CB..

the original PC version of the game the game freezes during the very first cut scene after Jill encounters the first zombie and runs back into the dining room..the famous barry speech occurs "What IS this?...what IS THIS "..etc then the game freezes and wont continue.. i know i've read about this problem some-where but cannot find the answer..

how do i prevent windows management from running during normal use time..\ (ie when playing a game or some such activity) as it allways slows the cmputer down to a snails pace (games especailly suffer)..i can't find any reference to it in the scheduled programme section or anywhere else for that matter..i would like to be able to limit it's running time to inactive periods only? any one have any thoughts?

many thanks guys!

many thanks for the info... having difficulty finding a way to implement the methods tho...no available options on winmgt.exe and i can't see winmgt or a route thru to the registry from msconfig could you elaborate just a little..and what does winmgt actually do..sounds like something connected to system restore (which i have allready disabled) EDIT;;; i have had a dig around and based on what you have described here and one or two other thoughts i've read...i ran WBEMCNT.EXE and reduced the back up time from every 30 minutes to every 5 hours (being too cautiuos to disable the back completely) does this sound ok?

i'm going to insist they write "what IS this...? what IS THIS?" on my grave stone....

had strange game installation issues with direct 9c.. one or two games have failed to recognise that 9C is installed (dxdiag confirms it is installed tho) one even tried to install directx 9b saying it was newer than the version i had on my pc..as an experiment i let it install..(the game wouldn't run so i thought it might help) but even tho it ran through the installation routine perfectly normally ..dxdiag confirmed i still had 9c installed..gawd knows what's going on

most excellent!! thanks!! i had the feeling it was something perculiar along those lines... just couldn't figure it out.. bit of a wierd bug to have in a game like this (you would have thought they might have noticed it during beta testing!!,,,wierd) thank you again..it's still the best version of the game by far..

ok after running thru the campaign a few times to test the variuos reg entrys for effectiveness on the in game AI..i think the best results for a balanced campaign have to be via the (tweaks section) ai build resfac 90.00000 this forces the AI to concentrate on research resources and buildingconstructors/factorys.. and in (Research) human open rate 105 martian open rate 105 these entrys combine to give an enemy that puts a lot of efort into getting the best units it can make onto the frontline against you..i was coming up against level three martian units before i had built my first level three factory and had seen my first Tempest martian death walker at about the same point in the game as normally you would see your first martian flying machine...(yikes) great stuff and works for both sides equally.. talking to myself here i know but what the heh it might be use-full to somebody sometime..

here's the sort of effect i was wishing for... and it shows the game can take an huge increase in time before a pod lands.. setting the reg pod interval to 960 means one pod landing per month.. setting the reg invasion threshold time fairly low means the Marsian home base will immeditaely invade even tho it is on it's own.. this gives you time to build control centres in, and reinforce the Scotish sectors because the individual Mars units are so strong it's not really feasible to attack but you can defend effectively and infiltrate using the mortar bike to take out the Marsian resources as it builds and whilst the scouts/fighting machines are else-where...cat and mouse sort of thing.. with the general vehicle enhancements set so ..well..enhanced in the reg for the Marsians and coupled with the fact that the AI randomly chooses an enhancement to research (spotted this via the exe file entrys with the old hex editor) this means that if the AI researchs the impact resistant armour first then you are in real trouble, as they will be able to over run your bases..if it chooses the tight beam enhancement then you can survive using the tactics mentioned before (lol) the interesting part about this is that as the AI lands a pod in a random Scottish sector once a month..if it lands one in one of your held Scottish sectors then you can usually reppell them and wipe them out ...if it lands in a Marsian area then of course this rienforces the Marsian invasion abilties...this being random it dramatically effects the progress of the campaign...AND is a major factor in making each replay a different and unpredictable affair.. which is negated in the stock set up simply because they all land in Marsian held ares or undefended or undefendable areas..so they get full strength each play thru.. getting the balance right is the thing i suppose between the Marsian enhanced armour/weapons /the aggression and the invasion threshold-outnumber force settings...mind you if the AI ever actually does research the drones early or the tempest later on then it will be devasting..one level three drone can take out any base you can build...in about 15 seconds.. tactical nukes amungo.. i have limited the number of units per area to 4 this means i cannot simply build 15 units of tanks and rush the enemy..not without a lot of organisation any way..and with the massive range of the Marsian heat rays after the enhancement they are usually badly beat up before they get close enough to take out the enemy bases...great game this im not a huge RTS fan...but this game isn't like most RTS games, it's not mission based..and isn't an ego trip to play..(ie the stupid "mission based-failed try again-i'm on level four"beat the campaign gameplay of other rts games... WoTW actually is a GAME, in the same sense that Monopoply was/is a game /ie it invites the same imaginative involvement and interest that the best of the old board games did (and still do) it doesn't try to impress you with computerised this and computerised that..it's a good solid game..using old fashioned tried and tested since the dawn of man gameplay elements..wonderfull...thank you Jeff Wayne and Rage software...(and H.G Wells for a marvellous story line) i hear there's some hope of a new version.. like most things i guess they will try to bring every thing up to date and in the process risk losing the genuine atmosphere and thought-fullness in the 98 version...really lets face it..all they need to do is up date the 3d battle map, models, effects and the AI.....now that would be MY idea of an up-date.. there's absolutely nothing wrong with the war room concept graphics or gameplay...add some period looking newspaper reports perhaps and your done.. stiil either way somethng to look forward to.. the seperate war room/battle map concept is something that takes this game to some-where entirely unique IMO.. it gives a unique replayable campaign..and is comletely adaptable to just about any concept you can imagine.. imagine a Lord of the Rings game made using the same concepts? or a Babylon Five space rts or even a WW2 combat simulation

