Broken Sword 3 refuses to start

[Marek]

I'm posting this here in case someone has a miracle solution. Who knows! This is what I sent to THQ last week, but I haven't had a reply:

I have experienced the following problem with Broken Sword: when starting the game, the screen flickers a few times, I see a window with the BS3 icon and the title bar "Revolution Software Ltd.", at which point you would expect the game to go full screen and start up. In my case, however, the game throws me back to the desktop.

This is my configuration:
ATI Radeon 9700 128 MB -- latest CATALYST drivers (03.9)
Windows 2000 running Direct X 9.0b
Everything else conforms to the system specs: 256 megs of ram, 800 MhZ AMD Athlon, etc.
Oh, I have a keyboard too. And one of those mouse things. (Can't live without them.)
I do not have any refresh rate locker programs running in the background. The only one that I have is part of the ATI screen settings interface, as it's set to "disabled".

Here's what I've done so far (to no effect, of course):
* I've tried starting the game in safe video mode, but the same thing happens.
* I have a dual monitor set up, so I disabled the secondary monitor.
* I've also randomly played around with screen resolutions and refresh rates.

I'm out of ideas, so I hope you can help me solve this problem.

I also went through all the possible problems with Tony from Revolution, but we couldn't find a problem. But, again, maybe someone has a miracle solution.

It's very frustrating that I still can't play this important game. I think I might have to play it in the evenings at college and order pizza or something. :(

[Tanukitsune]

I'm posting this here in case someone has a miracle solution. Who knows! This is what I sent to THQ last week, but I haven't had a reply:



I also went through all the possible problems with Tony from Revolution, but we couldn't find a problem. But, again, maybe someone has a miracle solution.

It's very frustrating that I still can't play this important game. I think I might have to play it in the evenings at college and order pizza or something. :(
Have you tried changing the sound acceleration and the graphics from 32bit to 16?
I had to fidget for HOURS till mine worked.... :frown:

[Skinny Minnie]

Hey Marek, I have a Radeon 9700 Pro AIW, and I actually ran a little older drivers (circa June 2003) to run BS3, which ran flawlessly. I think mine are 3.7's, but I know they're the ones from June 2003. I've got WinXP and the same DX 9.0b you have. I'm using the newest Soundblaster drivers for my Audigy (1, not 2), but they're not brand new. Creative isn't that great with driver updates, but they worked fine, and they're made for DX 9 like my video drivers are.

Also, have you tried fiddling around with different desktop resolutions? I usually match my desktop to the game-- what does the game default at? Does anybody know? I can't remember. But I ran BS3 with a 1024x768 desktop and 1024x768 in-game res. I think I played it in 32-bit color, with a 32-bit color desktop, too, but I can't remember. I think somebody in one of the BS3 help threads kept lowering their res down until it worked. :confused:

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Oddly enough, my default desktop resolution is 800x600 (I have an older monitor), but after a few reboots, I managed to change the game's resolution to 1024x768, and it starts and runs perfectly - it simply just switches to the higher res whenever I start the game, and switches back whenever I quit.

[Marek]

It turns out it's my sound drivers. I set hardware acceleration to a lower setting and now it runs fine for about 20 minutes, after which the sound goes out. So I have to keep restarting. Turns out there's no certified drivers for my sound system :( (I would need a certified Win2k driver for the ForteMedia FM 801 sound card.)