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Looks like someone needs to update the BZ98 installer... 

Anyway, I'll start including that in future experimental builds.  I'm not sure why the original one would start for some people and not others, but I guess that will remain a mystery...

I noticed the new DLL was a lot larger.  Where did it come from?

That fixed it.  Awesome!   

That particular test was done with a BZ98 install since I was at work.
ANET2.DLL: 95804 bytes, 7/7/1998 3:58PM
WINETS2.DLL: 32768 bytes, 6/15/2004 9:24PM

BZ2's rendering system is so fundamentally different and deeply integrated with the rest of the engine that it would be almost impossible to use without performing a full "engine transplant".  It was easier to work within the existing system, and I learned a lot by doing it.

I managed to coerce a call stack out of the application, and the access violation occurs deep inside NTDLL.DLL as part of something ANET2.DLL is doing.  After loading debug symbols, the call stack indicated a validation failure inside AllocateHeap.  Unfortunately, the call stack trails off after that.

If this is an Activnet thing, it's going to be a hard problem to fix.

Here we go again...

Battlezone D3D9

I put it on BetaDudes this time so downloads should be more reliable than hosting it on my NAS.

Changes:

• Added support for 32-bit frame buffer, enabled by default.  Disable in render.cfg "[D3D]" section with "Buffer32=0"
• Enabled dithering for 16-bit frame buffer
• Fixed fog color not getting set properly (e.g. in first Soviet mission)
• Turned off base address randomization so I can get meaningful results from crash reports
• Removed unused library dependencies
• Fixed calculation of v_mag_inv for small v_mag, which may fix some rare collision issues
• Fixed invalid floating-point operations in AI lateral movement, which should increase mission stability
• Added support for setting vsync, enabled by default.  Disable in render.cfg "[D3D]" section with "Vsync=0"
• Re-added support for setting Z-buffer, since removing it broke software renderering.  Hardware rendering is much faster with it enabled, almost 2x on my desktop computer.
• Switched seismic wave and explosion shake to Perlin noise.  The explosion shake is currently very weak, so it'll get tweaked later.

Usual reminders:
1. This build requires the Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redstributable Package
2. If using a retail install, rename the "splash" folder to "splash_" to disable Windows 7's compatibility layer
3. If running on Windows Vista or 7, make the install folder writable
4. If having trouble, try the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer

I may swipe Nathan's sound system from BZ2.   

The preferences thing is definitely on the list of things to do.

The problem with the saves is the shell itself, which is not the easiest to modify.

Looking into it further, there's a little hourglass next to the icon indicating that the DLL is a delayed load.  The 64-bit version of Dependency Walker gave me errors, but the 32-bit version just posted a warning.

It turns out that BZ does use SYSTEM32.DLL to send email in the network shell, so I wasn't able to get rid of it.  I did, however, remove some genuinely unused default dependencies.

I also turned off base address randomization so I'll be able to look up crash addresses in the map file when I try it at work tomorrow.

That's what I get as well.

Hm.  I put it on Betadudes, but you can also get it from my local network here

Several people on the battlezone1.freeforums.com get it too.  It's the biggest issue right now.

Now that I can reproduce the crash at will, I can start trying to fix it.  Of course, randomized base address means I can't use the map file to figure out where it crashed...   

[Update:]

I'm going to see if I can reproduce the problem on my work computer, which runs Vista 64-bit.

Update: I get the same crash on startup.

That result from Dependency Walker is immensely helpful.  Now I just need to figure out what those are, where they come from, and why the application wants them.