Topic: Vista users.. Need testers to verify Vista Fix for Dynaverse

[FCM_SFHQ_XC]

hummm, dual screen monitor setup perhaps?

I've never run OP or any other game on dual screen, since I only have 1 desktop screen, but I do have a spare CRT monitor I can hook up to my laptop, and if wireshark and OP will run correctly on dual screens then I might be able to correlate the timestamps better with slow movement... this'll be something for me to try tomorrow I guess(don't really feel like going deep into the closet of the Ancients tonight(yes that is how old and how stuffed the closet is here), that's an epic journey and search for a silly CRT moniter )

[Lepton]

It's been suggested in other contexts that switching off network discovery and IPv6 support can help in gaming applications with Vista.

[Bonk]

Ya, a dual monitor setup would make it easier to observe for sure. (I have run OP on one of two monitors on a Matrox dual display card back in ~'01.)

It's been suggested in other contexts that switching off network discovery and IPv6 support can help in gaming applications with Vista.

Definitely worth a try, but I think Pestalence may have already tried that, not sure if he turned off network discovery though.

***

I have been on one heck of a roller coaster ride since my last post last night. I thought I'd give Kubuntu 8.10 (amd64) a try on my laptop and see how OP would do under the latest Wine, just for a break from messing with Vista, and this is how it went...

1) Use Disk Management to shrink main Vista partition by 20GB to make room for a Kubuntu install. Went fine.
2) Realised I had downloaded the i386 Kubuntu when I have an AMD 64 bit processor, so I download the amd64 Kubuntu (though either would work).
3) Burn the amd64 Kubuntu to disk, leave it in the drive and reboot.
4) GRUB bootloader comes up, cool.. let the default Kubuntu entry boot, but what's this, the laptop's CD/DVD drive has not spun up, how can this be?
5) Realise I'm booting from my old IDE hard disk (in a USB external enclosure - light flashing), thinking oh crap it's got proprietary Nvidia drivers installed, it will never boot to the desktop on this ATI laptop...
6) Panic and shut down the laptop mid boot from the old disk in the USB enclosure...
7) Turn off the USB disk, figuring OK, now I can boot the laptop from the Kubuntu DVD to install...
8 ) Turn on the laptop, it powers up, LEDs light, nothing happens, no BIOS screen - nothing! (drop brick in pants)
9) Think, OK the GRUB bootloader disabled the MBR on the laptop's disk, (assuming laptop has one of those on-disk BIOSs) no problem, I'll just boot to the Kubuntu console from the IDE-USB disk, fix the MBR, shutdown and pick up where I left off, remembering to turn off the IDE-USB disk before booting up again.
10) Try step 9 - blank screen - no bios - nothing... (drop second brick in pants...)
11) Think, OK disconnect the IDE-USB disk and try booting from the Kubuntu 8.10 amd64 disk - nothing - again no BIOS, nothing! (think about crying)
12) Oh wait, I made recovery disks! Put recovery disk one in the laptop and power up, nothing... no bios, no bootloader, nothing!
13) OK, so I bricked it, poop! Get out good book and start reading distractedly and smoking fiercely, then sleep fitfully.
14) Wake up think, OK I was going to buy a cheapy desktop for the SFB-OP server anyway, might as well get it today and an external usb enclosure for the laptop disk so I can fix its MBR and boot from it's (assumed) on-disk bios.
15) Do laundry, make bread, take shower, wait for Future Shop to open, get on bus...
16) Buy Compaq Presario - Intel dual core CPU, 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD - ought to do fine - good buy at $550 (Check in store - has full on-chip Phoenix BIOS). Get USB external enclosure for laptop disk @ $75 - go home happy and determined.
17) Get home, open boxes, plug everything in, new desktop boots past BIOS, says "NO DISK, OR SYSTEM DISK ERROR, INSERT DISK, PRESS ANY KEY" (or however that message goes)
18) Think oh crap - I'm jinxed! Think out scenarios of returning the machine - store closes in two hours, takes me almost 1 hour to get there... maybe return it tomorrow? Shall I get my book and smokes out?
19) Open new desktop case, find HDD power cable not connected, connect it and boot up... marvel at all the crapware installed, thinking it's going to take me ages to clean all that crap off... ah well at least it works, might as well make the recovery disks before I clean it up and use it to fix the mbr on the laptop disk.
20) Start recovery disk creation, while underway remove the battery from the laptop, remove the hard disk and open up the usb enclosure...
21) Find out the usb enclosure is for an OTB drive, not a laptop ATA drive... crap, oh well I can return it and get the right enclosure elsewhere so I can fix the mbr and resume my Vista on OP testing where I left off tomorrow...
22) Put the hard disk back in the laptop, put in the battery... start packing it up.
23) Think what the heck, let's see if it boots with no CD in the drive or USB disk attached...
24) Power up laptop, see BIOS screen - JOY! It boots!
25) Make post on this thread telling whole sad story.
26) Make excuses to Krueg about why The Forge is not up today. (I'm assuming he'll understand - I need a working OP client to test from)
27) Ruminate on what to do next - eat dinner and clean up the crapware on the desktop, scared to try installing Kubuntu on the laptop now, don't want to boot XP or Kubuntu from the IDE-USB disk as I don't want to screw up it's config as I intend to put it back in it's own case once I get it moved down here... think up domain names for my new commercial account...
28) Breath sigh of relief, consider bank balance and evaluate sanity (admit to self - yup, nuts - carry on!).

