First post, by TwitchesMcGee
Read that readme, searched every inch of the forums for specific answer...done a lot of looking to no results, so its time to ask personally
Here’s where I'm at with the hardware:
* IC7-max3
* P4 2.8g hyperthread (c type)
* 1024 DDR400 (pc3200) dual channel (512x2)
* generic radieon 9600XT 128 AGP
* SB live 7.1
The game is Shock1. The game is running correctly as set up from directions at the TTLG "get it working on XP" sticky. I am running it on XP pro; I don’t know where to start other then the order in which problems present themselves. So...
1.) That inaccessible COM1 thing. So I've got a sound blaster, should be easily compatible, but VDMsound is emulating a card anyway, right? I'll admit that I don’t know everything I should about COM port assignments and IRQ channels, so I looked up my mobo/bios information from the manufacture and found this information;
IRQ Number Device
0 System Timer
1 PC/AT Enhanced PS/2 Keyboard (101/102-Key)
2 Cascade to secondary controller (IRQ8-15)
3 Communications Port (COM2)
4 Communications Port (COM1)
... List continues with probably irrelevant information
My VDMSound settings are verbatim to the sticky on the TTLG forum. On top of that I changed NOTHING in the sound setup of the game during instillation.
Ok, here’s what I want to know: how do I enable COM1 in my bios (a poster has said a lot of time to just enable it, how exactly?) Is this problem in my VDMSound settings (can you advise some other settings, like setting it to emulate different devices for direct sound and midi?) Or is my actual PCI sound card already using this port? What can I do with the information I found about my IRQs (I recall having to do some reassigning of IRQs to get sound in games like space quest to work on my old and no-longer-operable DOS machine?)
Basically I don’t know if the COM1 thing is a separate issue from not having sound, but overall I don’t want to have to ignore it, and I want sound.
2.) COM1 and sound aside, I have a previously mentioned (in a very old thread,) but not clearly answered problem with the mouse in higher resolutions. The curser moves fine in every resolution but the highest one in the video options in the game. I did nothing about enabling higher resolutions other then the batch editing instructed in that TTLG sticky. The last and highest one I see in the in-game video options menu (its 640x480 I believe) the cursor moves un-playably slowly.
Beyond not having playable control of the mouse in 640x480, the game is still smooth and flows at the correct speed. I would be content with playing in this resolution but I believe with a gig of ram running dual channel and a 2.8g chip I can push it a little higher.
What I want to know: why is my mouse moving so slowly in 480x640 when I have the hardware to play in higher settings, and on top of that having the mouse program in place and running as the TTLG sticky instructs. Also, how can I run the game in higher resolutions (say, 800x600 or 1024x768) and what do I need to do it.
That’s all I’ve got so far. Thanks for reading and more thanks in advance for any help or advice. Please question me if I left anything you need to know out.
Also, I'd like to mention that I run in hyperthread mode. Now I can play shock2 flawlessly after I disable the "2nd" processor (affinity 1 in the task manager, you probably know the trick if you’ve forced shock2 to run in XP.) shock1 doesn’t seem to care about 2 processors, hmm...