this is fascinating..having pumped up each Martian unit to have vastly improved armour and weapons..(a fightingmachine is now about the same level as a tempest mrk1) i really thought i had gone too far (using the reg to increase the tightbeam amplifier modifier increase up to 12.0000 for example) even my heavily defended port of liverpool fell after two major attacks...leaving me with virtually nothing,,,,so i pulled back and started to think about defending london the best i couuld.. left two naval guns and three units of armoured lorrys left from the start of the campaign defending a factory as i had a look at london...Wales fell, then the area was attacked...i never gave it a chance..but with the tight beam amp modifier ramped up so high this gave the marsians incredible range for their heat rays.(as the AI had obviuosly just researched this ability this was a surprise)..so they stood of at the edge of the map and attacked the two naval guns...(see the defences attractor modifier entry previous post i believe?) the naval guns pounded right back at them in a war of attrition which surprisingly (again) they started to win (the increased range seems to lessen the strength of the Marsian rays..handy) so i thought ok?,now what do i do? and sent the three lorry units to see if they could distract the fighting machines...nope they kept right on lasering the naval guns from extreme distance..looked good as well..huge streaks of light flashing across the map..but because the marsians considered the lorrys beneath their dignity to attack i actually was able to repell them (one unit of fighting machines one of scouts) by peppering them with lorry fire and long range artillery untill they sucumbed..they remained completely stationary thru out the attack (once they had set up their attack) so..the same number of Martianunits that had previuosly wipe out every Ironcad i had and conquered numerous bases defended to the hilt by every thing i had..fell to two medium naval guns and three mrk1 armoured lorry units...LOL how's that for irony..(even perhaps a little like the actual story-line of the book in some ways) fascinating ..coupled with the intelligence gem that the marsian tend to send a percentage (see outnumberforce modifier) of the human unit number to attack an area..(so the more units/defences you place in an area ...the more units the Marsian will send to attack it) this means a better defense is one comprised of a very small number of high powered guns..with some minor units to go in close and harras..so even tho the Marsian machines are now next to invincible in any number of units past three..they still have weaknesses in tactics that can be exploited...loverly jubbly..(as they say in the trade) i may rescue London yet.. if not then next time i'll know what to do...spread my forces out thinly thru out the map and research the heavy gun emplacements early...bit scary considering the huge strength of even a lowly scout mrk1 unit but effective AND easy on resources....as for retaliating and gaining territory i have absolutely no workable plan what-so -ever ! lol every attack i tried ended the same way very, very, quickly..