            

[Pestalence_XC]

Bonk, did you ever even consider my Dual Boot guide?

Do I have to teach you everything?


End of step 2

Now that Kubuntu has installed, remove your Kubuntu disk and put in your Vista disk and restart your system and allow the system to boot from CD. If you do not tell your computer to boot from CD, the computer will lock because it cannot find the boot directory on the Vista drive. You will either need to reset your computer or press ctrl+alt+del for the system to reboot. Make sure that your Bios is set to read Floppy first, CD ROM second and HDD last, this way you get the CD Load request on restart.


Step 3 - Fix Boot Loader:
When loading from CD, Vista will load the GUI files, and then display the loading splash screen. Click Next to continue for language. Usually this is default based on your bios settings.

Once the "Install Now" menu (do not click Install Now) displays, choose "Repair Your Computer" near the bottom of the window.

You will be prompted to choose the OS to repair. Don't worry if Vista is the only OS that shows up, even after a search. Vista should be the only OS showing up in most cases.

Click "Next" to get to the repair utilities.

Click on Command Prompt. This will load Vista’s dos command line utility.

In the command prompt window, type the following 2 lines (separately). Make sure that your typing is exact or it will not work (capitol letters are not usually needed), Wait for the successful completion message to appear between each command:

Bootrec.exe /fixMBR
Bootrec.exe /fixBoot

-close the command prompt, remove the Vista disk, and restart.
-Your system should now boot to Vista.

Step 4 - Edit boot.ini:
Go into your start menu and look in Programs>Accessories and find your Command Prompt (CMD)
-Right click on CMD and select Run as Administrator. You must run this in Administrator mode otherwise the commands will not take effect.
Be sure to type each line carefully (replace C in the first line with the drive containing your Vista installation):
bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast
bcdedit /set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP"
*Note the following 2 answers from bcdedit for each item are acceptable:
"The Operation Completed Successfully"
"The Specified Entry Already Exists"


You can substitute Kubuntu in place of "Microsoft Windows XP"

Then you get the selection of the OS upon reboot, and then you can enter Kubuntu and finish getting set up.


Man you like doing things the hard way don't you.

[FCM_SFHQ_XC]

wow, that is one epic roller coaster indeed!! o.O

bit of new results to display, before I stick in the dual moniter to run the packet analyzer...

I turned off SSDP Discovery Service..
Result: MUCH easier time logging into Dyna, BUT as well MUCH bigger lag then I was getting before.

When I turn on SSDP Discovery Service..
Result: MUCH harder time logging into Dyna, BUT as well MUCH LESS lag moving around and stuff then I was getting with service turned off

[Bonk]

Bonk, did you ever even consider my Dual Boot guide?

Yes. Still mulling it over. But the goal for now is to get the client working on Vista. Probably will install both XP and Kubuntu eventually (for development as well as playing), once I'm sure this laptop actually has a bios chip and not one of those on-disk bioses like some of the old Compaq laptops. I Intend to put XP and Kubuntu alongside Vista on this beast, once I'm sure it has a real bios, can't seem to find it in the specs anywhere (and it does have a bios sized EISA partition at the head of the disk), I might have to take it apart to find out, but laptops are a bitch to disassemble down to the mainboard.

I did have the "bios" set to read the CD before the hard disk, (actually, floppy[not present], flash, CD, HDD, network - that order [ever deal with a bootp server and network boots? - I have...]) but I suspect that the bios is on the hard disk, so if its mbr is gone then there is no bios to boot a CD see? Also, I have no Vista disk, just OEM Restore disks I burned myself. (though you mentioned something about extracting a vista install image from them somewhere - haven't gotten to that yet, and am not sure I will be able to). Have you ever come across an on-disk bios and understand how it works? The mbr is set to boot to its partition, it runs and then boots the appropriate partition as selected or determined by settings priority, so if the mbr on the disk that the bios resides on gets borked, that is it, you have to re-image the drive on another machine.

Do I have to teach you everything?

