Expendable with G400?

[rylan]

Anyone know how to get expendable to work correctly with a MAX? I am getting the black screen while it starts to load, then kicked back to the desktop without any errors or anything. I know this was discussed a while ago, but I forget the fixes for it.

[dwood]

I had the same problem... Went through A TON of suggestions from Matrox Tech Support, Rage Tech Support, and this forum with no success. In the end, the only thing that worked for me was a complete clean re-install of Windows98.

Rage SW had a couple of suggestions for the problem in their Expendable FAQ. Neither worked for me, but you may want to give them a try. (I can't exactly remember what they are).

Does your G400 TechDemo work properly? I couldn't get it to run at resolutions above 800x600. That too was fixed with the Win98 reload.

Other suggestions for the problem (that didn't work for me) included: set 256MB AGP aperture size, latest drivers, latest BIOS, unload all background apps, force AGP 1x, enable/disable bus-matering, try older drivers, try various desktop and game resolution combinations, and I think there were others, but I can't recall. Oh, and verify you don't have any IRQ conflicts with the card.

Good luck,
Dave...

[Kruzin]

You will find this thread in the Matrox Gaming Forum...

[rylan]

Yep, already, tried a bunch of stuff already. It happends at all resolutions and color depths I try. No irq conflicts (MAX on 11 by itself) and every other game I've played works great, and even the Matrox techdemo works without any problems.

I submitted a support request to Rage, so I'll see what they have to say.

My system specs incase they may help with this only problem:

Win98 SP-1
AMD K6-III 450
Epox MVP3G-M w/ latest via drivers
256mb PC-133 sdram
Matrox G400-MAX
SBLive!
Diamond VoodooII 12mb
TV Tuner
3Com 3c509b ethernet card

Nothing is sharing irqs, and max is at 11.


[This message has been edited by rylan (edited 06 December 1999).]

[Muad'Dib]

I've found that I have this problem when busmastering is disabled. Make sure yours is enabled. When I do that, it runs fine, until it crashes...

[paulcs]

I found I had a very similar problem when I forgot to put the Matrox installation CD in my drive before starting the game.

And yes, I felt very silly.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Muad'Dib]

Paulcs - when you don't have the cd in, you get the error, "Fatal Error: BDF is Missing." Trust me, I've seen it enough... Anyway, if turning off Busmastering doesn't help, try various resolution settings with 16/32 bit colors. If all else fails, revert to the default settings or reinstall it. A lot of people found that that helped.

[daniele]

Maybe it's not anything to do... but be sure your are running Liveware 2.0 or higher.

Bye, Daniele.

------------------
-------------------------
PIII 450 Mhz@450
Mobo: MS6163 PRO
RAM:256 Mb
HD: QUANTUM KA 7200 rpm 13 Gb
DVD SAMSUNG SD-606F
SBLive! (Value)
G400 Max 32Mb DH
Monitor Flatron LG FT795 plus

[rylan]

Here is something really odd. I borrowed a friend's full version of Expendable, and installed that with the bumpmapping patch for the G400, and it works. Went back to the version wit hthe Matrox CD and it crashed to the desktop. Guess I'll borrow it from my friend for a while. Looks awesome though!

[Ian J]

Rage website is www.rage.co.uk

I have a similar problem with the Matrox CD Expendable not working... dropped back to the desktop during initialization with no error dialog.

An e-mail to Rage got a quick reply and after several more e-mails was left with the final option of upgrading to Win98(se). I've yet to do this for cost reasons (and the fact that it might not work!)

Interestingly the demo worked perfectly for me.

The next time I do a full OS reinstall I'll check whether it starts clean, and if it does what then kills it.


Rylan: have you made a comparison between the two versions of Expendable that you've installed?

[Paddy]

Was there an option to turn bump mapping on before you used the patch?

I have not used the patch as the bump-mapping option is there. However it does not seem to do anything.

-yes i have a g400!

[Trav]

Hi Guys,

I installed expendable last night and had exactly the same problem, Had the loading screen, then I got chucked out to windows.
I then went into the setup of expendable and enabled vsync.
After that, it all works beautifully!!

Trav

[syntech]

Just for the files: in my case it helped to reboot, then uninstall it and then (with no reboot) to reinstall it. After that the game ran fine without any problems.



------------------
- Syntech -

[Ian J]

Well I've tried a full reinstall of Win95. I added enought support for the sound card, the Matrox video drivers (5.41) and DirectX 7.0.

Still no luck.


Trav: vsync doesn't work for me.
syntech: will try the reinstall after I get off the internet.