Windows 7 ST Game Install & Run Issues with Solutions

[black_dranzer]

Does anyone know if it's possible to get Armada to work on Windows 7? It installs fine, and will go to the menu fine, but when I try and start a game it just gets stuck with the loading screen flickering and I have to Alt+F4 out of it.

Any help would be appreciated

[ktegate]

Dunno if this is a dead post or not if it is i apologize in advanced. Me and a few old armada vets like 14 of us play late night on game ranger. We all use windows 7 to keep the game from going out of sync. i will try my best to give you guys a check list to do it may help. Also if you want to come play online you can do.

Checklist:

-Install armada on windows 7
-Patch to 1.2
-go to armada Dir C:/program files/activistion/star trek - armada
-right click on armada.exe - properties (here comes the fun part)
-go to compatibility tab
-set it for windows xp sp2
-run in 256 colors
-set to run as administrator
-Check armada CD is in the drive and gl have fun

Note: that Sometimes lowering the screen resolution May help fix some gfx problems. Also there are problems known with some sound cards which is more complex to fix and results in screen lag or slow down we are trying to find a way way to fix this. Another noted problem is on machines with more then 2 GB ram, armada seems to hate going over 2gb and makes it run into the negatives telling u not enough disk space.

For online play, won servers are no longer supported o joy. So we use Game ranger, which is a free small program and is able to host armada as well as other games. I'll walk you threw online.

-Google, Game Ranger (not hard to find)
-Download, install, register.
-run and connect and you will shown a list of games
-click on the top bar community
-click: search user
-Enter acct ID: 1221160
-That's me, and i will try help out with any other issues.

[ktegate]

just to be sure you did make sure 256 colours was ticked?
Also try lowering the ingame screen resoloution and see if playing with that helps. if not be sure to reply back, im guesisng ur running a nvidia card ?

if you need it doing asap and ur shaking from withdrawl u can always contant me on game ranger :P.

[black_dranzer]

Rett Mikhal wrote:

---

I use a program to run old games called Palette Stealer Suspender. I know it works to prevent color muck ups in Age of Empires, it might help with your black screen issue. It's a free download. Just google, download, install, open it, and browse to the .exe file.

Hope that helps. I'd like to drag this one and SFC3 out and play again. I only ever got SFC3 to connect to a friend's computer via LAN once, and for some damned reason you can't use transporters when human players are in the game. Totally lame, there goes 50% of my strategy!

Thanks for the suggestion, still got the same freezing cutscenes and garbled screen though

Never played SFC3 over LAN, as I never knew anyone else who had it lol, but it works fine on my Windows 7....

ktegate wrote:

---

just to be sure you did make sure 256 colours was ticked?
Also try lowering the ingame screen resoloution and see if playing with that helps. if not be sure to reply back, im guesisng ur running a nvidia card ?

if you need it doing asap and ur shaking from withdrawl u can always contant me on game ranger :P.

Yeah I made sure 256 colours was ticked, just tried it again to make sure but still no luck Tried with the lowest screen res as you suggested too but no joy Yeah I'm running a nvidia geforce 8500GT 1gb.

I'm not shaking from withdrawals as I have Vista dual-booted on my PC and it works on that, but it's just a lot of hassle to have to keep rebooting to switch over and I'd prefer to have it running on 7 lol.

Thanks for all the help so far though both of you

[Deks]

It's the RAM issue.
As it was already mentioned, Armada refuses to run on systems over 2GB of RAM (and no amount of messing with the properties will change that).

I think in such situations, it would be best to install XP in a virtual machine (as a virtual OS) and allocating 1.5 or 2GB to it... but you have to make sure that 3d acceleration is supported by the Virtual machine software in question.

Either that, or installing XP on a separate partition and use the inf file to limit the amount of detectable/usable RAM.

[ktegate]

Ugh i hate the problems with ram and armada, in xp u could modiify the boot.ini and tell it u only had 2 gb :P. Not sure if samething would be possible on windows 7. i'll do alittle digging and see what i can pull up for you. i'll post bak later with results i hope

[ktegate]

try this program

3D ANALYZE V2.26

[SIZE=1]3D-Analyze is a tool for transform and lightning hardware emulation. So it is very useful for running TnL games on video cards that have not on board dedicated circuits for TnL calculations (like all Voodoo, Kyro, some Radeon and older). It uses power of central processing unit to do emulation.

3d analyze is a Graphics Card Emulator that can emulate all the feature of a 3d graphics card like pixelshader 1.1, 1.4, 2.0, bump maps and a lota stuff. If a game stops running on your system just because u dont have a graphics card, dont worry 3d analyze will do it for ya. run 3danalyze select the game exe, select a few options u wanna emulate and there u go the game run perfectly now.[/SIZE]


i havent tested it as i run an ati, but if you could give me feedback that would be great. If this works for you don't be shy and come play online XD.

[black_dranzer]

Deks wrote:

---

How much RAM do you have on your Vista machine?

4gb, it's the same machine as my Windows 7 one...

[black_dranzer]

ktegate wrote:

---

tbh sta 2 was really different couldn't help, but feel they gave more to fan service then to actual game play. alot of the weapons dmg and and ships were altered so much it no longer felt like armada where u could yard rush bombers. it was enjoyable for the story.

