VOGONS


First post, by blackmasked

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Hi there
I am having serious trouble running Cannon Fodder 1 and 2 under DOS. Every time I run it I get 'out of range' and a black screen.
My assumption is that the game tries to use a strange resolution that my monitor struggles with, so I tried 2 older 4:3 LCDs and a newer 16:10 LCD monitor as well as a LCD TV, unfortunately results are always the same. I do remember playing DOS version of Cannon Fodder back in the late 90's with no issues whatsoever, but that was on a CRT monitor. So far I have tried S3 Virge DX and a S3 Savage, but the results are always the same. I am sure the game is not corrupt as this is the same copy I have used in the past.

Is this one of these games that requires an output device capable of running at 15 kHz?

Last edited by blackmasked on 2022-08-16, 19:52. Edited 2 times in total.

DOS build: Gigabyte GA-586T2, P200 MMX, 64MB RAM, Tseng ET6000 4MB, Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, Roland SC-55mkII, Yamaha MU-80
98SE build: MSI MS-6163 Pro, PIII 650MHz, 256MB RAM, Voodoo3 3000, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Platinum, Yamaha SW1000XG

Reply 1 of 8, by konc

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blackmasked wrote:

Is this one of these games that requires an output device capable of running at 15 kHz?

Definitely not.

I could be talking nonsense here, but since you tried so many monitors, why don't you also try a different graphics card? Maybe the one you're using has some weird refresh rate for Cannon Fodder's resolution.

Reply 3 of 8, by blackmasked

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Ironically I have no issues with the intro. It's the main exe that blows up every single time. In CF2 I can sometimes get as far as seeing Cannon Fodder 2 title screen, but the game hangs there.

DOS build: Gigabyte GA-586T2, P200 MMX, 64MB RAM, Tseng ET6000 4MB, Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, Roland SC-55mkII, Yamaha MU-80
98SE build: MSI MS-6163 Pro, PIII 650MHz, 256MB RAM, Voodoo3 3000, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Platinum, Yamaha SW1000XG

Reply 4 of 8, by Rawit

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Are you running it on the DOS build in your signature? This thread reminded me of the Borland Turbo Pascal bug some games have: Fix "Error 200" (Divide by zero) - by Snover and Stiletto (updated!) but I'm not sure this is the case with Cannon Fodder. Could you try running it with cache disabled?

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Reply 5 of 8, by blackmasked

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Yes I am running it using the rig from the signature. Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a go.

DOS build: Gigabyte GA-586T2, P200 MMX, 64MB RAM, Tseng ET6000 4MB, Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, Roland SC-55mkII, Yamaha MU-80
98SE build: MSI MS-6163 Pro, PIII 650MHz, 256MB RAM, Voodoo3 3000, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Platinum, Yamaha SW1000XG

Reply 6 of 8, by eightbit

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Hello! I just had to register in order to reply to this (well, I was planning on registering anyway) as I ran into the same problem last night, but in reverse. I recently received and bulked up a Gateway P5-120 and was interested to see how Cannon Fodder (the first one) stood up to other ports. I tried it the other night and it ran fine. Played a few rounds for about a half hour and it ran well. This was on a Diamond Stealth S220 rendition card.

Last night I was curious to see if it would run better on an S3 Virge/GX 4MB card and with that card I get "out of range", and this is NOT on an LCD. I am using a Sony G520 Multiscan CRT (monster CRT!) which can handle anything you throw at it...even the 15KHz signal coming out of a MiST box. I put the Stealth S220 back in and the game works again....

So there is something the Stealth can decode that the other card (and in your case all of the cards you have tested) cannot, but I would love to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately this thread is the only reference to the issue I can find on the internet...

Reply 8 of 8, by Rawit

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Ancient thread but after trying to run Cannon Fodder myself on a S3 card and getting out of range/unsupported I found this: Re: CL-5446 being better than S3 Trio64v+ ?

Tested S3VBEFIX myself with Cannon Fodder and it works! Both on VGA and DFP.

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