Known Bugs

[Sandern]

As requested, a few more details:

OS is 64bit Win7 Home Premium, I'm an administrator (fairly recent re-install).
Machine is DELL XPS 15 Laptop (L502X)
Processor is 2.2GHz Quad-core i7 (Hyperthreaded)
Integrated Graphics Chip is Intel HD 3000
Graphics Card is NVidia GeForce 525M (SHOULD be using this and not the integrated, not sure how verify this is actually happening)
8GBs of RAM installed
Single 500GB HDD
Screen resolution is 1366x768

HL2: Ep2 & Alien Swarm (run but never played, as such) are Installed
Other non-steam source mods work fine (The Hidden: Source)

As said, the install is from the extracted 7Zip, and is my first time trying to run HL2:Wars. (2.0.2, game says it is most recent update at the top of the main menu)

In the server menu, I can see servers (only ever seen one, however) but just as with hitting 'Play Offline' joining the server moves to the loading screen, which then closes quietly when the progress bar has near filled.

Video Config file provided
For kicks, I tried windowed and with a few other settings, nothing changed the symptoms.

Do ask if you want any other details or actions carried out.

Since you have never run Alien Swarm yet, try to run it once and see if loads a map. Your Alien Swarm installation might be incomplete or corrupt.

[VisualMelon]

Sorry, that made no sense. I've run it, and the Offline Practice works fine (on the current installation), I've just never played through an entire game online.

[Sandern]

As requested, a few more details:

OS is 64bit Win7 Home Premium, I'm an administrator (fairly recent re-install).
Machine is DELL XPS 15 Laptop (L502X)
Processor is 2.2GHz Quad-core i7 (Hyperthreaded)
Integrated Graphics Chip is Intel HD 3000
Graphics Card is NVidia GeForce 525M (SHOULD be using this and not the integrated, not sure how verify this is actually happening)
8GBs of RAM installed
Single 500GB HDD
Screen resolution is 1366x768

HL2: Ep2 & Alien Swarm (run but never played, as such) are Installed
Other non-steam source mods work fine (The Hidden: Source)

As said, the install is from the extracted 7Zip, and is my first time trying to run HL2:Wars. (2.0.2, game says it is most recent update at the top of the main menu)

In the server menu, I can see servers (only ever seen one, however) but just as with hitting 'Play Offline' joining the server moves to the loading screen, which then closes quietly when the progress bar has near filled.

Video Config file provided
For kicks, I tried windowed and with a few other settings, nothing changed the symptoms.

Do ask if you want any other details or actions carried out.

I think it might be caused by the main menu news display. Download and extract this into your hl2wars/bin folder (make sure to replace the existing client.dll):
www.hl2wars.com/download/client_noawesomium.7z

It's a version where I stripped away the awesomium lib (which is used for displaying the news in the main menu).

Other than that, you can you check the console (options -> keyboard -> enable developers console) for any errors.

[VisualMelon]

Tried that, didn't fix it I'm afraid. Client.DLL looks to have been replaced and there was no news in the menu, so I'm confident I didn't somehow get that wrong.

Select stuff from Console when in the menu (all the stuff that looks remotely dodgy):
Parent cvar in client.dll not allowed (rr_debugresponseconcept)
Parent cvar in client.dll not allowed (rr_dumpresponses)
Parent cvar in client.dll not allowed (rr_debugrule)
Parent cvar in client.dll not allowed (rr_debugresponses)
WARNING: unable to link rr_debugresponseconcept_exclude and rr_debugresponseconcept_exclude because one or more is a ConCommand.
WARNING: unable to link rr_reloadresponsesystems and rr_reloadresponsesystems because one or more is a ConCommand.
...
--- Missing Vgui material vgui/TitleBarIcon
--- Missing Vgui material vgui/TitleBarDisabledIcon
...
Unknown command "hotkeysystem"
...
Parent cvar in server.dll not allowed (ai_inhibit_spawners)
Unknown attribute "building" while registering unit unit_dummy (Server)
Available attributes:
Unknown command "asw_stats_track"

If I tap ` when it is loading, there is alot of red messages, but it is damn near impossible to get a screen shot - how can I get a copy of the console after execution?

Attached is the crash dump for when this modified install died.

[VisualMelon]

Windowing the game let me get a Screen Shot, but I can't claim that is all that is outputed, the loading/closing all happens very quickly.

[Sandern]

Windowing the game let me get a Screen Shot, but I claim that is all that is outputed, the loading/closing all happens very quickly.

Everything looks fine to me.

Regarding:

trying to use the spawn menu causes it to hang horribly

Do you mean it is very slow or do you mean it crashes?

It might means it crashes on showing VGUI panels created in Python.

