Ok i am really quite saddened to learn that after buying this game from Matrix Games, Napoleon in Italy, that it does not run in a playable state in windows 7. Although on the Matrx Games product page they list xp as recommended they still list windows 7 there.
I have tried all manner of things but i am getting the frustrating problem that once a tactical battle is complete the campaign game crashes and one is thrown back to a frozen main menu. You can hit the alt f4 combination enough to break this freeze but the campaign game is lost. - this is really bad as it is the design in the games tactical battles whihc make the title so good.
The only workaround i have has been to install the game in VMWare player with XP as a guest OS. this will get around the crashing problem and i have been able to play several turns so far. -
I can assuredly say that Napoleon in Italy, when it works, IS one of the best turned based strategy games to also feature turn based battles that i yet encountered. - The AI in the campaign and the tactical battles is markedly good and gives no quarter. I have had to sound the retreat many a time now.
The tactical battles are also many i say beautifully handled, with units in surround campaign hexes determining the reinforcements in the battle, however it is never guaranteed when the reinforcements may arrive.
however the game is also not without odd problems in windows xp - it wont play at all unless the xp desktop is full screen and set to 1024x768, and peculair windows error such as "range check error" may pop up and stop the ai's turn, in which case though one can stil save the game, leave the campaign and go back into it to resume it.
so can i ask if anyone knows whether it is possible to get the game working in windows 7 so that the superb campaign and awesome battles can all be enjoyed
I have raised this in Matrix forums but seeing the complete lack of any answers to the same problem someelse had with the other Hussar Games product,
Have you tried going into the properties for the game executable itself and setting the compatibility mode to XP? Also, try running it as administrator. Finally, if you have it installed in C:\Program Files\ try installing it somewhere else; Win 7 locks down Program Files in a way that breaks many games.
I don't know that these are specific fixes for your problem, but the have fixed issues for me with many different games.
Unfortunately i have tried all those and the game is installed to my d drive matrix games folder. It really is a wonderful challenging game and so i wish more knew about it, but also that it could work fully.
It is specifically just the crashing back to main menu screen which is the problem.
I went to the hussar games website, but they dont have a contact and it hasnt beern updated since 2007
Not sure if you tried all these, said by the developer
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2405588
I've tried running the free '1848' game by this developer on my Windows 7 PC to no avail. Tried many tricks and nothing works. If I remember correctly, my issue was the same agathosdaimon reported.
Thank you!
I went looking through the Matrix Games forums for information like this but could not find anything - the Napoleon in Italy forum comes up almost no threads in it for me and also when i types in Napoleon in Italy in the search i got nothing but my own post come up
what you have provided has fixed the problem with the crashing back to campaign screen i believe
i tested it and it doesnt crash so for now it will be more playable and hopefully the other graphics crash error messages dont come up.
for 1848 - i can get it to run in win 7y okay and it doesnt have tactical battles so i dont have that whole crashing problem to start with
i set the compatibility for win 95 and in the game i set the resolution to 1024x768 - for me i think the latter resolution change really did the trick but also if you have an integrated graphics card as well as a separate one, use the integrated one (usually the intel one) as it can work best for older games,
Quote from: agathosdaimon on June 08, 2013, 10:53:31 PM
Thank you!
I went looking through the Matrix Games forums for information like this but could not find anything - the Napoleon in Italy forum comes up almost no threads in it for me and also when i types in Napoleon in Italy in the search i got nothing but my own post come up
what you have provided has fixed the problem with the crashing back to campaign screen i believe
i tested it and it doesnt crash so for now it will be more playable and hopefully the other graphics crash error messages dont come up.
for 1848 - i can get it to run in win 7y okay and it doesnt have tactical battles so i dont have that whole crashing problem to start with
i set the compatibility for win 95 and in the game i set the resolution to 1024x768 - for me i think the latter resolution change really did the trick but also if you have an integrated graphics card as well as a separate one, use the integrated one (usually the intel one) as it can work best for older games,
Just curious, what specific change corrected it? Also, when you are on the matrix forums, the displayed messages default to something like 365 days. You have to change the display to allow you to see all the messages from the start of time....that is why you likely didn't see all the past message history in the forums.
Oh, i didnt know that with the matrix forums, that is extremely useful to know. I will check the settings to see what exactly fixed this
Yes, please do post your settings as I would to try it out on my PC again.
I have "For Liberty" and can't get that to work either.
One of the few things I don't like about Matrix...they sell old games that maybe don't run on your rig.... More than a few titles fall into this category. Compare that to GOG who seems to pull off miracles.
As far a Napoleon in Italy is concerned, it won't run on my Vista rig either...and believe me I have tried every trick in the book.
It's a shame, because I liked the game three computers ago...
But if you do find a viable solution, I am definitely interested.
Okay i have tried out Napoleon in Italy this morning again and i dont know if its due to a different combination of things or whether windows is some kind of T800 Terminator learning computer or something but i am playing the game very well now
I had the box for compatibility with xp sp2 checked - i unchecked this
I had disable visual themes checked - i unchecked this
I had disable desktop composition checked - i left this checked
and also left use as administrator checked.
With these settings only left on i was not getting any crashes to the menu screen and at all - the graphics card is my laptops GT540M
two other settings that need to be in place to make this work though i had found are: in game resolution set to 1024x768 option and also the Frame rate set to just 8 as anything higher causes the game to just have really bad lag and intermittent freezes.
Fortunately my laptop has also the integrate intel graphics card - these cards are so superb at supporting old games, i fear that perhaps if one does not have one onboard also they may not be able to get the game running as well
- for some reason this game has my nvidia card set as its default, so i choose to run it with the integrated card instead and with the settings above unchecked bar the desktop composition and administrator authority, and now the game runs well and DOES NOT FREEZE OF LAG - i had to emphasise this as i am very surprised - i set the frame rate in game to 20 and no problems at all in campaign or tactical battles.
There were a few moments with the integrated card where there was some ghastly flicker of distorted gaussian noise on screen but that is a split second and everything carries on - i am
One mistake i had made alot earlier on was that i was changing compatiblity settings on the shortcut to the matrix game menu - this will do nothing to the game itself as one needs to go in to the folder and change teh settings on the exe - and perhaps only start teh game from that the Napoleon exe.
Yeah in regard to Matrix Games, i beginning to see that although they are a great business with the games they offer, their support for the games is very minimal. in particular older games, which they still see at a premium price.
I had raised a ticket query on this game with them but only got back a generic response requesting DX Diag file - i suppose they need that to investigate the game? would that show the problems i explained to them? - i am surprise they didnt just link me to the help on their forums which have been linked in this thread.