WC4 DVD Won't Play Choices

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anomaly
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Anomaly

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I used ghoulika's MCI dll and the game starts up perfectly. I used the Ac3 filters as well and sound, video, all perfect.

As soon as I get to the first "choice" scene, when I have to "help out" the guy or "straighten out" the guy, no matter which option I choose, the video won't play. It stays frozen at the frame where it stopped to give me the choice. I get audio when I mouse over the option, but the video won't advance. It continued to the next two sets of options, again the video was frozen (this time the text from the old options weren't removed, simply overlaid).

Then it went straight to the first mission with Maniac, which plays fine.

I have Windows XP and a DVD-ROM but no Dxr card. What should I do? (game is run using win95 compatibility mode also)
 
No this isn;t the problem. If the game were not in focus, I wouldn't be able to use the mouse to switch between choices and hear Hamill's voiceover.
 
Anomaly, I'm having the same problem as you on my desktop computer, although I kinda stopped trying to hammer it out once I was able to get it to work on my laptop. On my game, it plays the intro video, then allows me to select Blair's options. Beyond that, I have no more video. I can continue to select other options, but once the selection in that scene is complete, my entire computer freezes, forcing me to reboot. As far as the hardware/software configuration you mentioned, I have mine set up the same way. There's a very good thread on getting the WC DVD to work here, which I'm sure you've read if you've come this far. I'll read through it again later today and if I come up with anything, I'll post it here.

BTW, (to reiterate) is anyone at all also having this problem?
 
My problem is not nearly that severe as I can access the Task Manager and forcibly close WC4DVD at any time, but otherwise the problem seems similar.

Mine will go all the way to the first mission, which even plays fine. The issue is, its not playing the intervening FMV segments, and that's what the game's all about.
 
Well...there might be a million reasons why it's not working on your system. I think my dll is pretty stable, it works for most users. There might be some DirectShow incompatibilities, so I'll need more info to try to debug this. Read about the debug version in the other thread, also try to be more specific about your system...DX version would be most helpful.
 
I'm running DirectX 9.0b. Attached is wc4.txt which is the log from the debug dll.

I ran the game several times and it crashed (of the "WC4DVD has encountered an error, send/do not send error report?" variety) twice. Three other times it ran the same as before, would play intro clip up to first text branch and then not play intervening video after a selection was made.

The log is from an instance where it successfully loaded but skipped the intervening video.
 

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I was just reviewing the log file :D From what I can tell there seems to be a similar problem as Ligos splitter bug. For some reason Mpeg-2 splitter is used instead of Mpeg-2 Demultiplexor. It might be that the splitter filter is not Microsoft one (since XP should default to demultiplexor). This is definitely DirectShow problem since for some reason it also takes 3s to load the video, when it should be done in less than a second. Let me see if I can think of a way to get around all the buggy splitters...
 
Please try this version: dxmci_debug.zip. It should fix the spillter issue if this is the case. Any further problems, please attach the new log file (don't forget c:\graph.log as well ;) ). Hope it works!
 
OK... now the game instantly gives an error message saying "Error rendering - 0x80040111" and then skips to the first dialogue branch (having shown no video). Then after I choose one, it crashes saying WC4DVD has encountered a problem and needs to close, we are sorry for the inconvenience, send error report, blah blah.

I should add I tried reinstalling Nimo 9.1 beta, then uninstalled it and reinstalled Nimo 8. Same problem.

See attached. BTW, thanks so much for your help man, obviously you are instrumental here in keeping WC alive for those of us who never got to play the canon games when they came out.
 

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argh...this is exactly why I hate codec packs! Never had one & everything always works for me. They only create a mess with a bunch of filters nobody ever needs. OK...as I can see from graph.log, the new dll had absolutely NO effect. You can try the old version and you'll get the same error. It seems that the Nimo pack (IMO the worst of the bad :p) somehow deleted ALL mpeg-2 splitters, so the game can't even start to play the video. I have no idea how to solve this mess. The best bet would be to uninstall the pack (and hope it cleans the mess it made), search for koepi on google and get only xvid codec (this will take care of all you divx avis ;) ). Then reinstall mpeg2dec & ac3filter. If it still gives you the same error, try to manually re-register the splitter (open command prompt and type 'regsvr32 mpg2splt.ax', be sure to be in your windows\system32 directory). This should make the game work.
 
Goodness gracious, people who are payed to do such things seldon do sucha a great job in keeping things working. You should be named a Saint by the Pope or something.
 
That did it. Everything works perfectly now, though the video lags, particularly during hyper jump movies, it re-syncs after a bit.

You sir, have my appreciation. And your efforts on this forum definitely don't seem to go unnoticed.
 
Hehe...I don't think I really deserve to be named a Saint :D Always glad to help.

@Anomaly: lags? There might be a short pause when video clip is changed, maybe even a bit longer if the disc stops spinning...but this should be almost unnoticable.
 
No, the lags are significant at times, they will cause a video to freeze to a single frame or to go black for as long as 4-5 seconds, then suddenly resume. When it resumes, it plays all the missing segments really fast in order to sync back up to the sound, which continues uninterrupted. These have almost always happened when a video is shown of Blair walking around (they are reused everytime he travels somewhere on the carrier).

Sometimes both sound and video simultaneously cut out, then come back. This happens whenever a video plays of the carrier jumping. My DVD is unscratched and looks really new, though I got it used on eBay.

Still they aren't enough to seriously detract from the game, and I suspect it would be unworthy of your attention. Nevertheless I attached the graph log if you have time to kill. I went into the game, loaded a game, watched a briefing, played around with the terminal, then exited.

BTW, this is OT but how the heck do you quit? I have to hit CTRL ESC and close the game using Task Manager and I know there has to be a better way.

Again, my thanks.
 

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ALT+X should work in all WC games.
Also the computer screen where you load and save should have a quit button.
 
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