ulfh

Join Date 10/2010

can't dismiss first campaign cutscene

I can't seem to dismiss the first campaign cut scene. I've tried most of the obvious keys (esc, space - which triggers the next turn it seems), pressing mouse buttons, etc.

Also a lot of my menus look really weird with plain black text on top of what ever was there before. A lot of them also don't work. For instance, exit game pops up an icon on top of the options menu (this looks really bad) and two text fields. If I press "no" the exit "menu" disappears, but I can't press yes and exit the game. If I press the area between the two text fields, the game quits however.

I recently updated the gfx card driver, so it's not old drivers. I'm on a dual monitor set up.

I also can't make any of the options in the options menu change. They just don't respond to mouse clicks.

Edit: Sorry for bunching up so many problems in one post.

Edit2: I get no in game interface/hud. All icons are displayed on top of the "terrain".

Edit3: I get a lot lines similar to "DebugMessage: Error parsing file C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic\screens\MessageBoxWnd.dxscreen. Object of type (null) with OBJID MessageBox_Diologe_Back has wrong size before parsing scripts 0 x 280" in debug.err. I installed the game using Impulse.

Edit4: Pastebin of the debug.err log:

http://pastebin.ca/1977611

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

Please open your debug.err file in notepad, and link the contents into a post here via pastebin. This will give us some technical information that can help troubleshoot your problem.

The file can be found in My Documents\My Games\Elemental

Be sure to copy the debug immediately after the error occurs; if you start the game again, the debug log will be erased and recreated for the new session.

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Added a pastebin of the log.

http://pastebin.ca/1977611

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

It appears your UI screens are corrupted. Try clearing out the C:\ProgramData\Stardock\Elemental - War of Magic\Screens folder, and failing that, reinstall the game.

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So far I've upgraded my video drivers, and I've tried reinstalling the game.

I'll try your other suggestion of removing the Screens folder.

I should probably point out that the game never worked properly so there appears to be some problems with my install method (using Impulse) or something happening during the first startup. I also saw some funny settings (some very small screenOffsetX or similar) in prefs.ini, but I'm not at my computer atm, so I can't check those. I'll add it in an update.

Anyways, thanks for your help so far!

Edit: Removing the screens directory didn't help. The game behaves the same, and the same error messages can be found in debug.err. The screenOffsetX variables in the Prefs.ini file seem to be well behaved now. (I recreated the Prefs.ini file by removing it and restarting the game).

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I also tried adjusting the game resolution down to 1680x1050 and 1024x768, removing the Screens folder between each attempt, then restarting the game. That also did not help. My "native" resolution is 1920x1200. I'm not sure if this has any bearing on the problem, but I'm guessing that somehow those files in Screens/ are (re)generated at startup, and if the sizes are in pixel coordinates, ... well.

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have you tried a verify install in impulse?(open impulse, hold a shift key down, then right mouse click on elemental, then left mouse click on verify installation)

hope this helps

harpo

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Sadly, Impulse reports that Elemental is installed correctly.

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Where else can I turn to for help? I'm kind of hoping that I'm not the only one with this problem. If so, there's probably little hope I'll be able to play the game.

To reiterate the steps I've taken to try to correct the problem:

1. Reinstalled the game

2. Installed new drivers for my graphics card

3. Verified that the installation is correct using Impulse

4. Removed the Screens folder before starting up the game.

5. Experimented with different resolution by editing Prefs.ini in combination with step 4.

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I finally got the forum search feature to work and could plow through the issues other people had. There are a some threads on similar problems.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395677

https://forums.elementalgame.com/391849

https://forums.elementalgame.com/392309

Some suggestions were:

1. Update drivers

2. Reinstall windows

3. Change language settings to use US numeric format. (dot as decimal separator, and comma as thousands separator)

4. Restart the game

5. Remove the Screens folder

People are reporting success with a number of methods, or at first succeeding, then the problem returns. For me the problem (at least initially, haven't really played yet) was to try nr. 3.

I imagine that this should be considered a bug, because it will affect people like me who's numeric format is set to US, yet when I dig into it I notice that it wasn't at all like the US numeric format. What is apparent from the threads above is that it's been a problem since 1.06+ or so.

Anyways, thanks for helping out. I can now play the game, or at least see the first menu.

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