63 replies to this topic

[Spyder]

Graphics card is geforce 4 mx with 64mb of memory.  I wouldn't think that is what the problem is because it seems to go through the intro ok....

Spyder

[DragonHawk]

What other factors might influence this?  I'm running out of ideas - someone jump in here now!  

Do you have an older computer that you can try the game on?  Maybe your version is corrupt.

[Spyder]

Well, unfortunately, I don't.  I do rollling family upgrades about once a year and everyone is at least an athlon 950.  we've got one 950mhz, one 1.2ghz and two 1800+ (which is actually 1.5ghz), all using ddr memory except the 950 who has almost 1gb of pc133 memory and she runs nearly as well as I do with the 1800+ with 512mb of ddr

We'll probably upgrade again next summer when Horizons (www.artifact-entertainment.com/horizons) goes live.

Spyder

[DragonHawk]

lol, you sick b******!  That's a great setup, I'm so envious... heheh.  

Actually, I'm feeling old.  It's too easy to be comforted by the games that I already have, so I don't feel an uber-need to get new ones.  Better on the bank account.  

With respect to your problem...  did you try a slowdown utility?  I realize this is probably stupid, but I don't recall you mentioning that.  I'm not familiar with the fodder patch, so I don't know what it is that this is contributing (or not contributing) to your system.

[Spyder]

Well, I was under the impression that the slowdown utility didn't have anything to do with it running or not, just in how fast some things happened in the game.  I could try it, I guess...I'll give it a go tonight.

That reminds me of a funny story (the CPU speed thing)....

Back when my XT overclocked at 12mhz was blazingly fast and everyone was envious, especially those AT folks who were running at 8mhz   I had purchased a game that had little ships crossing the screen and you had to shoot them with a stationary gun.  The tiny little PT boats were fast and the bigger ships were slow and they cris-crossed the screen as you shot them.  Well, the newest AT came out running at an unbelievable 25 mhz, I took this cute little game over to a friend's house who had bought this blazingly fast PC, and he loaded it....

Well, the speed of the ships was keyed to clock cycles....You couldn't even see the pt boats and could barely see the other ships...don't even talk about hitting them :lol  It was very funny....back in the day

[DragonHawk]

It's true, the slowdown utility shouldn't factor in, but I'm assuming there's some limit.  Will X-Com run on my computer if it was 10000  GHz?  Who knows.  heh, of course, by then, I'm hoping a new X-Com game will be out... or the guys who are revamping the interface finish.  

Anyway, if it doesn't work, I think I'm not going to be of much use.  

[Pete]

Back on teh f0dder patch probems, I'm only flicking through these before I go to bed so don;t moan if I'm repeating something, but I noticed that the instructions given with the f0dder patch are a bit pants.

You've got to make sure you have the musfix.dll file and the loader for the appropriate game actually IN the folder the game resides in. I'm running it on Win98SE on my AMD Athlon 1900 machine with 512MB RAM using the Collector's Edition and it runs fine

[Spyder]

Ok, my directory tree looks something like this (using periods because the boards compress all whitespace):

D:\MPS\UFO\
....dos4gw.exe
....install.exe
....intro.exe
....mpscopy.exe
....setup.exe
....install.dat
....install.gif
....pkunzjr.com
....ufo.bat (this is the game startup dos batch file)
....readme.txt
....\runexe
........run.exe
....\ufo2exe
........tactical.exe
....\ufoexe
........black.exe
........geoscape.exe
....\game_1 (and 9 other save game dirs)
....\geodata (some .dat files in here)
....\geograph (graphics files in here)
....\maps (some .map files in here)
....\missdat
........dum.bin
....\routes (some .rmp files in here)
....\sound (some .cat files and....)
........sndend.exe
........sndstart.exe
........sound.cfg
........music.com
........sound.com
........soundrv.com
........vector.com
....\terrain (some graphics files)
....\ufograph (some more graphics files)
....\ufointro (some .lbm & .fli files)
....\units (some graphics files)

Ok, Before applying the patch, when I click the ufo.bat file, the intro plays through, the geoscape window opens and prompts for my first base.  When I click to place the base, the program crashes with an error:

Quote

The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction:
CS:0000 IP:0077 OP:f0 37 05 oe 02

After I extract the fodder patch to my D:\mps\ufo directory, I get three more directories and two more files:

....ldr_xcom1.exe
....musfix.dll
....\source (source code)
....\xcom1
........ldr_xcom1.exe
........musfix.dll
....\xcom2
........ldr_xcom2.exe
........musfix.dll


After applying the patch, when I click on the ldr_xcom1.exe that appears in the upper directory, I get a "cannot CreateProcess" error in a tiny window.  I get the same error when I move the other two ldr_xcom.exe files from their directories to the main directory (D:\mps\ufo) and then click them.

In case you're interested, here is what is in the UFO.BAT file:

@echo off
cls
%1ufoexe\black
%1sound\sndstart
%1intro                %1
%1ufoexe\black
%1ufoexe\geoscape  "0" %1
if errorlevel 2 goto begin
goto end
:begin
%1ufoexe\black
%1ufo2exe\tactical "1" %1
:geo
%1ufoexe\black
%1ufoexe\geoscape  "1" %1
if errorlevel 2 goto begin
:end
%1sound\sndend

I appreciate any help anyone can offer

Spyder

[NKF]

Excuse me, but from your directory structure, it looks like you're using the plain old dos version (i.e the batch file and the separate exe files and the cat files). The f0dder patch, if I'm not mistaken, only works with the collectors edition.

