Weird Unreal freeze

[kewlcat]

Hey guys

I hope some of you are still playing Unreal on your G200s coz I am in a strange situation. In the level "Dark Arena", after I come into the open area for the second time after killing the earth-shaking monster, the "do you want to quit?" screen comes up automatically. when i cancel, the game goes back to normal except for the fact that I can't move with either mouse, keyboard or joystick. i can bring up the console, the main menu, alt-tab to windows, etc. but the game does not accept any input signals. what the hell is up?

my system config is as follows: Abit BH6, Celeron 300@375, Myst G200 8MB (4.51, bios 2.23), SBLive Value!, etc. etc. Unreal version 2.24.

Thanks in advance.

[kewlcat]

Sorry to bring this up again, but I am desperate. I still get the freeze, but it's only the movement keys and mouse that don't work. All other keys work.

Please help, I need to finish Unreal by this summer!

Thanx...

[motub]

Sorry to belabor the obvious-- I take it you've installed PD 5.13 (following all instructions, natch)?

I've just reinstalled Unreal myself but haven't patched it to 2.24 yet so it runs like a hog (notice I'm assuming that patching it will cause some improvement, which isn't necessarily true). I should be doing that late tonight/early tomorrow. If casting a fresh eye over the whole thing prompts any inspiration, I'll let you know asap. If not, I can always offer moral support....

I looked at your post again, and it occurs to me, what's up with that "do you want to quit?" message? Why is that coming up at that particular point? It would seem that the corruption of your game starts there. Somehow, the appearance of the cancellation screen, and/or cancelling that screen seems to crash Unreal (I would think, based on this, that the console is a separate program?)

Now I'm thinking out loud...is Unreal really crashed or just busy trying to sort out a confusing instruction? Sometimes I find that an ultimately recoverable error in Windows slows or freezes everything so bad that it looks like I have to reset but really all I have to do is wait. Since you can use your keyboard, ctrl-alt-del once to see if Windows lists Unreal as [not responding]. If not, click cancel and do it again (you know that sometimes Windows takes a while to recognize that something has crashed).

Surely you've got a savegame beyond the point of killing the earth-shaking monster by now. Does the crash still occur in the same way? Upon what stimuli?

And just why do you think that the G200 is the cause of the error? Had you had Unreal running fine and then installed/reconfigured the G200? Or possibly some other component?

If not, then maybe your best solution is to take your now more complete description of the problem to Epic Tech Support. Probably that's wise anyway. After all, if they say, "no that's not our fault, it's your video card" then you can come back and get help from Haig.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on so long, I'm just tossing out questions as they occur to me. I can't say that I do or will know how to solve the problem but it seems clear that I feel the need for more details. Someone who knows more about how Unreal is programmed might not, so maybe you should try them 1st...



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Holly
Who just *likes* SiN, dammit, no matter what the reviewers say! and can now put her V2 in her roomie's new (in a way) K6-266 (be quiet, she doesn't play games! well, not like Half-Life, anyway, she's a bleem! kinda roomie) because now her [Soyo 5EMA, K6-2 333 not o/c, 256MB PC100 , Millennium G200 8MB SGRAM, Win98] works plenty good enough 'til she's saved the moolah for the G400/Athlon rig [drool, pant, drool... ]

[kewlcat]

Thanks for your response Holly.

Yeah my problem with Unreal is probably not related to the G200 (I am now using PD5). But the likelihood of finding someone with the same problem is highest on a forum like this one. populated by friendly helpful ppl .

Unfortunately, I do not have a savegame beyond the point of killing the Titan. At present I have pretty much given up on the problem and resigned myself to botmatches (where I lose of course .

Anyone with a clue? If not, guess I can go back and finish Q2. Unreal is prettier though. Its all about eye-candy when u are a Matrox owner, hehe.

[motub]

Well, if I ever **get** to the titan [I'm not too good (yet) at any of the next-gen FPS...that AI, y'know, can't deal with enemies that *think* ] and it happens to me, I'll let you know.

I just thought...what would happen if you just breezed by the Titan in God Mode (there *is* a God Mode, isn't there)? Since you *did* kill him, you know you can (so you're not *really* cheating), and then you could just turn it off again and continue play...it's worth a shot, anyway.


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Holly
Who gets *way* too tense playing FPS with AI, and has put her V2 in her roomie's new (in a way) K6-266 (be quiet, she doesn't play games! well, not like Half-Life, anyway, she's a bleem! kinda roomie) since her [Soyo 5EMA, K6-2 333 not o/c, 256MB PC100 , Millennium G200 8MB SGRAM, Win98] works plenty good enough 'til she's saved the moolah for the G400/Athlon rig [drool, pant, drool... ]


[This message has been edited by motub (edited 07-09-99).]

[Auger]

I am currently going thru Unreal 2.25f on the PowerDesk 5.13 drivers. I went by that Titan a day or two ago and I didn't have any problems. What version of Unreal are you using? There were some bugs in 2.20 which caused it to crash, such as when you fired the razor gun. Once I found that throwing a switch would crash win98 so I used my Win 95 installation and went by the switch and then transferred the saved game to my Win98 setup.

[kewlcat]

Problem figured out. My copy of Unreal came with my SB Live! card and i guess that Dark Arena is the last level, sort of like a shareware version. Oh well.

Thanks for the help anyways. U guys rock!

Rahul

[motub]

Oh, for Pete's sake! Did you figure that out by accident, or what? 'cause I can't imagine who would have just *thought* of that.

Although once you say "it was the jury-rigged end-of level" the "quit game" dialog and "freeze" make total sense...

I should have remembered...a similar thing happened to me when I played the Monkey Island 3 demo, which also had an artificial end-of-level. The first time I reached it, I didn't know if I had killed poor Guybrush or just finished the demo...

