Problem with AC3

kaburke · #1 October 26th, 2001, 12:14 AM

Hi There,

I just bought a new system, Dell 2Gig 512M memory Win ME Geforce3 64M card, 80gig HD.

When I start a new game in AC3, the clock will not show a time, the little "scope" next to the time is blank. I can spacebar or click on the time and it will advance the 15 minutes...but no time advance on its own. I tried to "pause/unpause" etc. I noticed when I minimize the window and bring it back, it thinks its paused, though pausing/unpausing jumps it a little..nothing happens.

The radar "sweep" acts normally if enabled.

Once in a while, it will actually run normal, but this is only 5% or less of the time.

Any Ideas?

Thanks

Kevin

Joe · #2 November 1st, 2001, 01:17 AM

Hello Kevin,

Does the clock actually advance although the display is messed up? In other words, do planes still show up periodically as the game advances?

kaburke · #3 November 1st, 2001, 02:54 AM

Hi Joe,

I know what it is related to now.

You must use the uptime counter(ticks) for something related to speed calibration....Links 2001 has the same problem and they have stated the problem...which is.....

New Dell systems (since about May 2001) do not report boot time correctly on startup (mine's shows the system has been up for about 46.x days. The tick counter will roll over to zero in about 1.5 hours after the computer has been booted (as much as the 32bit counter can hold I guess). At that point, the game will run fine.

To your question...no..nothing happens it just sits there. If I time skip, they will jump ahead, otherwise they won't budge until I skip time again.

So my question is I guess, why do you care how long since computer has been booted (or more importantly, why does the tick variable have to be within a certain time period.) For Links, they say if you have had the system on for more than 23 days (A joke in Windows world I know, but I digress), you need to reboot and then it will work fine. And of course the Dell problem puts it way over 23 days. I'm a programmer myself (work for Intel), and I'm just curious why system up time (even if reported incorrectly) is creating grief.

Thanks for the help,

Kevin

Joe · #4 November 3rd, 2001, 01:45 PM

Kevin,

The game gets the tick count (from the multimedia resources, not the Windows SDK)when you start a new game, and calculates all events relative from that number. It doesn't rely on any particular value, but will most likely mess up if it does roll over.