Battle-map still not working...

**Kiwiphoenix** · August 22, 2009, 04:25 PM

I'm trying to run Medieval 2 on a Dell D610, with:
"1.86Ghz Intel Processor,
1GB R.A.M.
Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML Chipset Family
Sony DVD+-RW DW-Q58A
Intel 82801 FBM Ultra ATA Storage Controller"
It honestly doesn't mean too much to me, ashamed to say.

Whenever I try to run any sort of battle, even with all settings on the absolute minimun (and sound disabled for good measure), it simply goes to the loading screen, where the hourglass cursor appears and the loading bar fills, like normal. But once the bar fills completely, it just sits there.
(Once I left it like that for about 30 minutes, and when I came back it had loaded up a single frame of pre-battle setup, at which point is appears to have frozen.)

Now, I've run this successfully on a Toshiba, and its specs were hardly stellar. Also, the campaign map works perfectly fine, as does RTW (w/ Realism Mod), even on high settings. I've already tried updating drivers, and have no idea what to attempt next. Any ideas?

Thanks, KP

**PoleCat** · August 22, 2009, 05:28 PM

Well with the limited stats you gave us for your machine it looks to be barely above minimum spec for M2. I'm not surprised it's not playing battles.

What OS are you using and what's your video card? One GB of memory is low for a Vista machine for example....

**irishron** · August 23, 2009, 03:20 AM

This game depends on sound. You disable it, it won't play.

**PoleCat** · August 23, 2009, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by irishron

This game depends on sound. You disable it, it won't play.

I'm assuming that he disabled it through the sound options in the main menu - I hope he just turned everything off. I hope he didn't do anything like try to screw with the sound files....

**irishron** · August 23, 2009, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by PoleCat

I'm assuming that he disabled it through the sound options in the main menu - I hope he just turned everything off. I hope he didn't do anything like try to screw with the sound files....

If you go through the threads, you'll find players for various reasons disable their sound cards or onboard sound chips and wonder why they can't play. The specs do say you need sound and the code looks to use it. If that same code can't find it to use, it quits istead of just bypassing it. It's one of the cuties the devs did because of all the speeches and other sound effects in the game.

**Kiwiphoenix** · August 23, 2009, 06:28 PM

Nonono... I'm nowhere near savvy enough to think of messing with hardware or core files. I just muted sound in the menu (once had a similar problem in another program, which turned out to be corrupted sound files, so muting fixed that - I figured it was worth a try).

I'm using Windows XP, and have an X300 video card (I think).

Yeah, this machine is pretty sub-optimal, but then, so was the old Toshiba, and M2TW (technically) worked on that, albeit with minimal settings and reasonable troop numbers.
I haven't got the specs for it, but I remember being impressed by the capabilities of this new one.

Still, in general, it's looking like the Dell just doesn't want to work. If that's the case, I'll be more than happy with RTR. I just don't want to give up if there's still options left.

Thank you! -KP

**irishron** · August 24, 2009, 03:25 AM

What Rome will run on doesn't mean anything to Medieval2. The specs jumped appreciably.

That video chip isn't made for 3d gaming even under XP.

To make a couple of assumptions,
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en to get your .net up to date.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en to get directx 9 up to date.

Run dxdiag and post your results.

**Kiwiphoenix** · August 25, 2009, 03:34 AM

These are the requested results... it's rather long.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**irishron** · August 25, 2009, 03:46 AM

You're not fighting battles unless it's on minimum settings, no eyecandy, and very lucky, and it will still lag you to death.

With this game and battles, your cpu is minimum, your graphic chip isn't made for 3d battles no matter what Intel says and proven too many times, the shared memory of it and what your cpu requires, a gig of memory runs out before the battle.