Green analyzer causing Links to freeze (and other issues)

[Still Linksing]

The weird thing is that the GA was working perfectly in Windows 10 before I tried dgVoodoo. But there were other, even more disruptive problems without dgVoodoo, so... :-)

This makes me curious because this would destroy my current thesis. There are people who regularly use the GA who never ever run into issues? Or is it possible you simply hadnt run into issues because of not using that setup for many times? I dont know, just curious!

I quickly loaded up Wentworth. Hole #2 gave me problems every time with the GA in the past. I just tried it now and could not get anything to go wrong. It all worked perfectly. I can also tell you in the past everyone had the same issues with the GA.

Could Win 10 possibly be resolving the GA problems??? First some form of working AA and now the GA OMG, I'd hate to start having reasons to like Win 10!

[Still Linksing]

Just out of curiosity, is it likely that my problems would go away if I added a dedicated graphics card?

Yes!
I'll let others offer suggestions as the only time I look at hardware is when I need some.

[Danny D]

Just out of curiosity, is it likely that my problems would go away if I added a dedicated graphics card? Or are these problems more intrinsically tied to Windows 10? If adding a card would help, does anyone have any recommendations for a relatively inexpensive one that would work well with Links 2003? I never added a card when I first built this computer several years ago because Links was working so well with the integrated intel chip.

Hi Todd... The best video card is any of the NVIDIA GTX models. You can even pick up a used one on EBay dirt cheap. I'm currently using one that is pretty old, and it works flawlessly. I'm using a GTX 690. I would suggest buy any NVIDIA GTX card from 690 on up.

Thanks for testing my courses. That tells me its a problem other than the seam blending that's causing your crashes. Here's why.

I've read several comments from Lez Marwick in the past about the GA causing crashes due to the way a designer creates seam blends. He states that When creating SB's for green fringes around the greens, that the seam blend MUST be created using a 3rd texture in between the outer and inner textures. For example, You should NOT create a fringe around a green by blending together the rough and the green, and then spread the SB out to use as the fringe. You should always put a different texture between them, such as a FRINGE. In other words, there would need to be 2 SB's surrounding a green. it would go like this. ROUGH TEXTURE - ROUGH to FRINGE SB - FRINGE TEXTURE - FRINGE TO GREEN SB - GREEN TEXTURE.
Lez says creating them without that inner texture will definitely cause the game to crash when you use the GA.

I'll state up front that, I'm not a GA user at all, but have occasionally used it throughout the years without experiencing a single issue or crash. I've never paid attention to what course I was on at the time, so I can't name any. Every one has worked fine for me. I will also state that I have never installed the dgvoodoo program. I used Windows XP and Windows 7. I've never had Windows 10 on any computer.

For the record, on all of my courses I always create my SB's with the extra texture between...

y'all

[Danny D]

I never added a card when I first built this computer several years ago because Links was working so well with the integrated intel chip.

I have read that the number one biggest issue that causes problems with Links is "INTEL INTEGRATED GRAPHICS" either in the motherboard, or the CPU. A different video card may do the trick, if you can make Links use it instead of your integrated chipset.

Good luck,

Dan

Not sure what you consider "cheap" in video cards, but here's a refurb that would do the job well...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zotac-Geforce- ... ition=2000

[Still Linksing]

The best video card is any of the NVIDIA GTX models. You can even pick up a used one on EBay dirt cheap. I'm currently using one that is pretty old, and it works flawlessly. I'm using a GTX 690. I would suggest buy any NVIDIA GTX card from 690 on up.

The only thing here to keep in mind is from what we have found on the forum using modern cards, any Nvidia card under 1000 series won't allow jaggy removal via FXAA while cards above 1000 appear to all work. I had a GTX 970 and it did not work with FXAA.

[Adelade]

Still Linksing (and others), Sample sizes please of GA opened successfully with restarting the game in between? In my test with Wentworth West I successfully got the GA to work on it the first SIX times in a row, then the next 3 in a row were failures. Im willing to believe you, sounds like dgVoodoo may indeed be playing a role, but I also believe a lot of word by mouth accounts through the years have been made without enough testing per course and crucially per restart. If the way I experience it is the same as for everyone, then however the GA behaves the very first time you open it dictates how it will behave for the rest of that session, which I highly suspect have skewed the perception of where and when it works for a lot of people, along with the high level of inconsistency of the issues.

