Problems with Star Wraith III

grey phoenix · Post by **grey phoenix** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 3:10 am

Hi there,

Not sure if this is the right place or not, but I'm trying to play the freeware Star Wraith III game which is only 9.6mb big, and for some insanely annoying reason it won't work.

I'm using XP and an old GeForce MX440 card (I know, need a new one.) and all the text in the game is insanely small and doesn't match up with the boxes it's supposed to be in at all.

So I'm just wondering if anyone can help please? It looks like a great game for the small size of it that's all, and I thought the graphics card would be ok with it. (and the game documentation says my card should be fine, but mentions something about things being smaller with cards that have a limit of 256x256 texture size, but I think this card is ok?)

Thanks if anyone can help anyway, it's really annoyed me over the last hour or so.

Post by **Vice** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 5:23 am

The card is fine. The cause might simply be with a font setting. Are you using the default DPI setting for text in Windows? It could also just be the game selected size doesn't match very well with the resolution you're playing at. The game was made in a time when some of the higher gaming resolutions were 1024X768 and 1280X1024, so if you're playing in a higher resolution, the text may not be scaling very well. You can also try to set the resolution to a lower value in the options menu to see if that helps make the text larger.

Jongte4 · Post by **Jongte4** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 6:29 am

It works for me.
Nearly same system I have.
No problem.

grey phoenix · Post by **grey phoenix** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:41 am

Originally posted by Vice
The card is fine. The cause might simply be with a font setting. Are you using the default DPI setting for text in Windows? It could also just be the game selected size doesn't match very well with the resolution you're playing at. The game was made in a time when some of the higher gaming resolutions were 1024X768 and 1280X1024, so if you're playing in a higher resolution, the text may not be scaling very well. You can also try to set the resolution to a lower value in the options menu to see if that helps make the text larger.

Hi there,

I tried changing the resolution from the desktop and from inside the game options but it still doesn't change it, it's wierd. As for fonts, I've been using a different style/theme of windows but changing that back didn't do anything either.

In the game the text is too small and like scrunched together, and it's also knocked out of it's boxes in places like the start screen where you can choose game options, etc. The text is like a couple of hundred pixels off to the left at least, and like I said small and hard to read, then it's repeated in other places because it's knocked out.

I found Star Wraith II aswell and that seems to have the same problem, really strange.

edit :

Just checked and the DPI is normal aswell. To give more of an idea, at the start you have Single Player, Multiplayer, Game Options and Exit. They're all pushed to the left in one half with squashed text, then it's repeated further up the screen but as if it's in the distance, then again at the top right. Not really easy to explain but wierd!

So it's not the actual text size, it's the way it's being displayed on the screen and repeating itself in different sizes in other places, etc.

[Edited on 7-8-2009 by grey phoenix]

[Edited on 7-8-2009 by grey phoenix]

warsign · Post by **warsign** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:39 am

Might be GPU driver problem?

Post by **Vice** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 4:34 pm

That is strange, I'd be interested in seeing a screenshot of the problem.

grey phoenix · Post by **grey phoenix** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 5:13 pm

Yeah I thought you might, but the game opens in full screen and I'm not sure how to get one. If there's a key to press for a screenie I'll get one linked once I know what it is. I'm just dying to play it, not played one of these games since a Star Wars one on the PS or N64 years back, and I no longer have that.

Was surprised to see wikipedia saying the genre has pretty much died out too. (at least as in mainstream anyway.) If that's true how the hell that happened I'll never know.

[Edited on 7-8-2009 by grey phoenix]

Post by **Vice** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:17 pm

Press the Print Screen key to capture an image into the memory, then paste it in an image editor, then save it as a JPG.

Wikipedia is a public edited resource, so I'd take what it says with a grain of salt

Much of the information it provides is pretty accurate, much is subjective opinion, much isn't accurate. When it comes to space combat shooters, it is indeed a pretty lean market these days.

grey phoenix · Post by **grey phoenix** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 7:30 pm

Originally posted by Vice
Press the Print Screen key to capture an image into the memory, then paste it in an image editor, then save it as a JPG.

Cheers, it's turned out making a shot that kind of explains something now.

What you can see in these two isn't actually what I'm seeing because the actual screenshot is only showing 1 half of the screen I see, and that first one there's not even the smaller repeating options in the background and the text isn't scrunched at all. So I'm guessing the game thinks my screen is half the size and is making the actual text fit that.

I tried making my resolution a lot smaller from the desktop and in the game options, but it still doesn't seem to register it.

Ah, the text in this one shows the type of problem I'm having, and the graphics are also messing up like here too :

Originally posted by ViceWikipedia is a public edited resource, so I'd take what it says with a grain of salt Much of the information it provides is pretty accurate, much is subjective opinion, much isn't accurate. When it comes to space combat shooters, it is indeed a pretty lean market these days.

Yeah I usually do seeing as anyone can change things, I'd just not seen many around for a long time. I'd have thought console game developers would've made some amazing ones by now too.

Thanks if you manage to figure out what might be going on with those shots too!

[Edited on 7-8-2009 by grey phoenix]

edit : fixed it!

I went to the nvidia control panel and the reason it seems to have been showing the text repeating and small was because the antialiasing was set to x4. I don't even know why it was set to that, but as soon as I switched it to application controlled it started working fine.

So if you ever see anyone with the same problem at least you'll know it's that, otherwise sorry for any time I wasted!

[Edited on 7-8-2009 by grey phoenix]

Post by **Vice** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 9:47 pm

Thanks for posting the solution. 4X AA should work, so it may just be some kind of driver issue. For reference which Nvidia driver version are you using?

Another step that might be interesting to try is running the Arvoch Conflict demo (which is basically Star Wraith 5). It uses a very different 3D text system, so it would be interesting to see if rendering worked well with that game as opposed to the older 2D overlay method.

grey phoenix · Post by **grey phoenix** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:36 pm

Hey again,

I'm using forceware v93.71, and I also dowloaded the SW5 demo and it works fine, even when I set the antialiasing back to 4x, so yeah I guess that different text system works the best. They look like great games anyway, will probably spend a decent bit of time playing the first two, then maybe check out others in the series.

warsign · Post by **warsign** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 2:46 pm

You have to check it out Riftspace and Arvoch as well.
Awesome!

grey phoenix · Post by **grey phoenix** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 9:02 pm

Originally posted by warsign
You have to check it out Riftspace and Arvoch as well.
Awesome!

Ah, will do! Been years since I got into games like this, can see myself getting pretty addicted.

Will probably come back and post around elsewhere once I've played more too.

[Edited on 7-11-2009 by grey phoenix]