My "good" old map Problem...

[Cnegurozka]

Hi,
I just noticed 1.3 was released so i dled it, with a bit hope that BZII would finally run on my new PC (its nearly a year old now though ~~ )

But there it was again:
All maps are plain, flat, no single hill nowhrere, everything just 1 altitude (wich i guess is somewhere at z=0, since i fall down a bit on most maps).
Every map, every mode just always.

Specs:
2.8 P4
Ati radeon 9800 128mb Saphire
Win2k SP4

First I would like to mention my old thread about this http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=239&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Cause the problem doesn't seem to have changed at all.
But i can say a few things right now:

1.) I had a friend over here testing BZII on his Comp, he used my CD and had no prblems, so any kind of data problem is no question anymore, he even could play with my files over a network share. (He has a AMD something, Radeon 9700 i think, not sure, and WinXP SP1 )

2.) I installed a lot of different Drivers till today and i always had this problem with any driver / game version combination, and still on all my PCs.

So my final thought are as of before ... i have no f*** idea ><
perhaps some DirectX issue, but i tried quite a few Versions
perhaps Win2k SP4, despite the fact that noone else has problems with it ....

anything else i can think of won't explain, why i have this one problem on all PCs

help wanted badly, I NEED BZII *cry*
Cnegurozka

[APCs r evil]

Now this is just a stab in the general direction of where the dark might be if it wasn't the middle of the afternoon but did you try getting a new BZ2 cd and installing it? I read the link and someone suggested doing this but I don't think you said if you did or not.

[Cnegurozka]

I tried with severeal different CDs and images, non worked for me, all worked for my friend  

[Red Devil]

Have you tried swapping out your video card for his?

Do you have the latest chipset drivers?

Do you have the latest BIOS update?

Post the contents of your Bzone.cfg file.

Also post a *link* to a *zipped* directory listing of your BZ2 install.

[Dirty Rooster]

I read the old thread.

Same old .TER files missing.
That sounds like the problem, but I have no clue
where they are going.

Download some new maps from www.bz2maps.com,
then check the folders for .TER files. Should be
there and should work,
you have the wierdest problem I ever heard of.

[Red Devil]

Cne, have you run DXDIAG or any PC diagnostics yet? That will tell you if there are any problems with your video adapter.

[Bull]

Try a different video card,if you can,perhaps there's a slight problem with it.

[Cnegurozka]

@Red Devil
Chipset Driver:
Graphic yes, for motherboard im not sure actually, i don't think there is a real own chipset driver for that board, but ill look some more into this.

Bios:
No, the newest version resulst in very unstable system so i use the second newest.

Directory Listing:
Im not sure in what format you'd like to have that, made with what program ....

bzone.cfg:
See end of post

DXDiag:
No, never reported any errors.

@Dirty Rooster
Yeah the thing with the .TER files a very good thoery, but they are all there and all readable, at least as far as i can judge, and as i said before my friend good play with exactly my files, from my hdd over a network share.

@Bull
At the moment i cannot.

By the way:
My Battlezone.log files says the games was started on a Win9x machine, is this correct, or should it detect Win2k?
And what is this Error: Unable to create file '.\data\binData\NULL.msh' ?
http://cnegurozka.bei.t-online.de/private/bz2/BATTLEZONE.log



bzone.cfg:
fresh install from CD, then patched to 1.3
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// Copyright 1997-98 Activision Studios, Strategy Group
//
// Battlezone II - Core System Configuration File
//

// Configure game file system
ConfigureFileSystem()
{
   // Setup base data
   ConfigureStream("base")
   {
      // Look in "addon" first
      AddDirRecurse("@rootdir\addon");

      // Look at pakfiles next
      AddPack("@rootdir\patch13.pak");
      AddPack("@rootdir\data.pak");
      AddPack("@rootdir\bumps.pak");

      // Look in "data" last, and only last.
      AddDirRecurse("@rootdir\data");
   }

   // Make it active
   SetActiveStream("base");
}

[Angstromicus]

If everything fails, it may be your CD drive. Perhaps its read speed is too high, or it's just not working properly.

[OvermindDL1]

If the entire map is flat && he falls when he starts, it sounds like it is loading it incorrectly, indicates a problem with a missing file, or the OS.  Video card drivers, mb drivers, air drivers, no driver's will fix that.  First, (although I do not think this will make a difference, it has a chance) since you are running 2k4 SP4, make sure the filesystem is NTFS and not FAT32.  Make sure policies or anything else is not in effect that prevent an unauthorized program (like BZ2) access to the hard disk.  Did you try installing the game on your friend's computer and copying it across the lan to your computer, verbatim, and try running that copy.

[Red Devil]

Cnegurozka, looks like your OS is somehow jacked.  It can't find the current directory and it is reporting 9x like you say.

To find out, right click the My Computer icon, then click on Properties and see if it is reporting 2K or 9X there.  Better yet, use Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information (shortcut to msinfo32).

How did you install the OS or did you get it that way?  If so, did you upgrade or do a full, clean install?  Or perhaps you are really starting up 9x from the boot menu?  Do you have a dual boot box?  If so, if the timeout value is too low, it may just jump to the first OS in the list which may be 9x.

[Cnegurozka]

@OvermindDL1
No, but itried vice versa, i installed and my friend used my version to play, so im 99,9999% sure it's nothing about my CD or the files in general, more likly some real weird OS problem.

@Red Devil
Its saying Windows 2000, Version 5.xxxxx, SP4, like it should

I installed it from a normal boot able CD.
And yes i already reinstalled it 2 times on this Computer and i always had this problems.

System is on a 4 GB Partition of my 240 gb Array, installed on a clean just formated Files System (preformated so it gets 523k cluster).
And no im not starting Win9x accidently, i haven't installed any other OS on this PC, and i would have seen the difference, beleve me

My problem is the realtivly low time i have to test this, and i can't risk my PC being unuseable cause i need to do some programming for my computer science study ....

And i checked the NTFS security policies again, there all allowed for all, on the whole BZII Directory and all Subfolders.

Perhaps BZII tried to write any Data to a global Temp Folder, that isn't there on my System, or blocked cause to some very weird System Configuration by me?

Ps.: I know now, why it said Win9x, the default shortcut created by the BZ2 installation was configured to run in compability layer win98, disabled it, but no change.

I uploaded a new .log File, no FileNotFound Errors anymore and it detects Win2k now.
http://cnegurozka.bei.t-online.de/private/bz2/BATTLEZONE.log

[Red Devil]

Grrr... accidentally closed my browser just as I was about to finish responding...

Anyways, since DXdiag runs okay and you are able to run other games and display 3D images, that narrows it down to BZ itself.

Not sure if this would affect it this way, but do you have Bumps = 1 in your Render.cfg file? (in BZ root folder)

Also, a nice utility for ATI cards is Rage3D Tweak.  Just makes sure you read each tweak before you use it.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=391

Edit: Good catch on the 9x thing. Wish I'd thought of that!  :-}

[Cnegurozka]

"Bumps = 1" has a ";" in front of the line, so i guess its commented out.

[OvermindDL1]

Why on earth is your 4 gb partition formatted to 523kb cluster's, ntfs is not capable of that size (nor would you want that size), even if you meant 523bytes, that is still a nonstandard size.  If it is indeed formatted as that, that is horribly incorrect.  I am not sure if this would be harming BZ2, but it would probobly be best in any case to format using NTFS default cluster size, which on a 2gb or larger partition, is 4k (4,096 bytes).  Try that, does anything change with bz2?