game freezes! cant play

[devmehta]

The intro to the game runs very smootly and then it takes me to inside the globe thing and it runs very well also, but as soon as I click on 'garden' the screen goes black (presumably loading), but it stays black for an unreasonable amount of time because it freezes.. I cant ctrl+alt+del or anything.. and like 1 second of sound loops over and over again if that helps.. I wouldnt think it is a graphics issue as the starting portion of the game runs fine.

I have a p4 2.2, 512mb ddr, 32mb radeon 9000, laptop

any suggestions? Is there a load screen that is supposed to come up when i click on 'garden'?

thanks

[The GoldFish]

Sounds to me like a classic candidate for ATI drivers with a hacked inf so they support Laptops (for example, the 3rd party omega drivers, from what I'm told at least) - this is because most laptop manufacturers are very lazy about keeping their drivers up to date and prevent you from using the standard reference drivers, and Darwinia is especially finicky about how up to date the drivers it's run with are.

The other possibility is adding 'RenderLandscapeMode = 1' into your preferences file (ensuring there is an empty line at the end of the file), but this is less likely to fix it since you probably mention it working before applying the 1.21 patch.

[devmehta]

ahhh yes.. ok, i installed the omega drivers and it runs perfectly!! I wish i knew i could install other drivers before.. i thought i had to stick to dell drivers for my laptop vid card.. but yeah, this is much better.. it makes the game run at about 5 fps faster too.

Thanks

[Dr4goN]

That's the power of the Omegas!