CoW 1.4.4 - Easy and painfree Installation

[Scorpion]

Torrent downloaded and installed fine. Which of the small fixes (if any) do I need to install now?

[Gigantus]

Great news indeed!

Check the available patches\fixes in post#2 - install them in numerical order.

[mckain666]

what do i need to know befor moding this version

[jnecros]

Gigantus

Thank you very much for uning this install. I am testing it all now, so far so good. Now I may finally be able to convince others to try it, because it was really huge pain in the ass to install before and nobody wanted to bother.

[Iguanaonastick]

The torrent link seems to be dead. I get a 404 from both the link earlier on this page and from the one in the first post.

[Gigantus]

The torrent link seems to be dead. I get a 404 from both the link earlier on this page and from the one in the first post.

I am not sure what happened but I will try to get the page back, annoying to say the least.

Edit: I am a complete noob at torrents, but will the torrent file be sufficient (see attachment) - the seed is complete and there should be some seeders out there.

[Jean=A=Luc]

Thanks again for doing this Gig, the extra HD space is really appreciated.

May I suggest adding the

windowed=true
borderless_window=true

lines to the cfg in a subsequent update? Most people don't know about the borderless mode yet it costs nothing to add and many will appreciate being able to alt+tab in peace. It's one of those tech support thingies that makes a mod that much more user friendly.

Edit: Actually the cfg already contains the commands but they're set to false.

[Gigantus]

This was done purposely (the first thing I did after my installation) - windowed mode is very unstable and probably accounted for all message-less crashes. It comes very handy when modding, no doubt about it. I dare say I am rather experienced, but that didn't stop the game from crashing\freezing on me a couple of times. Sometimes a 'click, hold and move' would be enough.
As you have seen I left the lines in the CFG file, but I truly don't recommend to set them to 'true'.

[Jean=A=Luc]

Oh ok, I thought that might be the case. I've been using it only for a little while so I guess I'll see. I assume a ctd caused by the borderless mode would occur during alt+tabbing and not at some random point? I've never had problems with it in SS.

[MedievalDragoon]

Ok, I downloaded part the files from your torrent and part from Megavideo links and then I installed the patches and it doesn't want to start, It gets to the loading screen then crashes to desktop.

I know I have my Kingdoms.exe in the right place so that can't be the problem.

[Jean=A=Luc]

Ok, I downloaded part the files from your torrent and part from Megavideo links and then I installed the patches and it doesn't want to start, It gets to the loading screen then crashes to desktop.

You sure the installation went alright (needs to say it was "successful" in the end)? A wrong file name (brought about by downloading from different sources) or incorrect install order can botch your game.

You'll probably need to post your error log: "\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\logs"

Search for "error" (alt+f) or just post the whole thing (in a spoiler).

[Gigantus]

UPDATE

Hosted the torrent at a new site: Download torrent from 'ExtraTorrent'
Created a new torrent (same hash) at 'The PirateBay'

@Jean-A-Luc
alt+tabbing would be the primary reason for a crash - once you restore the window you will often see that the graphics are messed up, eg the radarmap is all wonky. The 'borderless' setting might reduce the risk.

@MedievalDragon
Mix and match is never a good idea, unless it is an identical file - see the initial problem with file names between MegaUpload and RapidShare.

[Iguanaonastick]

Great! Thanks for re-uploading.

As for windowed-mode, I have never had any crashes that I attribute to it. I mean, I run a lot of mods and most never crash period. And without it I'd be bored to death watching load-screens on my slowish PC. Still, better safe than sorry I suppose.

[diadok]

I am downloading on the pirate bay torrent and it seems to go very well for now (reception goes from 350 to 450 ko/s).
I hope it will be fully downloaded when i will go back home this afternoon.
I have already downloaded the 2 patches on MU.

[diadok]

I have install a clean installation of your version.

With graphics on high settings (but no shadows and buildings on low) i had a fatal graphic error during a siege. Which others settings needs to be lowered ?
I have restart with low settings everywhere and the battle ended without crash, but everything low is ugly...

[gracul]

I don't seem to be able to download any of the files from MU, rapidshare does the trick however.

