Can't Start Game

[foxtrotsierra64]

I purchased and downloaded game and installed it with no problem. Shows version 1.02. When I start game i tgoes through all introductory and then comes to screen that has a pop up stating must play tutorial and how to get to tutorial. I clicked on "Play" then"Campaign". At this point it locks up. When I hit Ctrl/Alt/Del a message box labeled "Direct Show Texture 3D9 Sample" comes up with message hr=0x80004005". What is my problem?

I clicked on "New Game" then "Campaign", not "Play" then "Campaign." Also, If I hit "New Game" then"Skirmish" I seem to get into the game.

[pipfromslitherine]

It sounds like a bug which is caused by misbehaving codecs. They sometimes get installed by burning software etc. I did manage to build an EXE which works around this issue (hopefully).

If you could download the tweaked EXE from

http://www.slitherine.com/files/gbotma/ ... ignore.zip

and see if it fixes your issue, that would be great. You'll need to extract the EXE file from the zip (remember that windows might helpfully block it as it is a downloaded EXE) and place it in the install folder for the game (you'll see a GBM.EXE file in there already). Hopefully it will do the trick! Note that shortcuts etc will all be pointing to the old EXE, so be sure to test by directly running the new EXE. Once we are happy it fixes your issue, you can rename the original EXE to GBM_OLD.EXE and then rename this new one to GBM.EXE and all the shortcuts will then point to the new EXE.

I hope this will solve your issue.

Cheers

Pip

[foxtrotsierra64]

Your fix worked perfectly until I got into tutorial screen where I am supposed to click on the flag to select campaign. The program then locks up and I get message "Could not find output pin hr=0x80040216." Any ideas? Should I redownload the whole program and reinstall. Look, it's Thanksgiving so there is no rush for an answer. Yes, I would like to get going on the game, but if you need a couple of days for the holiday (I suppose you celebrate it) before you answer I'm ok with it. Slitherine has always been good to me.

I also bought the "History Great Battles of Rome" and I'm experiencing a similar problem. I go into the game and the first few screens come up ok. When I get to screen where the tutorial states click on "Campaign" button when I hit the button the program locks up. Can you help with this also? Do I need to also place this question under the Rome game forum?

[pipfromslitherine]

Hmmm - this sounds more like either the codecs required are not on your machine at all (which would be odd, as we only use those installed as standard on Windows), or they are very broken (in that they cannot playing the movies). Can you let me know what version of windows you are running on, etc.

Alternatively, rename the MOVIES folders in the DATA\CAMPAIGNS folders. This will stop it trying to play the movies at all, and should let you into the game.

Cheers

Pip

[foxtrotsierra64]

For both games when they locked up I hit "Escape" and both games seem to progress without further problems. Thanks again for your assistance. I'm using Widows 7. My machine has 8gb of memory and dual core processor.