A slowdown utility is probably your best bet. By the way, if whatever slowdown utility you're using refuses to work with the program since it uses a .bat file, you know, you could run the slowdown utility on your command shell. I don't know what it's called in XP, but I presume since it's based off NT it's something like 'cmd'? You could just open the properties for your shortcut to the command prompt and refer to it from there.

Anyway, run it on the shell before launching your game. It's a lot more elegant than editing each line in your batch file.

Only problem I can forsee is that you would have to type exit twice to exit from the command prompt.

On a less related note: does anyone realise that the main game loop is run off that tiny little batch file? Heh. Same goes for TFTD, only they converted the batch file into a .com file. Wonder if UFO'd run if I substituted ufo.bat with tftd.com? Hmm... nah. I'd rather not suddenly cause a nuclear holocaust...

- NKF

[Spyder]

NKF, thanks for the response.  Let me try and clarify what you want me to do....

Download the slowdown uitility.

Open a DOS window (RUN> 'cmd').

Execute the slowdown utility (I assume it runs TSR)

Then execute the ufo.bat file.

Right?

[NKF]

Well, close.

Load up your command prompt.

Then run the slowdown utility on another instance of the command prompt instead of running it on the game as you normally would.  Then launch your game.

Mind you, only do this if your slowdown utility won't work on .bat files like the non commercial versions of Moslo. If you can find another one that can work on batch files, well, all the better.

I only skimmed the tail of this thread, so I'm not entirely sure if this'll solve your problem. If the game itself won't start, then this probably won't be of much help.

- NKF

[TakeaPot]

IF youve got UFO Defense CE you can get it working under XP by (and i shouldnt be advertising for another site but its an emergency) downloading 2 files called
"musfix.dll" and "xcom1fix.exe" from www.xcomufo.com.

It worked a treat for me anyways

[DragonHawk]

I think there's nothing wrong with "advertising" another site with the resources, if they have them.  We shouldn't be competitors; I think the X-Com community should be more unified than that.

[BladeFireLight]

Dragon I think he was refering to the fact that that site has more than just patches... if you get my drift.

[MicahDG]

If ya'll are still having trouble with fodder's fix, read this, an excerpt from my site's bug faq:

X-COM Bug FAQ
5 January 2003
micahdg@xcomufo.com
www.xcomufo.com


UFO Defense Collector's Edition

---Garbled video error while running under WinXP/ME/NT/2000
Short explanation:
You must use the Collector's Edition (CE) of UFO Defense in order to play the game in WinXP/ME/NT/2000. Place these files: xcom1fix.exe  and  musfix.dll  in the main UFO Defense directory and run xcom1fix.exe to start the game.

Long Explanation:
Only the Collector's Edition (CE) of UFO Defense will work properly under Windows XP/2000/ME/NT (WinXP) Even with the Collector's Edition, most people will still have video problems when they try to run the game. For others, the music or sound will not come out right. This is because of the DirectDraw and DirectSound drivers the CE uses to create compatibility with WinXP. Unfortunately, the programmers did not get it quite right, hence the "garbled" video error when the game tries to initialize DirectDraw on the latest OSes. You can bypass this problem by running dxdiag.exe and disabling DirectDraw manually, but this is tedious and doesn't fix all of the problems. There is a file that actually fixes the conflict caused by DirectDraw by correcting the pitch that the game is sent to the video card with, in addition to fixing the sound/click delays in the game. It was written by a feller xcommer who goes by the name of F0dder. The file for UFO Defense is called xcom1fix.exe (or ldr_xcom1.exe) Run the fix file instead of "UFO Defense" to start the game.


---"Couldn't CreateProcess" error with xcom1fix.exe or ldr_xcom1.exe
This error originates with f0dder's fix (ldr_xcom1.exe or xcom1fix.exe) in which the fix can not find the UFO Defense.exe executable. The most common solution for this is to make sure that the UFO Defense executable file is named "UFO Defense" with an .exe extension (making it an application). Also, make sure that the fix (xcom2fix.exe or ldr_xcom2.exe) is in the same directory as the game. If that does not work, consider re-installing the game again.

[BladeFireLight]

Also note that Xcomutil 9.20 comes with f0dders patch that works with the split geoscapt/ tactical the is used by runxcomw.bat. so if you have xcomutil prior to 9.20 the foder patch will not cause problems.

[Spider]

i finally got the game to work on XP with the fodder patch..

all i did (after reading at http://www.xcomufo.com/ ) was to change the executable file name from UFO.exe to UFO Defense.exe... and it works fine

[Slaughter]

Hehe, so much trouble for so little . The solution you mention works Spider. But there's another way too. Many programs need a argument. That means that when you start it, you have to supply some extra information. So let's assume the executable for UFO is called UFO.EXE. To run the game with that filename you run this command (through a shortcut, or a .bat file): ldr_XCOM1.exe UFO.EXE

But as you say, you made it work, so I guess this comes a bit too late

[Ashura]

anyone can tell me where ro get this fodder patch?
I can't seem to find it anywhere

[Slaughter]

You can find it here