Just btw.
Actually the window mode is either as stable as the full screen mode, or more stable.
When u play the game on fullscreen directx uses an exclusive mode which means that it can print stuff directly to output instead of asking the system for it. This means that some of the systems functions can be suspended for the time, resulting in more processing power and memory for the game itself. During alt+tab a lot of things happen to the system, as it has to switch from exclusive mode, freeze the games video output, and then restores the systems suspended functions. Sometimes with poor memory management of the game this can lead to a crash, and im not saying that the guys at CA dont know how to manage memory, im saying that it's just pretty damn hard even for professionals with a couple of years of experience. Anyways, we don't live in 2006 any more, and med2's engine doesn't even tap to most of the resources of our dual-tripple-quad-core processors or 1gb graphics cards - so an exclusive mode is essentially useless +while tabbing out of it crashes might occur, meaning that the window mode is in fact more stable for mtw2.
As for the borderless window, it's just initializing mtw2 without a caption bar, letting it fit into the resolution given at the game menu. Nifty stuff.

And i can't believe i ran into something like this just by going out to download another mod.

[Gigantus]

Actually the window mode is either as stable as the full screen mode, or more stable.
When u play the game on fullscreen directx uses an exclusive mode which means that it can print stuff directly to output instead of asking the system for it. This means that some of the systems functions can be suspended for the time, resulting in more processing power and memory for the game itself. During alt+tab a lot of things happen to the system, as it has to switch from exclusive mode, freeze the games video output, and then restores the systems suspended functions. Sometimes with poor memory management of the game this can lead to a crash, and im not saying that the guys at CA dont know how to manage memory, im saying that it's just pretty damn hard even for professionals with a couple of years of experience. Anyways, we don't live in 2006 any more, and med2's engine doesn't even tap to most of the resources of our dual-tripple-quad-core processors or 1gb graphics cards - so an exclusive mode is essentially useless +while tabbing out of it crashes might occur, meaning that the window mode is in fact more stable for mtw2.
As for the borderless window, it's just initializing mtw2 without a caption bar, letting it fit into the resolution given at the game menu. Nifty stuff.

And i can't believe i ran into something like this just by going out to download another mod.

Your explanation (nicely done, wasn't aware of it) leads me to believe that the increase in stability of my version must have a different reason - and it's not the script because I haven't touched it.
.

[Toho]

yea im not having much luck with rapid share or mega, mega says it was removed because it went against terms of agreement (WTF?) and rapidshare is being weird no timer or any download option, on top of the screen it just says you are downloading CoW 1.4.4 but im not downloading anything and my pop-up blocker has not blocked anything so I'm confused.
guess il just have to use pirate bay

[Kharn1986]

I was originally really happy to see this post come out with an"easy and painfree" installation. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to discover that the download is just as unstable as the previous version and I have the exact same problems as before ie:

1. When trying to start a campaign, I am redirected to the start page.
2. When I fix problem 1, the game crashes at turn 7.

I realize that this is a really good mod, but fail to see the point of having such a great mod when so few people can actually play the game because of installation problems/instability problems.

Why is this the only mod where you need to modify and go through 20 steps before it works (and the steps aren't even together)? Yes, I have heard people on the forum who complained be told that they should "shut up" because the game is free. However, I thought (an perhaps naively), that one of the main purposes of releasing a mod was to have other people enjoy the mod.

If any one out there knows of a version of this mod that ACTUALLY works and is simple to install (like all the other mods), please let me know.

Incidentally, any help on how to resolve issue 1 and 2 would be greatly appreciated.

[Jean=A=Luc]

If any one out there knows of a version of this mod that ACTUALLY works and is simple to install (like all the other mods), please let me know.

This one. Technically the original installation worked as well (the torrented one at least) but had many script related ctds and such.

Parts 1 and 2 need to be installed in the right order, you need to be sure installation was successful and had no error reports, namely the ones that would be caused by incorrect file names (if you downloaded from both rapidshare and MU).

Posting error logs is always helpful as well.


@Gigantus

I've honestly never had any alt+tab related graphical glitches or anything of the sort, neither with windowed borderless mode nor with the vanilla setup and the w/b mode has never been anything but good to me. Maybe I was just lucky in that regard.

The vast majority of ctds in CoW are script related and tend to occur during or around scripted battles. The script file is huge and a lot of the code is probably messy.

THP's sandbox campaign was (is?) very stable precisely because it did away with most of the scripted events.