Battlezone 1

Hello all.

I have played Battlezone since my early childhood, and it is an integral part of my game collection.

The XP machine I ran it on recently bought it, so I upgraded to an immensely powerful Windows 7 laptop, knowing as I did so that I would doubtlessly face error after error trying to run my childhood favorite.

After installing the original Battlezone, I was able to quickly fix all issues I had by installing Ken Miller's 1.5 patch, and it now works flawlessly. However, I also acquired a copy of The Red Odyssey recently, and things are not going so well for that. Installation went smoothly, and the 'not enough memory' error was easily dealt with by running the program in XP(sp2) compatibility mode, but when I finally got the game started, it ran the intro, then promptly crashed with an error reading B607-E277. When I tried to restart the game, it asked if I wanted to run in Hardware or Software mode. Remembering someone mentioning that Software mode would circumvent some errors, I tried that, but now the game runs with certain blocks of the ingame textures turning to random colours.

Since the 1.5 patch obviously is not applicable to The Red Odyssey, does anyone have a fix for this? I'm experienced with the deeper inner workings of games, so straight-up code modifications are perfectly acceptable.

Thanks for your time

Welcome to Battlezone!

Could you please post your system specifications? We need to know:

Operating System: Windows 7, is it 32 bit or 64 bit?
How much RAM?
What graphics card?

It sounds like you installed BZ and RO separately from their CDs, rather than using the Battlezone 1998 Installer which includes both, along with the latest patches already applied. It would be a good idea to install Battlezone 1998, and then see if you still have a problem running BZ/RO.

If you expect to play with the current BZ players, we need to get your BZ 1.4 working. Red Odyssey has all the same issues as BZ 1.4, so if we end up making your BZ 1.4 work, RO should work too. 1.5 is still in testing phase, otherwise all players would be there 100% of the time.

I'm running a Toshiba Satellite L675, and the specs are as follows:

OS: Windows 7 Home 64 bit
Core: i5 M460 quad, 2.53 GHz
RAM: 4.0 GB
Video: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470, 2224 MB of VRAM

Anything else you need?
Is there anywhere I should post this for future reference?

Thanks so much for referring to the 1998 installer! Never has something quite that awesome been done to Battlezone, I've spent hundreds of hours trying to scrounge together all the little scraps and pieces that you guys have tied together into one package of epic. I'm halfway through the download right now; I'll let you know how things work when it's finished.

Thanks so much for your help!

You won't be able to play BZ 1.4/RO 1.3 while using ATI card on your Win7 laptop (unless you like ugly SW mode or buggy WIN mode), but since you have i5 processor, you have additional integrated card. After installing BZ98 installer simply switch your cards. I believe on Toshiba you have to do that over graphics card software (Lenovo has a switch).

Thanks again for the help, but I'm having some difficulty figuring out how exactly to switch between dedicated and integrated.

I've done some looking through my computer, and didn't notice any sort of dedicated video configuration program, like my old NVidia-based computer had. Google searches have been next to useless, as people rarely ask how to do this and I keep getting pulled off into product description pages. Even when people are asking this question, it always seems to be for desktop machines rather than laptops, and the discussions dissolve into the specifics of the motherboard and video card configuration. I suppose I could go straight into my device manager and disable the card, but that would also disable video output, wouldn't it?

Any suggestions?

Forgive my newbiness, I'm better with straight-up programming than software and hardware interaction.

I posted on that other topic for the future references. We can continue talking about your issue here. Those SS's are from my HP laptop which has the same processor as yours (I'm pretty sure you made a mistake when you said quad core, since 460m is dual core).

I'm afraid my computer doesn't have either of the first two options that appear in your right-click menu.

I've been looking into the whole matter further, and from what I can see, there are three different ways computers swap between power and battery life.
First, there's manual, like what you have, and what I want.
Second, there's automatic full, which chooses which core to use depending on what's most efficient.
Then there's the kind mine seems to have, automatic incremental, which balances out tasks assigned to each core with the intent of keeping battery life and performance equalized.

I'm still trying to find a manual override, if there is one. I'm downloading fresh display drivers with the hope that it'll maybe add a feature there wasn't before, or direct me to one that I didn't know the location of.

There's also the option of direct BIOS adjustments; I'll look into that when the download finishes.


Oh, and when I said my my processor was a quad, I was fairly certain. DXDIAG lists it as a quad, and the device manager recognizes four cores. But DXDIAG does also list it as an M460, so either there is a dual and a quad variant for the same model, or DXDIAG is getting screwed up somewhere.

I got a fancy configuration tool with my new drivers, but it didn't have any relevant settings.

EDIT: Just got back from my BIOS. There was an option that allowed you to manipulate the parameters of the automatic CPU frequency adjustment, but that was as close as it got. Pity there was no equivalent for the graphics processor.

I've got a new idea; posted about it here.
http://www.battlezone1.org/the-ultimate-solution-t1818.html

Like I said there, VMware allows SW mode only, so that won't help you.

When you go in Device Manager, do you see 2 cards?

No, just one.
Christ, this just gets better and better XD