NWN crashing on startup

[ThunderFoot]

I've been having problems starting NeverWinter Nights in either Surround mode or normal.
I've a Parhelia with the latest drivers and just started trying to get NWN working again (because I'd given up trying with some earlier drivers).
Anyway, now it shows up the "eye" splash screen, blanks everything as if it's going to start and then crashes citing an error in "mtxogl.dll" before displaying any of the opening movies.
If I go into display settings and ratchet the video acceleration down 3 notches it'll start (but of course isn't playable at that speed).

My nwconfig.ini file says it's found version 1.3 of opengl.

Oh yes, I'm using NWN v 1.26 at the moment.

So, what problem with opengl support would cause it to barf before even running the movies?
No-one else seems to have this problem except me.

I've tried reinstalling both nwn _and_ the parhelia drivers and neither helps.

There's settings in nwn.ini about "first run" and "safe movie" and if I enable those I can _sometimes_ get it to start, but if I alt-tab out and back or if I try changing the resolution in the in-game options it'll crash with the same error in mtxogl.dll.



Any ideas?

ThunderFoot.

[Spire]

I experienced exactly the same thing yesterday when I tried running NWN for the first time with my new Parhelia. I spent a long time trying pretty much everything to get it to work, and there is only one thing that I've found that prevents that crash in mtxogl.dll on startup:

Temporarily set Windows to 16-bit color before running the game. I have no idea why this works, but it does for me.

[ThunderFoot]

Nope, that doesn't work for me, but I just found something that does... Opening the config file and changing "Opengl Installed" to 0 so it doesn't even try. Forcing it to just use directx fixes it just fine. (Not that I should have to, of course.)

[R.Carter]

NWN can now use DirectX? I thought it was an OpenGL only application.

The only problems I had with NWN and G400 were due to the animated textures like the lava and water. Those would cause the game to randomly drop to the desktop.

Simply disabling them was a workaround to that problem. I have no idea if Matrox ever fixed that (or is even planning on fixing) particular problem or not.

Can't help with Parhelia issues as I don't have one... sorry.

[ThunderFoot]

Hmmm... Weird.
What I did isn't repeatable. I can't get it running again now. I think you're right about the OpenGL, I just can't work out why telling it opengl didn't exist worked the first time I tried it...

[Spire]

Originally posted by ThunderFoot
Opening the config file and changing "Opengl Installed" to 0 so it doesn't even try.

That was one of the first things I tried, and it didn't work for me.

The 16-bit Windows thing still works for me every time, though.

[UberLord]

It's a random start up bug. Sometimes it crashes, sometimes it loads. Once it's loaded it's stable though

[ThunderFoot]

Heh. Random doesn't help me when it's 99% probable... If alt-tab would work then I'd just have left it running permanently in the background, but alt-tabbing back to it _always_ crashing it if I've managed to get it working, so it's not usable.