Steel Panthers bug ?

Jolly Roger · 01-21-2010, 11:52 PM,

Hi folks,

did anybody else experience suddenly changing colours of the SP screen.
Looks like splashing, mainly blue & purple, colours.
Assume this problem is related to windows XP service pack 3.

Did anybody fix that problem ?

Cheers, Klaus

junk2drive · 01-22-2010, 12:25 AM,

Check over at the Depot if you mean SPWAW. I remember seeing some posts.

Jolly Roger · 01-22-2010, 01:33 AM,

Checked it meanwhile, but can´t find a post on this subject.
It happened in SPWW2, SPMBT and SPWAW as well.

Cheers, Klaus

Cross · 01-22-2010, 02:05 AM,

I run WinXP SP3 and have no colour problems on WW2, MBT or WaW.

Perhaps it's a problem with your video card, or graphics drivers?

Weasel · 01-22-2010, 04:14 AM,

I get the neon colours when I played the DOS versions, I am sure it is video card/game related. BTW - if you google XP SP3 you will see tons of posts from computer gurus saying to stay away from it. It causes lots of problems and the best part is you can't undelete it completely, you have to reinstall.

I was going to install it but did some research first, once I did that I said thanks but no thanks.

Jolly Roger · 01-22-2010, 07:25 AM,

Hi folks,

thanks for your replies.
It´s a very strange problem, as I run all SP versions without problems for approximately 10 months and now these annoying colour splashes reoccured.
I really hope, Matrix and Shrapnel would use a new game code and leave the old tracks for the future.

Cheers, Klaus

Weasel · 01-22-2010, 01:32 PM,

My bet is SP3 is messing around. CRAP!!!!!!!!

low_bidder · 01-23-2010, 04:29 AM,

I used to have this happen ALL the time.
The manual says to 'alt'-'tab' release to return to desktop, then click back on the game. You can do this while the turn is running without losing anything or bumpin the turn counter.
Backing to desktop clears the buffers and short term memory. IIRC, it also clears out the cache memory (L1, L2). I got tired of doing that a lot since the chip I'm running has no L2 cache and I starting researching it and found that if I turn off cideamon.exe BEFORE starting a turn it helps a lot.
You do that by using the old 3 finger salute (alt-ctrl-del release) then selecting processes from the box that pops up. cidaemon.exe should be near the top of the list. Right click on it and select "shut down" then "yes"
I'm running SP in XP home. It might not work like that is some other windoze version.
One day I will figure out how to run MBT under WINE and toss windozes in the trash where it belongs.

Iwo Jim · 01-23-2010, 10:00 AM,

I have this happen all the time since using new laptop with Vista Alt&Ecs minimizes the game to task bar then just click on it again to return it to full screen and should return colors to normal this usally works for me, on other problem I've noticed playing any version of spwaw is using the artillery screen game acts very sluggish trying to plot a shoot is very as you have to keep left clicking to try and select a hex....has anyone else had this problem

Imp · 01-23-2010, 10:36 AM,

(01-23-2010, 04:29 AM)low_bidder Wrote: Backing to desktop clears the buffers and short term memory. IIRC, it also clears out the cache memory (L1, L2). I got tired of doing that a lot since the chip I'm running has no L2 cache and I starting researching it and found that if I turn off cideamon.exe BEFORE starting a turn it helps a lot.

Are you sure?
unless you lose stuff on your computer a lot try adjusting your file search settings to basic & cidemon.exe wont run. It records where stuff is on the harddisk to a logfile for searching purposes only to speed up but how often do you search for stuff?
Tried alt tabing & could not see any real diffrence cache dropped 1-3MB thats all. Perhaps if you are very short on memory starting another process/program clears the cache some do try & create as much space to run in as possible, increasing your page file might help.