Tips & tricks & the blue screen of death

[Tales_From_Topographic_Oceans 0]

Here are a few things I have run into.

FIRST: I have had a problem of Windows 98 not shutting down after I play the game. After I close out of the game, and I click to "shut windows down" it would almost shut down but get that blue screen of death that has an error message. Well, I think I found the problem. After I close out of OPF, I go to Windows Explorer (file manager) and then click on Tools, and then Find. I type in the box: ~*.tmp, and then Find Now, and some temp file shows up. I delete that file, and windows shuts down ok. Not all temp files should be deleted--only the ones that have ~.

SECOND: On your graphics card settings (under display properties--windows desktop) if you have the antiailiasing (did I spell that right?) set too high (2x or 4 x), the game may run slow and sluggish. I kept having my mouse controls very sluggish and almost unresponsive. I would move my mouse to the right, and there was a delay. I went in and set the antiailiasing to the default setting which was "let programs control antiailiasing," and the game runs faster.

THIRD: I have a question. Pop in the OPF CD, and the game window comes up, click on button that says set preferences. There is a display setting with several options. 2 options are Direct 3D and the other is Direct 3D WH T&L. What is the difference? When I select Direct 3D, it works fine. When I select Direct 3D WH T&L, it causes strange lighting problems. In a night mission, the area I was at kept changing between being light and being dark. It was like someone was turning the light on and off. So, I replayed the mission with Direct 3D selected, and I did not have that problem. What is going on?

FYI: my graphics card is GeForce 2 MX400 64 MB. I have the latest XP drivers installed so I do not think it's the card.

[ALDEGA 0]

1: That's a safe disc problem.

2: This is completely normal. If you don't understand why this happens, search on google.com.

3: There are three options: one is Glide, the other two are Direct3D. The second D3D option (hw t&l) uses your videocards's Transform&Lighthing unit (if your videocard has one), instead of your system cpu. This should improve performance. (if a game supports this). Your videocard has a T&L unit. It should work fine in HW T&L mode. Try another driver if the current one doesn't work.

btw, which operating system are you using right now? Win98?

[Tales_From_Topographic_Oceans 0]

ALDEGA:

yES, Windows 98 SE.

My card says it has T & L. I will monitor the T & L setting in daylight missions and see.

Is the antiailiasing 2x and 4x the same thing as the AGP speed or are they 2 different things? I assume since my card is AGP 4x that it runs at that speed, and I do not have to adjust the speed tp 1x, 2x or 4x.

[ALDEGA 0]

AGP and FSAA are completely different things. They aren't relevant in any way.

AGP is a port (located on your motherboard) to which you can connect a(n) (agp) videocard.

FSAA is a way of reducing, if not eliminate, the so-called "jagged edges" (rough edges around objects). There are multiple ways to do this (multisampling, supersampling...). While offering a great improvement in visual quality, they all cause quite a drop in frame rate.