[VisualMelon]

Do you mean it is very slow or do you mean it crashes?

It might means it crashes on showing VGUI panels created in Python.

It effectively crashes, only Windows doesn't notice, and it seems to keep rendering. It doesn't show over programs 'underneath', which in my limited knowledge implies something is waiting on something, but that the message loop and DX what-not are still alive.

The menu itself rendered fine, but when I clicked one of the buttons on the menu is died. A pretty jiggling Spanner cursor appeared, and I was denied any further input bar moving the cursor.

Prior to noticing the menu on the left, I could move about the map, change camera angle and all that just fine. Yellow circles appeared at points in the map (I forget which one I did it with) as I moused over regions, IIRC.

Thanks for your swift responses, sorry this one is so late.

(Edit: Tried 2.0.1, it works - feel free to keep asking about 2.0.2, I'm happy to do more tests and such if it helps iron out bugs)

[Sandern]

Do you mean it is very slow or do you mean it crashes?

It might means it crashes on showing VGUI panels created in Python.

It effectively crashes, only Windows doesn't notice, and it seems to keep rendering. It doesn't show over programs 'underneath', which in my limited knowledge implies something is waiting on something, but that the message loop and DX what-not are still alive.

The menu itself rendered fine, but when I clicked one of the buttons on the menu is died. A pretty jiggling Spanner cursor appeared, and I was denied any further input bar moving the cursor.

Prior to noticing the menu on the left, I could move about the map, change camera angle and all that just fine. Yellow circles appeared at points in the map (I forget which one I did it with) as I moused over regions, IIRC.

Thanks for your swift responses, sorry this one is so late.

(Edit: Tried 2.0.1, it works - feel free to keep asking about 2.0.2, I'm happy to do more tests and such if it helps iron out bugs)

Seems weird, I don't made that much changes in the c++ code. Just a handfull of changes between 7 october and 4 november:
https://github.com/Sandern/hl2wars_asw_ ... its/master

I did remove the sm2.0 versions of some shaders, but your gpu's should support that (except if recognized incorrectly). You could try copying over bin/game_shader_dx9.dll from 2.0.1 to 2.0.2.

[VisualMelon]

I did remove the sm2.0 versions of some shaders, but your gpu's should support that (except if recognized incorrectly). You could try copying over bin/game_shader_dx9.dll from 2.0.1 to 2.0.2.

Wonderful news! That fixes it! I also copied back a 'broken' copy of the dll to check it hadn't mysteriously started working, and it started dying again, which is nice evidence for this little fix working. This is without awesomium per your nice binary replacement, and I'll check if it works with it tomorrow and edit this post accordingly. (Edit: does work with awesomium)

Thanks for the help, and I hope this helps you reach a bigger player base, the game is really impressive and deserves recognition.

[VisualMelon]

May have been a little quick to rejoice, when starting an annihilation game against a CPU player, this pops up (doesn't with overrun). I've not tried multi-player with another person.

[Sandern]

May have been a little quick to rejoice, when starting an annihilation game against a CPU player, this pops up (doesn't with overrun). I've not tried multi-player with another person.

Yeah, you also need to replace the shaders folder with the one from 2.0.1.

But it does identify the problem. It thinks your gpu's don't support shader model 3.0 (even though they do).

[VisualMelon]

Yeah, you also need to replace the shaders folder with the one from 2.0.1.

But it does identify the problem. It thinks your gpu's don't support shader model 3.0 (even though they do).

That fixed it

It seems in-fact that or_trapped is the only one that was working, I'd not noticed it was change to that when I changed to overrun mode, so wasn't trying any other maps, all rather embarrassing.

Could the issue be that it IDs the wrong GPU? (i.e. notices the HD 3000 (though this does support Shader Model 3), but then gets given the GeForce) Maybe muraqqi could provide details on his GPU?

Thank you again for the swift support.

[muraqqi]

yes, changing vga on my laptop from HD3000 to GT 540M resulting mod working for me. Damn, why i didn't notice this. Sorry for causing such trouble. I think HD3000 SM3 is not complete yet, a lot of missing pipeline or something

[Sandern]

I removed the shader model 2.0 shader versions, because it's too annoying to support, while all graphics cards should support a higher version. I didn't added any checks in the code, which is why you ended up with the crashing behavior.

I will add an error message when you start the mod for the next version.

Just curious: does Counter Strike: Global Offensive runs correctly? According to the requirements you need a card with shader model 3.0.

I guess Alien Swarm likely falls back to the lowest directx level if it can't identify the card, and I don't believe there is a way to force a higher directx level (-dxlevel doesn't seems to work).

[VisualMelon]

I don't have/tried Global Offensive, so I can't say.