Hey - thanks in advance if you can shed even a little light on what's going wrong here. I'm under the impression this is an unusual problem.
So. I've played OpenArena for well over a year now with no significant problems. Anything that's come up, I've fixed. 'Til now. =/
Before we go any further - my system specs. The computer I usually use to play OA:
Dell Dimension 8400 (late 2005 model) BIOS A07
Intel Pentium 4 "Prescott" 3.0GHz, Hyper-Threading enabled
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM
ATi Radeon X800 SE w/128MB dedicated memory
connects wirelessly to shitty aDSL, but this isn't a network problem, so networking hardware = irrelevant.
Windows XP Professional SP3 (October 2008 rev). Beyond that, it's tweaked beyond belief. However,
none of my system tweaks have affected OA (or indeed anything) in a negative way. I know what I'm doing. I know a lot about computers. That's why I'm so confused...!
The issue:
OpenArena will open. I click "Multiplayer" and select a server. It connects. Takes awhile because of aDSL, but I've optimized the latency stuff pretty well (I think). I pop up in the Spectator list. Okay. I wanna join a team. Except...nothing looks right. The display resolution is great, but it clips off the screen on both sides. Should I go to "Setup" or use the console to set /r_mode, customheight/width whatever...things go to hell. The speakers emit a strange crackling sound and the machine just locks up. I mean the thing
flatlines. I can't do anything except a hard shutdown, which I
hate doing as I'm convinced it will only lead to more problems.
Scenario: I connect to a defrag server. I pick up a rocket launcher. I hit my bind to change weapons and the PC shits itself into frozen-mode again. Nothing I can do.
I mean NOTHING. Can't force-quit, can't open the Task Manager, can't even press Num Lock and have the little green light go on on the keyboard. Nothing at all.
In a nutshell, I can no longer play OpenArena at all. Single player works fine until I try to do something like add a bot or pick up a weapon. And should I make it as far as opening the console and changing my graphics settings, all it takes is /vid_restart and the whole setup is dead again.
What on earth is going on here?
I have NEVER had problems like this before tonight. Never. I blame OpenArena because every other program will run. And for the record, I have a pretty average graphics card and have most effects disabled in my config. The config I use without issue all the time. The same config that lets me score over 250 on a server where my
ping is about that.
I'm baffled. Anyone out there more of a geek than I - HELP!