMAC to v4 (English) and since then I get something that sounds like an alert played at random intervals, except it is louder and seems to overpower other sounds in the game (it will often "corrupt" the voiceover of some action). Sometimes these alerts will occur in a string of 10-20 in quick succession and sometimes it'll go a few minutes without one. Is this a known issue? Are there any suggestions? Thx.
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS	posted 07-14-99 10:10 AM ET Does it happen if you disable the EAX and DS3D entries in the alpha centauri.ini file? I've personally got a Live in my work system and haven't experienced this. jkm firaxis games
twells	posted 07-14-99 12:44 PM ET Well I did some playing around with this and here are my results: First I set ds3d=0 and that caused the noise problem to go away, but shortly after playing I started having graphics problems (I have a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra, PII 300, Win98, 128Mb of RAM BTW). The white box on the mini-world map showing my current view wouldn't erase from it's old location each time I moved around. Animations (explosions, movement of units and the like) were not redrawing properly. They looked like how a mouse pointer would leave a trail on older laptops. Eventually the game locked up my computer and required a hard reset. Next, I renamed my Alpha Centauri.ini file altogether and let the game rebuild it. As before it worked for a bit and then the same problems described above occured. The game eventually crashed with an error that it was unable to allocate a memory buffer. Finally I restored my old ini file, left ds3d=1 and set eax=0 and my problems have gone away (although IMO this kind of defeats the purpose of having a SB Live) A couple of notes I didn't make in my first post. It's actually a SB Live Value card. The driver version is 4.06.622 dated 6/19/99. Please let me know if you need any further info. I'd really like to be able to re-enable EAX support. Thanks
Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS	posted 07-14-99 01:26 PM ET The v770 ultra is a brand new card, so I'm not certain what problems can be associated with it. The v550 (just TNT), would sometimes die on the movies. Setting the card's hardware accleration to 0 in the system control panel would usually take care of that. jkm firaxis games
Shirgall	posted 07-14-99 05:32 PM ET I have a SB Live! (not the Value edition) and I also have lots of problems with Patch 4. My graphics card is a Matrox Millenium G200, and I do not have any graphics artifacts. I will attempt to disable EAX tonight when I'm at home, but like folks are saying, it kinda defeats the purpose of having a SB Live!.