Act 0 - Proving Grounds

Hi, I'm new to this forum and to EoC.

I've got this little problem in the second mission (Proving Grounds): I leave Lucretia's station. After quite some time Clay tells me to go to the Waypoint he just provided (the one with the race-track-thingie). After my arrival, it takes a couple of minutes of absolute inactivity for him to tell me to fly through the rings/loops, do this under 3 minutes, shoot the five targets along the way or get 5 secs penalty for missing them. Ring 1 gets highlighted, Clay counts me in (3...2...1............................................go!), and off I go.

Trouble is, Ring 1 stays highlighted after flying through. Sometimes Ring 2 gets targeted after I finish the course, sometimes not. I've flown through the bloody rings fantastillions of times, I shot up the targets like there's no tomorrow (and for some reason, Clay actually acknowledges my shooting....long after I hit the respective targets), and Mr. Clay keeps telling me something like 'so, you're giving up? What are we supposed to do now?' after I finish my run, the clock under the reticle keeps ticking, nothing happens, I can't seem to finish the mission. Any suggestions?

I'm playing EoC on an AMD K7 600MHz machine, running Win 2K, with a Soundblaster Live!, GeForce 2MX 440, 512 MB of RAM (just in case that's got something to do with it).

Regards

Chloé

Is your game patched to version F14.6? If not, the patch can be found here:

i-war2.com/bugs_fixes.html





No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

Hi Shane,

Thanks for your reply, but yes, it is patched to 14.6. That was the first thing I did after running the game for the first time (I couldn't change the screen resolution in Win 2K (instant BSoD); Funny thing is, I could do it in Win 98SE, but then, I couldn't start the game in Win 98... instant ctd...)

Oh, and I do have the latest available drivers for my system, although I might downgrade the NVidia driver to 4073 again one of these days, just to see if it changes anything.

Chloé

Hi Chloe: It sounds like the problem is with your system. The game should run MUCH better under Windows 98SE. Since you have the patch, do a scandisk, defrag, clean out your Temp files, etc. I assume you're using a Geforce card. All the newer drivers (above 40) should be okay. I remember that I completed this "mission" by just steering through the rings using thrusters and joystick ("W" key default) and ended up with "a new course record." If the Waypoint doesn't automatically change, just accelerate to the next ring and steer through it (don't worry about minor collisions). Turn off Aim Assist to help you shoot the targets.

BB

Hi Blackbeard,

It sounds like the problem is with your system.

After giving the matter some thought, that's what I've come up with as well, especially after downloading different saved games and encountering exactly the same problems (messages appearing only after several minutes, if at all; random CTDs or BSoDs I can't reproduce; the works...). I'm going to install EoC on another machine now and give it some test runs. If it works there, fine. If not, well, I was going to build myself a new machine anyway, so I'll just leave it until then.

I assume you're using a Geforce card.

Yep. GeForce 2 MX 440. But not for much longer...

Thanks for your hints on completing the course. If I ever get the game to run smoothly, I'll give 'em a try. At the moment, however, my problem is that although I do complete the course easily under 1'30" and although I do hit the bloody targets, Mr. Clay does not credit me with my flying or my shooting and instead remarks about my giving up... Sometimes when I get to the race track waypoint, the rings aren't even there. Well. As I have been denied the pleasure of re-installing Windows for several months, this might be a good time to renew my acquaintance with Mr. Gates' pearl of software development...

Regards

Chloé

Right, Gentlemen, thanks a bunch for your help.
Tidying up my Win98 installation did the trick. It seems as if my NVidia display drivers were the bad guys - after de-installing them in protected mode and reinstalling the 4072 NVidia driver plus directX 9, EoC works like a charm.

Clay responds in time, the race-track is cleared, and there's even traffic around me li'l ship. Before that it was rather lonely out there in the Badlands...

Again, thank you.

Chloé