So, you gonna get the full version now? If you have a lot of games you want to get rid of, maybe you can trade for it at the Used Game Trading Zone ( http://ugtz.com/ ). Or I'm sure you can find it around cheap...

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Holly

i'm not perky, but i'd like to be...

[SlurpDog]

kewlcat: Get the full version of Unreal. That game is awesome. I've played it through 3 times (good way to avoid going to class), and it's still awesome.

motub: Maybe I can help you out with that perkiness...

[Jorden]

motub always has her way with words...

About 4.51 against 5.13 drivers... err Unreal isn't much with them, not even 2.25f... if you want to play Unreal2.25, just don't go for the ogl drivers... bad thing.

If you get stuck with the ogl-drivers, edit the Unreal.ini file and look for rendering_device=something.
If something is OGLRenderingdevice or something like that, delete the part after rendering_device, save the ini and restart unreal... next time my rendering device said I was using English as rendering... lol... change that back to d3d !!

I've seen Unreal with ogl in pd5.13.. the waterfall was looking much better !!

And sorry, dear gf, I'm good with words too... lol

Who needs help with Unreal 2.25f... come running to me !

Jorden

[kewlcat]

Once again thanks for your responses Holly and Auger.

I installed the 225f patch last night and retried going thru' the level and, yep, the freeze is still there. I am seriously thinking of posting my save game for ppl to download, move past that stage and re-send me the new saved game. Problem is, Unreal saved games are >3.5 MB in size.

The most frustrating part is, I have no clue what is causing the problem. I hate being ignorant .

[motub]

Oooh, Unreal tips! Glad I dropped by; I was wondering why she ran like a hog and looked like...uh, garbage.

SlurpDog: Thanks. Looks like I got help with that already (see updated sig).

Jorden: You're d*mn right you are ...I surrender.

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Holly

i'm not perky, but i'm gettin' there...

[motub]

Hey, Rahul--

I thought perky and bubbly were almost the same thing...both pretty scary, kinda...

While I wait to tweak Unreal sufficiently that it looks like anything other than hideous on my G200, my thoughts on your Q1/Q2
debate--

It makes me laugh, actually. I started playing FPS with Wolfenstein, and then Duke. When the shareware of Doom came along, I thought it was the plug-ugliest (ugh! those reds! those muddy greens!) thing I ever saw...until I saw Quake (bleh! all brown and purple). My colleague (we played this at work) thought the game and the design was great, but I found it so visually unappealing after the clean, bright, colorful games I had played, that I couldn't even try it.

Then 1) I got a Total3D (Verite 1000) card, and 2) GLQuake. To this day, several vidcards later, I am still stunned when I boot up GLQuake and see that first hallway. I did try GLDoom (I have since gotten it) but didn't see any improvement. That was before the new drivers, though, and I didn't try hard. Haven't played that far into Q2 (I am **way** behind in my gaming) and it is kind of boring -looking, but much more attractive and bright. So far Quake seems to be more fun (once I "got" Quake's mindset, it was a blast).

Still think Duke blows the lot of them (except Half-Life) clear to h*ll & gone, and DNF (when it gets here, sometime next century) will leave everything in the dust. But then, I started as an adventure gamer; I like a sense of humor with my adrenaline...a story's good too...or at least some kind of context. I mean, after you've taken that (HL) 5-minute train ride to work (down, and down, and down), and seen the sh*t hit the fan, I had *no* problems generating a powerful desire to get the flock out of there, and a very clear understanding that I was way the hell far from "out of there". Same like SiN: if I (as Blade) don't survive infiltrating the bank, those hostages are toast (and I certainly don't want toasted hostages just because I'm a bad player). It still makes me way too tense, but having a real (to me) reason, and not one just told to you by the designers, will keep me coming back every time.

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Holly

i'm not perky, but i'm gettin' there...

[kewlcat]

Hey Holly

Yeah perky and bubbly are the same kind of thing, but to different degrees, sorta like upbeat and too damn optimistic respectively.

My fps gaming history started with Doom, although I did play a little bit of Wolf3D. Wolf was fun, though I kept getting lost coz all the rooms were rectangular, guess I have no sense of direction in more ways than one. I remember Duke as being very funny and having a great storyline, but 'twas a little hard and I didnt like the weapons too much.

Speaking of Doom, I remember playing the shareware version and getting the kickass screen at the end which went something like: "Killed all those big badass monsters and you expected a long nice vacation didnt you? Didn't you? Well you were so wrong" or something to that effect. The sheer unexpectedness of it took my breath away, I had been expecting the full game (sound familiar?). Some games just end well.

Oh has anyone here ever played Microsoft's Deadly Tide? It has a weird ending too. When you finish saving the world, you are rying to escape out of this alien spaceship, but unfortunately get trapped inside and are taken away to the aliens' home planet. I was like "WTF? I play for so many hours and don't even get a happy ending!" Oh well. Guess it emulates real life or something.

Excuse these ravings, feeling a little talkative today...will shut up now.

Rahul

[kewlcat]

Yeah Unreal looks real good in D3D on my G200. I like Q2 too, but the whole industrial look can't compare to the old-world "green" look of Unreal.

Which brings up another interesting debate. Q1 vs. Q2. Not quality of game or technology, but rather the whole look. Remember how Q1 was so medieval looking and scary? Then Q2 came along and there just wasn't that scary element any more -- not dark enough I think.

Of course Doom, the granddaddy of them all was pretty scary in its own right. I think I heard something over on Planetquake about Carmack saying somthing about adapting the Quake2 engine to make a Doom-like game. That *would* be fun to play, especially single-player!

Okay enough rambling from moi.

Rahul
(who likes perky girls, as long as they stay short of bubbly)

[This message has been edited by kewlcat (edited 07-11-99).]