Letters @~Any letters or e-mails received on an adventuring-related topic @~may be reprinted in here unless marked 'not for publication'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~First a response to Thomo's query about 3D cards etc from last @~issue from: Steven R Chapman, Sheffield In response to the letter from Thomo, the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) on the motherboard is a slot based on PCI (Peripheral Component Interface) and is designed especially for the demands of 3D graphics. I obtained that information from a new book called PC Systems Installation and Maintenance by R.P. Beales (ISBN 0340692324). It costs œ19.99 and is available from all good bookshops. I have found it to be full of useful information about PCs and recommend it to anyone who doesn't know a lot about PCs. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~... And more from: Andrew J Wielochowski, via email I just read a letter in SynTax 59 regarding 3D cards. I can answer a few questions... 3Dfx is a chipset supported by the Voodoo generation of cards 1,2,3. Other 3D cards like Riva will not use the 3Dfx chipset. All decent 3D games will use a variety of 3D cards and will always have 3Dfx. 3Dfx is currently the most popular with Voodoo but the new release on TNT2 with 32-bit (something techy) is set to kick Voodoo 3 off the market. The 2d/3d type cards are good but generally buggy. The only cards I know that can be used together is the Voodoo 2. You get two of them and use a fly lead to attach them together. @~See also John's article this issue on the subject. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Next sound card comments following my fun and games with my @~SoundBlaster from: George Jones, Ellesmere Port I have had considerable trouble with sound cards myself and they can be more trouble to configure than the rest of the devices. I have taken to using motherboards with built in sound chips (in the hope that they OUGHT to be compatible!). In your case, this should not be a problem as SBs are supposed to be the industry standard and they come with enough paperwork to account for a couple of tall trees, mostly useless, as usual. The only two tips I can think of at the moment are that many boards are 'touchy' over any vestige of the previous system being present in your micro. It pays to have a clean sweep before you load new op. instructions. The other is that I was told not to let the 98 new hardware wizard find drivers for you - cancel your way out of the 'new hardware' dialogue box and wait until the start up routine has finished, THEN put your CD in (should autostart). @~When I cleared out the old hardware settings for my soundcard, I @~did what the Creative Labs website suggested and, after removing @~them from device manager, rebooted in safe mode. I was amazed @~to see soundcard drivers in there that HADN'T been listed in the @~ordinary 98 device manager. So I removed them from there too. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Now extracts from two emails from : Carolyn Brown, Sandysike I bought a copy of Baldur's Gate last week (pause for the usual rush of guilt!), and think it's brilliant. Mind you, I had to find an updated driver for my graphics card before it would work, which I was lucky enough to find on the Win98 CD. One problem I did have last night was that the program started hanging on entering certain buildings. It just refused to load the new area. Sometimes I got a message to say there was an assertion error, whatever that is, and the 'demand for WED file had failed', whatever that means, and sometimes it simply stuck. Anyway, after nearly throwing the computer through the window, I saved the 'save game' folder and reinstalled the whole thing. It now seems to work OK, thank goodness. @~Then later ... Just a quick follow-on from my email re Baldur. I did say that I thought I had my problem re 'assertion errors' nailed by reinstalling the game. How wrong I was! Last night, the problem occurred again. Every time I tried to enter the weapon shop in Beregost the game crashed with the same error. I finally decided to send an email to the tech support team at Interplay and went to the web site in search of the address. While there, I found a good section on Common Problems and Troubleshooting which, I think, has solved matters. I don't know if you will ever experience the same problem but you may know someone else who does, so in the hope you might find it useful I have attached a copy of the relevant info, plus a copy of the map which is referred to in the text. The error message I was getting was always the same and is as follows:- 'An assertion failed in D:\Dev\Baldur\Infinity.cpp at line number 1692. Programmer says: Demand for WED file failed' The file with the map in it has the following piece as a heading, which didn't come out when I saved the map (I'm not very good at handling html files!). 'Many assertion errors seemed to be caused by a file copying incorrectly from the CDRom drive. Many of these errors have been remedied by simply copying the area file over manually into the games DATA folder. Below you will find the map with the area numbers clearly marked. If you are entering an area that is giving you errors, simply copy that area file from the CD manually into the games DATA directory.' I didn't actually need to do this, as I followed the advice in the main help file which was, in the first instance, to delete all the files in the CACHE\DATA FOLDER and then restart where I left off. The deleted information is automatically replaced and should be OK. @~I hadn't heard about these problems and the solution so this was @~very useful info. You'll find it in the 'Articles' section, and @~the map is in 'Screenshots'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~And finally some useful info from: Steve Provost via email Found a couple of great sites you may like to include in the mag if you haven't already done so before: Clip Art Castle at www.clipartcastle.com has thousands of FREE fantasy & sword & sorcery animations, backgrounds, bars, buttons, clipart, icons and 3D Text. And there's more at www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/4139/Fantasy2.htm @~These are excellent sites and I'll tell you about them - and @~some others - in more detail next issue. - o -