Can you stop AOE1 from temporarily freezing repeatedly on Windows 7?

Topic Subject:

Can you stop AOE1 from temporarily freezing repeatedly on Windows 7?

rakovsky
Clubman

posted 09-07-16 08:59 PM ET (US)

I have AOE1 (1.0b) and Windows 7 and it normally works OK.

I downloaded the awesome Lost Sumeria campaign here:
http://aoe.heavengames.com/dl-php/showfile.php?fileid=1779&f=1&st=0&ci=

Every 15 seconds the game freezes for three seconds when I play this campaign and some other scenarios, and I don't know why. When I watched the video walkthrough, the maker of the clip has the program running fine.

The only way I have found to make this work is by playing it in Safe Mode. That might mean there is some program running behind the scenes, but when I bring up Taskbar, the only ones running are a few core programs/apps, and I've checked them all. I even disconnected from the web and disabled Norton.

[This message has been edited by rakovsky (edited 09-12-2016 @ 08:50 AM).]

Author

Replies:

rakovsky
Clubman

posted 09-12-16 08:51 AM ET (US) 1 / 14

I also tried running Norton's disk optomizer.

chab
Clubman

posted 09-12-16 01:09 PM ET (US) 2 / 14

please do not spam every thread with the same question.
We understand you're having issues but maybe noone here knows the solution.
I know that modern (fast) computers can encounter game freezes (I tried to fix it in my mod).

However it seems you issue is different.
The freeze I'm speaking of is not temporary: the game time just stops elapsing (UI is still responding well but units ain't moving anymore) and won't go back to normal.

Maybe some disk access are very slow, but the game should not access the disk much while playing.
Try deactivating the music (or even all sounds), just to test if the issue disappears.

anterior2
Scenario Design Expert

posted 09-17-16 09:49 PM ET (US) 3 / 14

I've noticed that the game will have a mini-freeze when the MIDI music changes, but your freezes seem to be caused by another program running on your computer if safe mode works.

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Suppiluliuma
AoEH Seraph

posted 09-18-16 07:42 AM ET (US) 4 / 14

I agree with chab. rakovsky, please don't post the same questions in different threads. If people doesn't reply it is not because they don't want to help, but because they can't.

I hope you solve your issues but spamming the forum won't make them vanish.

Ris1ng
Clubman

posted 09-18-16 08:44 AM ET (US) 5 / 14

The only freeze I've experienced while playing on a modern OS is the MIDI music track change, I've never had any other issue.

Perhaps it's another software running in background that is affecting your game's behavior.

[This message has been edited by Ris1ng (edited 09-18-2016 @ 08:45 AM).]

rakovsky
Clubman

posted 11-24-18 10:10 PM ET (US) 6 / 14

My sincere thanks to those who wrote on this thread. Let me follow up on this issue, because I love Rise of Rome. I downloaded AOE (the old classic version), along with the 1.0c update and the Rise of Rome HD Edition, and am playing it on my Windows 7 laptop.

The game freezes or pauses for 1-3 seconds at intervals of about every 1 minute 20 seconds to 3 minutes or so.

I was able to stop this problem with the Rise of Rome HD edition because it allows "Windowed Mode". The problem exists only in the normal Fullscreen mode of the game. The problem also doesn't happen when I play the game in Windows Safe Mode, which is an awkward mode to use.

Unfortunately, the original AOE doesn't have a Windowed Mode, and some player scenarios and campaigns are made only for the original AOE game.

The problem persists even when I uninstalled and reinstalled the game and tried different downloads for the AOE game.

chab
Clubman

posted 11-25-18 07:10 AM ET (US) 7 / 14

If you want windowed mode, you can download RockNRor, it allows you to configure windowed mode and supports all (main) versions : AOE 1.0b, 1.0c, ROR 1.0 and 1.0a

You don't need to install the mod itself (RockNRor) if you don't want it.
You can simply run the RockNRorAdmin program, select (CTRL-O) the empires/empiresx.exe file you want to customize (to use windowed mode), then "edit" (CTRL-E), and enable the "windowed mode" and "ROR_API" features.
And copy the files wndmode.dll, ROR_API.conf, ROR_API.dll to your AOE install directory.

rakovsky
Clubman

posted 11-25-18 02:33 PM ET (US) 8 / 14

Chab:
Thanks for your advice on making it run in WINDOWED MODE.