here's a thought again perhaps on the network pod landing problem..as this will be player versus player perhaps you can increase the time betwe pod landings to such a degree that in real terms one never lands at all..(thereby removing the issue?) as a human player has more than enough available units and resources in the Marsian base to build and stage a succesfull invasion...then it just remains to see whever the human unit placements at the start of the game are the same for each player tho im sure it might be more involved than that ..but it would at least allw a game to start and perhaps run for long enough to discover whever anything else is out of sync.. on my side..i believe the technica term for my state is "woohooo!" after two or three days trail and erroring the reg entrys..i have managed to get something workable going.. even tho strangely only four pods landed at the start of the campaign (no idea quite what controls that as yet) these four pods have allready out built my forces and are proceeding to kick my butt right the way back to London..i mean they are absolutely awesome..(in the spirit of the book) i have set the reg usng these entrys agression 9.9 ai build 9.9 frontline attract1 12.0 frontline attract2 12.0 outnumber force 0.5 (try 0.000001 for real wave after wave of relentless attacks) then increase the heatray focus beam modifiers and reduce the impact armour entrys research rate 105 this will quicky give the marsian hugely improved armour ratings if and when the AI researchs the "ability" one unit of scouts can then very nealy wipe out any base or units that don't prepare to the utmost degree AND constantly re-inforce as if the first attack fails before you can repair another attack begins untill the Base is lost or the AI turns it's attention else where.. it plays a little more like survival horror..which is appropiate i dont know if the AI is beatable like this but that's the whole point! not knowing if you can win is the nub of the games tension..and really brings the storyline home.. to quote another story/film.. "we're going to need a bigger boat" apart from that ive set the time of day entry in game to 1 just to see what that might be refering to..

Originally posted by coupe827: Quote: Good luck on getting the audio to work, most people have tried but then given up. I think the problem must be the way the program tries to access the CD hardware directly to play the disc may just not be allowed in XP. The registry changes to get the network version to operate do not work for reasons of synchronisation. When one computer lands it's pods in a sector ont he other computer it lands elsewhere. The two machines are then out of synch and one of the games will crash. Sorry to be negative but although I will try this again when I get the chance (no network card in one of my machines at the moment) I do not hold out much hope. I am working on some possible hacks for the game including more scenarios for those of you who are interested. Dean i can answer that one for you (i think) the Marsian Map.wow and the human Map.wow files are not the same/ try copying the marsian Map.wow file from the Marsian cd into your human opponenets game folder this im guessing should mean that both you and your enemy are both playing on the same map...should help or at least clear a few things up.. i have been playing the game with the Marsian Map.wow folder installed into the main hard drive...this has turned out to be one of the reasons why the Marsian AI isn't behave-ing very well...if i revert back to the Human map file things change noticably..the two files are the same size but have different dates.. what i am trying to do is to beef up the Marsian units to such a degree that one or two can defeat a Human area. then i can reduce the amount of units allowed per area (this reg entry works) and kill off the "tank rush" tactic as a method of wining the game... one Marsian fighting machine unit should be a menacing sight..not just targe practice!

ok sussed out the registry entrys ..(there's enough of them) but can't say as anything really brings the game to life...it's a fabulous game one of the best stratergy set ups i can imagine..(other games really REALLY should follow this type of double/war room/battle map twin gameplay set up....all WOTW really needs to exlode it into infamy is allow the Marsians to land their pods any where in the country (randomly) and instant excite-ment fear and replay heaven would ensue...it would be perfect.. except that the AI (once you have gotten used to it's tactics) is absoloutely useless.... for example ive stopped fighting the Marsians ..all i need to do is send a couple of armoured lorrys and a sapper to Edinbrough build some level one bog standard fences and a set of 4.6 guns and sit back and wait...surrendering all other countys untill Edinbourgh is completely surrounded..not even trying to fight back or research or anything to reinforce my positions.. the Marsians simply cannot take Edinbourgh no matter how aggressive they are...pointless... i swear that i could self destruct every unit and facility i had except one in London set the game at high time excelleration...then go out to the pub ..then go and watch a film ...then have a meal ..arrive back home...and still find the Marsians had lost the war.. what a waste of a good intelligent and atmospheric game.. i have knocked up a modified AI file that forces the Marsians to use the Human stratergys...this means they place their rsource faciliys much more sensibly..and defend them with guns and fences ..but this really doesn't help much in the end.. two things might help..there is a build briges special ability for the human side...which isn't really usefull.. but if i can remove all the bridges from the maps then this would slow down your ability to advance untill you could develop the bridge building ability...giving the Marsian some extra advantages and adding an extra tactical situation..(marsians have sabotaged the bridges at the start of the game or some such story-line addition) or slow down the research for the humans...unfortunately i can't find a way to achive the first..and the registry entrys for the second dont have any effect on the game. it's annoying... x)

dunno if this thread is dead..but if any one is still here...can you tell me how to use the WOW.INI registry addition and how to correctly write it and the ini entrys them selves etc? the game has me fascinated but it is just too easy (once you have got the hang of it)...hardly worth playing at stock difficulty levels..i did try the WOW program site but the trail version link is dead...mind you i would love to be able to modify it by hand (as it were) any help?

