cwbuckley on 15/1/2003 at 00:35
description : I have installed and played Arx Fatalis at times with no problem. My problem is that after my computer has sat for 30 minutes to an hour after rebooting, if I try to double click or in anyway try to run Arx Fatalis, nothing happens. I have d/l latest drivers. Both video and audio. I have a computer big enough to handle this game. I have a Nvidia gforce 4 mx420 pci 64mb ram. philips psc 703 audio card and running xp. I have even tried installing your latest patch without any luck. If I reboot the computer, then I am able to play the g! ame. Hope that you can help me. Thanks in advance. Chuck
addink on 15/1/2003 at 10:41
I gathered from the (
http://forum.jowood.com/showthread.php?threadid=11892) jowood arx tech forum that you can only run the game
once after a reboot. I assume you have to reinstall after that one go.
This is indeed strange behaviour.
Did you check whether you can initiate a second 'one time' startup if you don't make any saves? or have you tried deleting the 'current' directory*) from the saves dir?
Have you tried deleting the config.ini?
AFAIK (and as far as it should be) Arx doesn't change any files, apart from the obvious config and save files. All of which can be deleted without stopping Arx from functioning.
So there
should be no reason, to be unable to start a clean game for the second time at start up...
Maybe even (a definate maybe) with the 'current' dir gone and/or config.ini gone, you can load a save file and continue where you left... (if it doesn't, also try to start a new game and then load the previous one)
maybe you've tried this already, anyway, good luck with every thing...
cheers.
*) the 'current' directory is just some swap space, used used by arx to keep track of changes you made in sections other than the one you're walking in. I've tried to figure out a reason why this dir isn't deleted on exit, and I haven't found one; possibly Arkane initially had a system in mind similar to UltimaIX (automatically starting where you left).
cwbuckley on 15/1/2003 at 14:21
Thanks for trying to help. After I reboot, I can start the game from the arx fatalis icon. Then I can go into a new game or saved game. I can then exit out of the game, go back and restart the game over again, and again and it will work ok. If I stay away from the game and say go back in 30 to an hour later, then when I click on the icon the hour glass comes up for a few seconds and goes away. I can open the cd rom drive and close it and the menu will come up. When I click on play the same thing will happen. However, like I have said if I reboot the computer and then go back to the arx fatalis icon and click on it, it will load ok.
I have not tried to delete the config.ini file. I agree with you, that there just isn't any reason why this thing shouldn't work like it is suppose.
Again, thanks for the help. If you or anybody else has any other ideas, please let me know.
Chuck
donbdn on 27/1/2003 at 15:29
There are two v.1.15 patches. The first one didn't let the game even start. I got a different v.1.15 patch from Jowood. Good luck.
Don
Ziusudra on 31/1/2003 at 00:10
It sounds to me like it might be a problem with your power settings in XP. Try setting all the options to 'Never'.
If that doesn't solve the problem, it could be a piece of hardware power saving on it's own.
I'm pretty sure it is not a problem with the game itself.