Yeah, I know the drill, trust me, I've been multi-booting systems for decades. My old pentium 233MHz had Win95b, QNX, FreeBSD, DOS5 and Slackware on one disk. (but it had a real on-chip flashable bios and a floppy drive, I built the system myself - these are the first computers I've owned that I have not built myself.) I haven't been at it for a while and these newer systems throw me a bit.

Man you like doing things the hard way don't you.

Yup!    (thanks for the tips though )

wow, that is one epic roller coaster indeed!! o.O

bit of new results to display, before I stick in the dual moniter to run the packet analyzer...

I turned off SSDP Discovery Service..
Result: MUCH easier time logging into Dyna, BUT as well MUCH bigger lag then I was getting before.

When I turn on SSDP Discovery Service..
Result: MUCH harder time logging into Dyna, BUT as well MUCH LESS lag moving around and stuff then I was getting with service turned off

Interesting observation SFHQ, I wonder if it is repeatable.

I just tried a login with Network Discovery off and the SSDP Discovery and UPnP services off - long login, had to click back button multiple times, then got the image attached (never saw that before - damn thing couldn't make up its mind). After logging in, movement and supply was slow as usual.

But while I was logged in and chatting with Mace, I remembered these settings in the client WONServerSetup.gf:

Code: [Select]

BlockSize = 10000 // How many micro-seconds to spend on server side stuff before doing page flip
DelayMultiple = 1.0 // What multiple of time to wait before going back to server side stuff
PacketQueLimit = 75 // What
Might try playing with those.

It also occurred to me, that Pestalence may have impedance values set on the map and the client actually heeds them on vista where it does not on earlier versions of windows? (I doubt it though, the default impedance is 1). Did you add impedence values to the map Pestalence?

[toasty0]

Hopefully I can join you guys in your efforts in the next couple of days. Been doing a wicked fun install of SQL Server 2008 on a VPC. The SQL server install wasn't so bad, it was the 10^(2*123)^¹⁰ patches and services pack I had to apply to the WinServer03 base that took so freaking long.   

[Bonk]

I noticed your site was borked yesterday, figured it was something like that. Sounds like fun!  Me, I can't wait to get apache/php/MySQL setup on my new desktop. Curious to see how Vista will respond.

[Bonk]

I see it's working now, but man, the sound has got to go, that is a big no-no! 

[toasty0]

Oh that Flash? I'm hacking that for a client.

What can I say. It's what he'll pay for.

[Bonk]

Noscript gave me this when I right clicked the flash object (might want to check that out):

edit: oh wait, it just looks like its related to it's placement - don't you just love css?

[toasty0]

Oh great. Another issue goes into the bug tracker.

[Bonk]

I might be my imagination, but these settings seemed to help login, supply and shipyard (but not movement and map updates):

Code: [Select]

BlockSize = 1000 // How many micro-seconds to spend on server side stuff before doing page flip
DelayMultiple = 1.0 // What multiple of time to wait before going back to server side stuff
PacketQueLimit = 200 // What
But I forgot to run Wireshark tonight, I'll try and duplicate this result tomorrow and capture a packet log of it.

[Pestalence_XC]

Impedence on the server is 1 on all hexes.. haven't played with them.

Now for the WonServerSetup.gf, I haven't tried adjusting those settings, will give them a shot tonight.

[Bonk]

Impedence on the server is 1 on all hexes.. haven't played with them.

Cool, thought I'd ask, it would be neat if it actually worked!

Now for the WonServerSetup.gf, I haven't tried adjusting those settings, will give them a shot tonight.

Client side, of course.

[Pestalence_XC]

OK was playing with the SFC.INI file some

Setup:

Vista 64 Bit (32 bit just as fine.. on x64 OS, the working folder will be in Program Files (x86).. on 32 bit it will be just plain Program Files) however it is all same concept.

Installed game as Administrator (Explore the CD, Right click on Setup.exe and select Run as Administrator)to C:\Program Files (x86)\Taldren Software Inc\Starfleet Command Orion Pirates

Used the Enhancement Pack v5.1 to update game completely with all tools and features, Ran in XPSP 2 Compatibility mode and as Administrator.

After the Enhancement Package tossed out the installers and the black Dos Window came up, I went into C:\Program Files (x86)\Taldren Software Inc\Starfleet Command Orion Pirates\Installs and eant file by file setting to XPSP 2 compatibility and setting Run as Administrator.. I then backed out to the Program Files (x86) folder and right click on the Taldren Software inc folder, selected Properties, clicked on Security Tab, clicked Edit, and set each user to Full Access. Then I went back to the General Tab and unchecked Read Only.

