What's wrong with my Dominions?

[Edi]

LuckyRaccoon said:
So is that it then? I mean do you plan on fixing that or are you already? It's near impossible to find a new computer that doesn't ship with vista.

The game was developed to be multiplatform and to work on Linux, Mac and Windows (89/2k/XP). Vista wasn't out then and generally most Vista problems are related to poor driver support. It is quite unreasonable to expect a team of two (only one programmer) to actually go back and modify Dom3 to be optimally Vista-compatible at this late a date.

As stated by one person above, no problems with Vista as long as you take care to update your stuff to the latest specs. Microsoft supplied drivers suck arse in most cases and you need to go to the hardware manufacturer for drivers which either will or will not work. Or you can start exploring options for Linux dual-booting.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Beat me with a wet mackerel and call me an idiot. I really should have noticed this the first time I responded.

Intel Graphics. That's certainly the problem. Intel graphics has a long history of being mistaken for an actual video card, but failing miserably.

General minimum Requirements:

* 256MB Ram, 500 MB disk space
* A good OpenGL accelerated graphics card (geforce or equivalent is recommended).

Windows minimum Requirements:

* 600 MHz Pentium II Processor
* Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP

[Alneyan]

LuckyRaccoon, my own advice would be: upgrade yours drivers, straight from Intel. If it doesn't work, try playing with the flags Gandalf mentioned. in particular -xxx and --noglext. You might also want to try other 3D games and tell us which ones work, if any (I don't think the problem comes from Dominions as such).

Regarding the Intel Graphics card: the Intel Graphics 950 should have enough firepower to play the game, and its specs are definitely higher than the first Geforce cards. More significantly, Intel claims the 950 can run these games and Vista's Aero interface, so it should be able to run Dominions with decent performance, at the very least.

For that matter, Dominions doesn't actually require a 3D card in the first place; my old computer could run the game with only software support (Mesa on Linux), though it didn't have much in the way of processing power. It was slow, of course, but it works - if you don't mind its s.l.o.w.n...e..s...s.

As I understand it, the 950 doesn't have support for some advanced features, the like of hardware T&L. Still, I'm pretty sure Dominions doesn't require that kind of feature, since the game runs under software Mesa. But you do need *some* kind of OpenGL support somewhere, so that means proper drivers.

[Gandalf Parker]

IMHO

A) Vista is neat and new with great new hooks that programmers will be able to do wonderful things with. We will all want it.

B) The people who make the video and sound cards are still catching up to making drivers that can use Vistas new features.

C) Game developers have not even started using new Vista hooks.

D) AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING it seems that getting pre-vista games to run on vista is only capable of two things. Either it runs worse for lack of something, or with work you can make it run the same as it did before you got Vista.

So my recommendations would be....

1) I would NOT want to go thru the headache of upgrading Vista on a machine with older hardware and older programs already installed on it which would all have to be tweeked just to get them to run as well as they used to.

2) But if you buy a new machine from a reputable company then they probably give you hardware which IS up to date for Vista so you would probably be ahead things when the games come out for Vista.

Personally however, for many reasons, I would not get a windows laptop. Everything has its pros and cons. For me its Linux on servers, Windows on desktop, and Mac on laptops.

Gandalf Parker

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
Personally however, for many reasons, I would not get a windows laptop. Everything has its pros and cons. For me its Linux on servers, Windows on desktop, and Mac on laptops.

Gandalf Parker

Personally for me it's dual or triple booting on servers, desktops and laptops for different operating systems. There are mutliple benefits for having a dual booting or triple booting system.

It will be awhile before developers release a game which can use DirectX_10 and the new hooks since game developers don't want to lose customers still using Windows2000 or WinXP. I believe Microsoft will be the first because they want to push everyone into using Vista... so HALO_3 and maybe DungeonSiege_3 probably won't work on older operating systems unless cracked.
I'm irritated how Vista is still 32bit by default and maximum RAM is still 4GBs and... well I'll stop my rant.

[Rasit]

NTJedi said:
[...]so HALO_3 and maybe DungeonSiege_3 probably won't work on older operating systems unless cracked.[...]

They are way ahead of your. Microsoft made sure you can't play Halo 2 on XP, despite using it using DirectX 9...

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

So, any luck getting this up and running? I've picked up a similar laptop, esp. with regards to the intel graphics 950. I intend to turn it into a triple-boot linux web/work machine, but it would be nice to get Dominions III on it.

If I get it up and running, I'll share what I did.

As it is, I don't have the graphics yet, and my computer freezes when autoupdating (gotta love vista) or manually installing drivers. That, and the link from the 950 chip product page takes me to 945 drivers. I'll need to get familiar with this.

If I need to, I can play Dom3 on another computer, but I'm going to bash my head against this for a bit. Its fun.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sorry for being a bit snide the first time around... I've made some progress in getting the game to play, I'll share that- but I haven't tested it extensively yet. If you want a starter point to look at, though...

Windows XP Service Pack 2 compatibility mode on (though I don't think it has any effect, though I'll find out as I test)
And I modified the shortcut with the following commands
-w (closes easier upon failure, since the X button is still there).
Disabling visual themes, desktop compostiion, display scaling- all semi-useless.

Update: Unless there's a more specific option I can turn off thats the source of the problem, -a --noanimback is essential. Though windows xp compatiblility isn't looking to be that way.
-a --noanimback (got me past the start menu- through the start menu, and all the way into pretender design. It stopped working though once I tried to close the two messages that show up at the beginning of the game)
-f --nofade (now I can see the world map)

I haven't tried entering a battle yet, or disabling some of these tweaks to see if they're unnecessary, but I've made significant progress in getting the game to show up.

So, the shortcut running in windows mode is Code:

---

 "blah balh \dom3.exe" -w -a --noanimback -f --nofade 

---

If it really is working, I'll find out what exactly is necessary and try and write some clear instructions for you to try. If you're around, let me know?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

With my current config, it seems to be playable. As long as you don't try to watch battles. I'll try a couple more switches and get back to you.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

One particular switch seems to be all thats needed, allowing you animated backgrounds and watching battles.

That's --noglext . If you've tried the other switches, you may need to renable/restore default setting in the video section for as full an experience as possible.

Try it and let me know.