Yeah I'll completely agree that Armada 2 was awful, but FleetOps just makes it SO much better lol, it's like an entirely new game - new ships, the ability to choose different avatars for races that give you bonuses, upgraded graphics, customisable and more realistic Borg ships (cubes and spheres now take multiple ships to take on, more like in the series), warp has been taken out....it just feels like a different game to be honest. There's a load of commentated replays on youtube if you wanted to see what the gameplay etc is like...

really it didn't work ? did u try emulate software tnl and hardware tnl for direct x =/. sorry to hear it, if not try using one of the codes they give u to make it appear as an ati card in the game might work :P

Yeah I tried all of those Still no luck

are ur vista and windows 7 systems on 2 diff computers? if so try dual booting windows 7 onto the vista just to test armada XD if it works then guess just depends how much ur admit about getting it to work :P.

Yeah they're on the same computer. Annoying that Armada goes OOS with different operating systems

[Titiuu]

If you're like me and refused to throw this good game away in hopes they'd ever come up with an XP patch, you're in luck.

If you install this game, and click properties in the game's .exe files, and under the compatibility tab, check (or uncheck, I can't remember, but essentially make the computer worse) the available boxes (I'd be a good computer engineer, you can tell).

Then run the game. Before, the game always crashed on XP the minute Riker was beaming down to Amargosa.

When the screen STARTS to fade from the observatory, right-click. You then get the game loading screen with the proceed button, and Riker's on his way to Amargosa. I'd guess the right-clicking skips the video coming up, which crashes the game. Right-click every time you're leaving the observatory, so you get the mission that follows.

Also keep in mind that alt+ctrl+up arrow rotates the screen 90 degrees. You may need it later, but at all costs avoid hitting the Windows key.

Not sure if it'll run on Vista or 7, but it runs fine on XP.

(Sorry if this has been posted before, searched and couldn't find it.)

[Mark_Nguyen]

Hi gang, I recently upgraded my PC to a Win7 machine and I've dusted off the original Bridge Commander - I've read it still works fine on 7, and would like to give it a try as it's been quite some time.

Questions:

- I have two monitors, how does BC fare on that? Do I jsut get a blacnk second screen in 7?

- What is the sequence of installs for the patches / whatever from bcfiles? Back on the XP machine I got a couple crashes as I loaded it up... I wonder if there's a better order to upgrade the basic machine?

-Since I haven't in quite some time, I'm gonna go through the story mode first. Will BC handle all the latest model upgrades in that, or should I just leav it be?

Thanks for any pointers!

Mark

[MANT!]

Well for Starfleet Command I got it to run using the following method I was turned on to in another thread..

1. Insert CD and run setup exe as administrator.

2. Once files are loaded, go into the install directory. across the top where the name, size, type is located click on the file type.

3. then click on applications, to bring up only the exe files..

4. Right click on each exe file. click on properties, click on compatibility tab.

5. put a check in compatibility mode for (WTF!) windows 2000...go figure.

6. Now the boring stuff... put a check in both visual themes and desktop composition and run in admin.

7. if you want to be real sure click on the show setting for all users tab and redo the whole process once more.

This method also works with Klingon Honor Guard and several other Non-trek games...

[daedalus5]

Mark_Nguyen wrote:

---

Hi gang, I recently upgraded my PC to a Win7 machine and I've dusted off the original Bridge Commander - I've read it still works fine on 7, and would like to give it a try as it's been quite some time.

Questions:

- I have two monitors, how does BC fare on that? Do I jsut get a blacnk second screen in 7?

- What is the sequence of installs for the patches / whatever from bcfiles? Back on the XP machine I got a couple crashes as I loaded it up... I wonder if there's a better order to upgrade the basic machine?

-Since I haven't in quite some time, I'm gonna go through the story mode first. Will BC handle all the latest model upgrades in that, or should I just leav it be?

Thanks for any pointers!

Mark

Install BC as normal (no difference for Win 7). Install the patch and thats it! I'd recommend the Kobayashi Maru expansion from www.bcfiles.com.

Not tried it on multiscreen - I wouldn't imagine it'd work (but would be great if it did!)

[Scottish Andy]

Hello all;

I like repeatedly returning to this game and playing it, even over large spans of time where I cannot get it to run on a particular OS or machine.

I have been playing this game on my work laptop (Dell Latitude E6500 running WinXP SP3) after getting it to work there using the Win NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5) compatibility mode.

I have just bought myself a new Gateway DX4320 Win7 machine with quad 2.9GHz Athalon processors and 4Gb of RAM. Many other of my ST games work, including 'Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates' and 'Bridge Commander'. However, 'Birth of the Federation' and 'New Worlds' will not run. BotF freezes within a minute of game play, and NW will not start up the actual game, even though the intro movie and set-up/mission selection screens do work.

I tried duplicating the settings my laptop used, but to no avail. I've tried selecting all combinations of the checkboxes, as well as each compatibility mode. I've even reduced my screen resolution to 1024x768, turned off the Win7 advanced graphics (composition) and attempted it with the laptop settings; it simply will not start the game.

I've recently read that the game is just not happy with a 64-bit system and/or with over 2Gb of RAM.

Can anyone offer any knowledge/advice/help?

Thanks,

Andy

[StalwartUK]

BOTF runs just fine on my machine. There are a few patches around that fix issues it has with newer OSes/hardware.

I haven't had any luck in running New Worlds however. It's always been temperamental at best.