Went back to the Black dos Window.. and installed the Enhancement Package as normal I installed everything except EZ-INI (I am using the 2.0 and the Enhancement pack has the 1.0) During install process, when Mod Chooser installed, I set Comp[atibility to XPSP 2 and Run as administrator on the program's desktop shortcut and then I continued to install with the Command Prompt box)

After the install was done, I went to each shortcut that the Enhancement Pack created and I set them all to XPSP 2 compatibility and set each file to Run as Administrator. The only exception is Mod Viewer, I set it to Win 2000 compatibility and Run as Administrator. I also checked the Run and Start Up path to make sure they were pointing to the correct Program Files folder (I think XP and 32 bit users may need to adjust these by removing the (x86) along with the preceeding space in both the Run and Start IN boxes if the files are not pointing to Program Fi.les

I then edited my WonServerSetup.gf file

BlockSize = 1000
DelayMultiple = 1.0
PacketQueLimit = 125

[WONDirectoryServer/Addresses]
0=client.sfc.dynaverse.net:15101
//1=client.dynaverse.net:15101
//2=sfc2.directory.stasis.ca:15101

I then ran EZ-INI 2.0, set everything I wanted.

I then opened the SFC.ini file directly to verify changes.

Under Networking I altered

NetLib=0 (was Netlib=1)

Under 3D I altered Wireframe=1 to Wireframe=0, Driver=1 to Driver=0, zbuffer=0 to zbuffer=1

Under UI I altered UITyep=2 to UI=1

I also altered for voices and turning sound down and set max channels to 64.

On my NVidia Card on the graphic settings for 3D, I set it up as the screenshot below.

SSDP is set to manual in Services, but it is started.

Then I copied the StarfleetOP.exe file to a different folder, renamed it to SFCOP.exe, Cut and then pasted to overwrite the game's original file.

I went back to the Starfleet Command Orion Pirates folder and rechecked properties for Read Only, and turned it off again, and I also rechecked Security tab and ensured everyone had full access.

I then went back into the OP game directory and went to every EXE file and set them to XPSP 2 compatibility and Run as Administrator.

I then installed the Hardcore Installer (you don't need the script pack.. the installer contains the current scripts) in XPSP 2 compatibility and as Administrator,, making sure that I directed the Installer to the Starfleet Command Orion Pirates foler.

I launched game from Game Explorer (Windows Vista built in game tracking system.. OP happened to be in there, checked the launch path, which pointed to the SFCOP.exe game file).

I entered CD Key and let the game load.

I then logged in to the Dynaverse and it felt just like being on XP.



Honestly I think what worked was setting UIType to 1 instead of the default 2 and turning Driver=1 into Driver=0 and turning WireFrame=1 to Wireframe=0 and the Netlib=1 to Netlib=0


I need to test it out more and have others test it here.. so far, it is a winner.. I have not had any lagging with this config so far, but I want others to try this setup and see if it works properly for them or not.

[Pestalence_XC]

OK.. I am still getting a little bit of lagging, but no where near what it was.. I'm going to try disabling QoS and Microsoft Sharing Folders (printer etc.)

I'll post back tomorrow with new results.

[Age]

I am not sure if this would help but if you went into your SFCOP desktop Icon in properties and in the start up force it to run in dx9.This happened to me in GuildWars as my graphics were giving me problem so some over at guildwarsincgamers told me to run it in dx8 although I have 90c.It worked out fine so wouldn't changing it from 10 to 9 or 90c in the start up work?

[Bonk]

OK.. I am still getting a little bit of lagging, but no where near what it was.. I'm going to try disabling QoS and Microsoft Sharing Folders (printer etc.)

I'll post back tomorrow with new results.

You forgot the Nvidia settings screenshot in your previous post.

The trick with all of these experiments is to be able to duplicate results, of course.

I also wonder if not installing the dll updates might make a difference, We have not tried that yet(?), XP may have failed gracefully on incompatible calls where vista will not.

[Pestalence_XC]

You forgot the Nvidia settings screenshot in your previous post.

The trick with all of these experiments is to be able to duplicate results, of course.

I also wonder if not installing the dll updates might make a difference, We have not tried that yet(?), XP may have failed gracefully on incompatible calls where vista will not.

OOps, guess I did miss something..

However I had much less lag in the game. I tried with Video turned down and Video maxed out.. the screen shot below are my usual settings, but I cranked the settings even higher than usual testing last night.. Video card settings made no difference in performance.

The only lag I got ws when I returned from a mission.. and it happened only 1 time.. Further testing is needed, but the SFC.ini file definately has some effect on the game.

I guess you can try the default DLLs but the DLLs I use come from SFC III, and SFC III is Vista compliant with little to no compatibility adjustments. I don't see how adjusting the DLL files in the game folder is going to effect the networking negatively, but maybe it will.. who knows.. I guess I'll try that later this evening then.

Anyhow, here are my standard settings in the NVidia Control Panel.