Everquest not starting for me

[hendar]

I have poked at innerspace a couple of times without success, and decided today to give it more time. The problem I am seeing at the moment is that when I start no-patch I get a black screen and then the client crashes (Visual Studio traps this and wants to fire up the debugger). I have no idea where to begin.

I installed the current IS today (Jun 25), and added Everquest. The patcher will run if selected.

I see that CreateDevice fails, which is odd since I am able to run Everquest outside of Innerspace.

An excerpt from Everquest's dbg.log:

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[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00010:Checking critical files.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00011:Initializing WinSock.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00012:Enumerating 3D devices.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00000:Found adapter #0 - NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 (6.14.10.8617)

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00001:Adapter #0 - NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 :

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00002:32Bit = 1, D32 = 0, D24 = 1, D16 = 1 

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00003:16Bit(565) = 1, D32 = 0, D24 = 1, D16 = 1 

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00004:16Bit(1555) = 0, D32 = 0, D24 = 0, D16 = 0 

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00013:Initializing keypress handler.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00014:Parsing INI file .\defaults.ini
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:05 2008]00015:INI file .\defaults.ini loaded.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:06 2008]00016:Loading keyboard tables.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:06 2008]00017:Creating window.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:06 2008]00018:Checking display driver version.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:07 2008]00019:Activating window.
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00005:CRender::InitDevice: Using 32bit mode.

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00006:CRender::InitDevice: Using vsync 0.

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00007:CRender::InitDevice: Using 24bit depth buffer with 8 bit stencil.

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00008:CRender::InitDevice: HardwareTnL Enabled.  
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00009:Using hardware vertex shaders. 

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00010:CRender::InitDevice: Retrying without lockable backbuffer.

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00011:CRender::InitDevice: Using Software Vertex processing.

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00012:CRender::InitDevice: CreateDevice failed.

[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00000:Parsing INI file ./eqlsUIConfig.ini
[Wed Jun 25 14:00:08 2008]00001:INI file ./eqlsUIConfig.ini loaded.

[Lax]

It appears that you have old video drivers. Check on www.nvidia.com to see if drivers from their site can be installed. If not, you'd have to go to your laptop manufacturer's website for an updated driver.

[hendar]

Are you sure the driver is at fault? EQ seems to run just fine on its own, or under WinEQ2.

NVidia's driver updates don't seem to support the mobile chips. I'm told that one can edit the inf files and load the newer ones, but I'm reluctant to head down that road.

[Lax]

Well, WinEQ 2 is forcing certain video mode changes, like forcing you into windowed mode. Inner Space isn't, it's mostly just trying to stay out of the way. You could try enabling "Force Windowed" in your IS configuration for the EQ profile you're launching, and that may make it have the same behavior as WinEQ 2 as far as this issue goes. Otherwise, this issue on laptops is solved with the newer drivers, to my knowledge.

NVIDIA's newer driver update page does have some GeForce M/Go support, and I specifically looked at it just a few minutes ago, but it doesn't list the 7600, just the higher end ones. I would be inclined to try it anyway, myself. But yeah, from what I understand and unless it changed, editing .inf files might be the only way to do it without an update from your laptop manufacturer

[hendar]

Thanks for your help. "Force Windowed" did solve my problem (or at least work around it).

I am thinking about installing the 64-bit XP on this machine, and that would be a good time to experiment with the video drivers. That way if anything goes wrong it is a simple matter to back out the change via an image restore. But until I have a decent amount of time I'd like to keep things the way they are. My laptop's manufacturer hasn't released a driver update for XP, to my knowledge. I should take a look, but Vista seems to have all of their attention.

I'd like to add that I am quite impressed that you managed to make this work. I tried to write something to shove keystrokes into background EQ sessions running under WinEQ, but nothing short of proxying Direct Input looked like it was going to work. The thought of that motivated me to take another look at InnerSpace. My time is worth more than your subscription fee, so you're welcome to the job. Maybe my urge to beat on things will be satisfied by ISSDK. At this point I would rather have a standalone app that could send commands to remote IS instances, that way I could have a nice UI up.

[Lax]

Well, I am currently working on the next generation of Inner Space and subsequently the next generation of WinEQ that will be using the Inner Space 2 engine. It sounds like what you are wanting to do will probably be supported "out of the box" by the new WinEQ, and your tinkering side may enjoy the new features in the IS2 development kit.

Beta for the new WinEQ currently looks like it's a month or so away, but that is subject to change. Beta for the new IS2 will probably come after that.

[hendar]

A quick followup: the problem was an incorrect resolution in the eqclient.ini file. The profile was copied at one point from another machine and used to run at 1280x1024. Since WinEQ2 forces things into windowed mode, this wasn't a deal breaker. But in IS land it prevented the device from being created. After correcting this value, I was able to remove the "force windowed mode" switch and run normally.

Normally I don't poke around in those files, but since I decided to migrate from WinEQ2 I wanted to have a similar profile system. This required that I verify that the correct profiles were being used for each session.

For anyone else contemplating this, it might save you a few minutes to note the following: The ini files under IS have names derived from the profiles under "Game Configuration". If one has a profile named "EQ1" then the ini used under WinEQ2 is eqlsPlayerData.WinEQProfile0.ini (for the first profile), which must be renamed/copied to "eqlsPlayerData-EQ1.ini". Now perhaps it is a bad thing to drag the WinEQ config data over, but the files look to be in the same format.

Rather than specifying the eqclient.ini file in a configuration dialog (which seemed easier to grasp for new users), the file is again derived from the profile name. For "EQ1" it will be "eqclient-EQ1.ini".

I am considering changing the SetSessionName function in DefaultStartup.iss so that the session name is also derived from the profile. I have no idea if there is some requirement to name sessions "is1" etc. Having sessions/profiles named after characters is an interesting idea.

[Lax]

There is no name requirement, the name is purely up to you. The default is based on is1, is2, etc.

There is also no harm in copying the eqclient.ini file that WinEQ 2 used over to what IS would use; the difference is mostly just that WinEQ 2 adds some additional settings for its own use, and IS does not. Otherwise, the format of the ini files is defined by EQ.

IS could certainly use another setting for the ini file instead of defaulting to the profile name, and all this would require is a modification to the configuration UI (which would only show up for EQ1) and a modification to the default startup script (specifically, where it does EQ1 stuff). These mods could technically be performed by anyone with the gumption and subsequently shared with everyone else.

Here's some tips that may help you with what you are now looking into.

Modifying the default startup script is slightly more difficult than it appears at first glance. If you modify the default script, it will be overwritten when you update IS the next time. To prevent that, simply copy it to a new file, and then change IS to use your script instead of the default. The script is executed as part of the startup sequence, so you would change the entry in your startup sequence to run (for example) MyStartup.iss instead of DefaultStartup.iss.

You can change the session name, the text in the title, etc at any time. To set the text in the title, use the windowtext command as you see in the default startup script, e.g.

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windowtext MyClericName - Cleric

To set the session name (as seen, again, in the default startup script):

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uplink name MyNewSessionName