[Still Linksing]

Still Linksing (and others), Sample sizes please of GA opened successfully with restarting the game in between? In my test with Wentworth West I successfully got the GA to work on it the first SIX times in a row, then the next 3 in a row were failures. Im willing to believe you, sounds like dgVoodoo may indeed be playing a role, but I also believe a lot of word by mouth accounts through the years have been made without enough testing per course and crucially per restart. If the way I experience it is the same as for everyone, then however the GA behaves the very first time you open it dictates how it will behave for the rest of that session, which I highly suspect have skewed the perception of where and when it works for a lot of people, along with the high level of inconsistency of the issues.

Don't get mad but I tried to break Links very hard, promise, but it just wouldn't break.
I did 8 restarts, opening GA, no issues. I played around again trying to get it to crash, failed, it seems to work perfectly.

One thing I can tell you, never been any mention of it on the forum but I have found you appear to get a higher reliability of the game opening successfully using LinksLauncher.exe over LinksMMIII.exe
If you conducted your tests launching Links with LinksMMIII.exe or a LinksMMIII.exe shortcut, may be worth trying the launcher.

My attempts at getting GA to crash were in practice mode. In the past, I would've played nothing but seasons when it crashed. You wouldn't think it should make a difference, just mentioning it.

[Still Linksing]

It appears we have some questions arising from this thread.

I have a question. Is anyone using Win 10 and using the green analyzer and has it caused you any problems?

[mainertodd]

Just for fun, I removed dgVoodoo again to see how things would run. I was able to play at 1920x1080 at normal speed, with the green analyzer working perfectly. However, I was still getting fairly frequent crashes while playing with a partner, and I couldn't use custom skies.

So, it seems I have two options: play alone without dgVoodoo and without custom skies, or play with dgVoodoo at a reduced resolution, with custom skies and a playing partner, but no green analyzer. For now, I think I'll try playing with dgVoodoo. If that's unsatisfactory, I'll look into buying a separate graphics card. *shakes fist at Windows 10*

[Danny D]

Just for fun, I removed dgVoodoo again to see how things would run. I was able to play at 1920x1080 at normal speed, with the green analyzer working perfectly. However, I was still getting fairly frequent crashes while playing with a partner, and I couldn't use custom skies.

So, it seems I have two options: play alone without dgVoodoo and without custom skies, or play with dgVoodoo at a reduced resolution, with custom skies and a playing partner, but no green analyzer. For now, I think I'll try playing with dgVoodoo. If that's unsatisfactory, I'll look into buying a separate graphics card. *shakes fist at Windows 10*

This reply is in reference to playing with a partner.

I have no idea exactly what kind of a "partner" you are talking about. Whether it be a computer opponent, or if you play online with a live human friend, this comment may not pertain to you at all, but I'll toss it out here for anyone that has never heard of this issue.

I played online with a human friends using TCP/IP (direct IP to IP. Not thru a server, such as Game Ranger) for years using XP, and rarely, if ever, had any crashes. And then I switched over to Win7. The first time we connected and tried to play, the crashes started. BUT, I discovered right away what triggered the crash. It was when I played a WAV file. We never used live chat. We always typed messages in the Links chat window, and we played a lot of wavs. As it turns out, Win7 has a bug of some sort with Links 2003. (I don't know if this bug carries over into Win10) Playing WAV's will disconnect you immediately. My friends was still using XP, and his WAV playing would never disconnect us. It only happened when I played one when using Win7. Later on my friend changed over to Win7, and had the same disconnect issue, until he changed the option on his machine.

I posted about this here in the forums several years ago, and someone advised me that I had to change a sound option setting in the Links "multiplayer" options to make it stop happening.

To find that setting, start the game and go to the ONLINE TCP/IP host mode, and you will see a button on bottom right called "Multiplayer Settings". Click that to open the options, and it has some selections about playing WAV's there. To stop us from disconnecting, I had to select the middle option from the top options "ONLY PLAY LOCAL WAV FILES".

Just thought I would post this in case anyone else has this same issue when playing online with friends, and playing wav files...



I'll add this for those that may wonder what these options actually mean.

Top - "PLAY ALL WAV FILES" - This means, if I have a wav residing in my Links2003\WAVS folder that my online partner doesn't also have in his WAV folder, and I play that wav in the chat box, my computer will upload the file to his game and play it to him. (doing this with Win7 will disconnect your game from your friend)

Middle - "PLAY ONLY LOCAL WAV FILES" - This means, if I play a wav in the chat box, it will ONLY play the wav for any player that has that specific wav file residing in their Links2003\WAVS folder. (selecting this option will stop the disconnect issue, but if my opponent doesn't have that wav on his computer, he will not hear it when I play it)

Bottom - Disables the option to play wavs.

Hope this helps