I extracted the RocknRor files to a folder, and also copied the ROR_API.conf, ROR_API.dll, and wndmode.dll to the AOE install directory (the folder that contains the EMPIRES.exe and Empires 1.0c.exe files).

The instructions say "Get latest CustomizeAOE version from http://aoe.heavengames.com/dl-php/showfile.php?fileid=2464". Do I need CustomizeAOE?

I ran the RocknROR Admin program and tried to open EMPIRES.EXE, which is not READ ONLY, but it said:

Could not open file. (locked or not compatible).

But I succeeded in opening Empires 1.0.exe (which is not READ ONLY), went to the Edit menu, and set the options for Windowed Mode and API to Enable. Then at the bottom, I clicked on SAVE, but it says:

Could not open file for write. Make sure you have the necessary rights or close other programs that may use this file.

Can you think of anything to allow ROCKNROR to edit the file?

[This message has been edited by rakovsky (edited 11-25-2018 @ 02:34 PM).]

chab
Clubman

posted 11-26-18 04:14 PM ET (US) 9 / 14

you need to run the program as administrator (probably because the game is installed in a place like c:\program files (x86)\...)

rakovsky
Clubman

posted 12-02-18 07:46 PM ET (US) 10 / 14

Yes, the game is installed in c:\program files (x86)\...), and by running ROCKNROR in Admin mode, it was able to modify the AOE.EXE file. Good thinking, Chab.

And when it was in Windowed mode, the game does not temporarily freeze anymore.

Instead, there is a new bug that occurs when the game is in the "RockNRor"-modified Windowed Mode: During game play (and not during any of the other AOE screens, the mouse operates as if it is placed about 2 inches to the right of where the mouse shows up on the screen. So if I click on the lower right hand small map for example, it instead clicks on my Desktop, since the Desktop is two inches to the right of the game screen. I don't know why it does this.

chab
Clubman

posted 12-03-18 12:36 PM ET (US) 11 / 14

this typically occurs when a patch is missing in EXE.
In "Edit" popup in RockNRorAdmin, if you go to Windowed Mode/Advanced (expand the [+]), you should see 3 rows ScreenToClient1/2/3, are they all set to "ON" ?

rakovsky
Clubman

posted 12-03-18 06:13 PM ET (US) 12 / 14

Chab,

Setting all three rows to ON like you said and using the wndmode.dll file that came with ROCKNROR fixed the problem with the mouse. Good job!

The wndmode.dll file that came with the "Rise of Rome HD" update had not been not effective in fixing it. Do you think that there is any advantage to keeping the "Rise of Rome HD" wndmode.dll file, or any other practical difference between the two wndmode.dll files (like if you need to use the original file to play multiplayer games)?

chab
Clubman

posted 12-04-18 12:27 PM ET (US) 13 / 14

what is "Rise of Rome HD", is it Definite Edition ?
Or some unofficial mod ?
I suppose it's the same DLL file, you probably can keep the original file

rakovsky
Clubman

posted 12-06-18 10:10 PM ET (US) 14 / 14

By "Rise of Rome HD", I meant "Rise of Rome Unofficial Patch". Here is the mod's description:

The classic Age of Empires � revived in HD! This is the unofficial (HD) patch for Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome, a complete revamp of the original game � with HD resolution, HD quality interface graphics, hundreds of bug fixes, new gameplay options and many other enhancements. The patch has over 90 000 downloads!

(https://upatch-hd.weebly.com/)

ROR Upatch came with a setting where you can be in Windowed mode, which gets rid of the game freezing that happens when someone runs an unofficial Online-Downloaded version of AOE1.0c on Windows 7. ROR Upatch comes with its own wndmode.dll file, but in order to get RockNROR to put AOE1 in windowed mode, I can only use the wndmode.dll file that comes with RockNROR. I was concerned that RockNROR's wndmode.dll file could cause problems after it replaced UPatch's wndmode.dll file, but I haven't noticed anything.

[This message has been edited by rakovsky (edited 12-06-2018 @ 10:16 PM).]

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