i've put the modified sound effect file and a enhanced campaign for download here see read mes for details wotw site

here's another tip to get round the CTD's that seem to happen when entering a battle.. it's very very tempting to surround the entrances to your area with fences ....don't do this..as when the game trys to load the enemy onto the map it immediately encounters a problem taking damge from the fence (if it's a large force)...what appears to happen is that the enemy trys to occupy the same area as the fence and blam your on your desktop..you've got to leave room for the enemy to get onto the map..makes sense) sometimes if you reload the game and try again the battle loads but the enemy force appears in the top left courner of the map (which can be absolutely devasting if youy have built your base nearby..) but at least this will allow you to carry on the campaign..so leave some room top left...and dont crowd the spawn point for th enemy with fences...(guns seem fine tho with some sensible place-ing) im having an epic struggle playing as the martians right now , its a much tougher challenge (i beat the martains as the humans in a few hours..the trick is to attack attack attack..even taking an area then abandoning it again...waiting a while for the enemy to re-occupy the area then go in again and destroy the half built control centre and building machines before they have got established..do that a few times and this seems to really drain their resources..then when you have built up a decent force go in for good and occupy it..then move onto the next..attack..retreat then attack and occupy) allso after the enemy haS taken an area..then the next area immediately changes colour you can be pretty sure the original area is now undefended (at least early on) so attack the first area..destroy the base then attack the second and destroy the attackers....the abandon the area..with luck you can tie the enemy up for hours with only a small force/ drainig his reasources whilst you build your up.. as the martains..this is not much use tho.as the human fences and mines are devasting..and easy built..so it's wait till you have got a decent force,, and recon the areas first leaving the heavily defended ones alone till they have been starved of rsources..and you have the long range bombarders....then build the tempests.. one pnt tho does any one know how to get the martians to use the black dust ability/weapon...? i cant figure it out the tempest can throw canisters of biological death whilst using the heat rays but i cant find how to make them do it! other than that it's an epic game//feel like im reading the book from the martain point of view, it's not like a game at all..brilliant..6 hour sessions would you believe lol...it's 6 in the morning now..i started at midnight ! and only gained one area..boring?..not in the slightes..it's an epic game..im attempting to modifiy the sounds the game uses to make the walkers more menacing..(and to get rid of the time excelleration "hum" on the elder chamber calender..managed to replace the hum with the ticking clock sound from the human maproom...which allthough inappropiate...is much less wearing on the ears (after a long session)...when you open the research files you hear the sound of a crow..lol...got that one wrong..! but the scanner walker now uses the redweed sound (as it walks) so im picking my way trhu them one at a time (hex editing the sfx.obj file does the trick) il post the completed file for download if and when im sure it doesn't add any more bugs to the game.. any huw good morning..im off to bed ..(he he!...must stop doing this it's killing me)

Originally posted by sgilford: Quote: Hi, Just in case you're still interested I managed to sort out my problem. I managed to find the patch I was looking for and downloaded it. The downloaded file is called WOW.exe and is about twice the size of the one on the War Of The Worlds CD. The trick is that if you rename new WOW.exe WOWStart.exe and move it into your War Of The Worlds program directory the game runs perfectly, including the music. Steve HI! i have windows ME (off base a little) havent been able to find the enlarged exe file patch containing the music..sadly...the ones at gamecopy seem to bee the same size as the ones on the CD..and because my main cd rom drive is actually defunct cause an error when i try to use them ..(i figure they are configured for the normal installation paths?) BUT heres my tip for playing the game... copy the MAPS folder from the CD to the game folder....on my older machine this makes the transition from the war room to the battle map screens almost instant...never takes more than 5 seconds , where-as before it would take much much longer...so thats a huge improvement right there..!! secondly the game has only (so far) crashed twice.. the second time i happened to check the system resources information (ie how much RAM i had left still free) and it had fallen to allmost 15% //which would make any programm unstable..//what i think happens is that as you transit from the war room to the battle map and back it uses just a fraction more ram than it gives back each time...eventually causing the game to crash...so if you are in a long session ocasionaly exit the game (after a couple of hours -or so) and restart the computer.. might not apply to NT but it does affect windowsME any huw hope this helps