Vista - Older games issue

The Campaign Series by talonsoft sofware, while over 8 years old is still
higly regarded and sought after in wargaming circles. The games have
installed and run fine thru all Windows versions, until Vista.

Vista appears to Make some changes in the actual files within the game,
notably the OBX, PDX and OOB files which control the data of the units used
in game play.

What happens is upon installing to a vista OS, the ranges for units to fire
at hard targets becomes ZERO and makes the games unplayable as one cannot
engage another hard target.

The games install and start up fine in vista just the internal coding
becomes re- arranged either due to the way Vista is processing the data or
something to do with the lines used in the coding being read by Vista wrongly.

Any ideas on how to get something like this resolved?
vista should NOT be reorganizing/editing the files within a game !?
It doesnt not appear to be an issue with the game not running or
installing, it has to do with the actual processing of the data by Vista.

The short answer is going ot be, probably by Talon soft. That Vista is not
supported by their game. EA and a few other companies take this apporach
with their latest released games like Battlefield 2142. Iin BF2142's case,
it works fine, but if you have any problems under Vista. EA will offer to
refund you money and that's it.

Seems odd that Vista would make actual changes to the game files. How are
you determining that it's actually modifying the file ? It might mark the
files for superfetching and such, but I would be surprised it would\could
make any other changes. Odds are, the code is just not executing correctly
because of the way Vista runs different, probably in more protected mode to
prevent games from crashing the system

If they Talsonsoft doesn't offer a vista ptach, then you might be out of
luck

"Randy P" <RandyP@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:85896B42-82A9-48F0-AAAF-E4EFFDC01858@microsoft.com...
> The Campaign Series by talonsoft sofware, while over 8 years old is still
> higly regarded and sought after in wargaming circles. The games have
> installed and run fine thru all Windows versions, until Vista.
>
> Vista appears to Make some changes in the actual files within the game,
> notably the OBX, PDX and OOB files which control the data of the units
> used
> in game play.
>
> What happens is upon installing to a vista OS, the ranges for units to
> fire
> at hard targets becomes ZERO and makes the games unplayable as one cannot
> engage another hard target.
>
> The games install and start up fine in vista just the internal coding
> becomes re- arranged either due to the way Vista is processing the data or
> something to do with the lines used in the coding being read by Vista
> wrongly.
>
> Any ideas on how to get something like this resolved?
> vista should NOT be reorganizing/editing the files within a game !?
> It doesnt not appear to be an issue with the game not running or
> installing, it has to do with the actual processing of the data by Vista.
>
>

"Randy P" <RandyP@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:85896B42-82A9-48F0-AAAF-E4EFFDC01858@microsoft.com...
> The Campaign Series by talonsoft sofware, while over 8 years old is still
> higly regarded and sought after in wargaming circles. The games have
> installed and run fine thru all Windows versions, until Vista.
>
> Vista appears to Make some changes in the actual files within the game,
> notably the OBX, PDX and OOB files which control the data of the units
> used
> in game play.
>
> What happens is upon installing to a vista OS, the ranges for units to
> fire
> at hard targets becomes ZERO and makes the games unplayable as one cannot
> engage another hard target.
>
> The games install and start up fine in vista just the internal coding
> becomes re- arranged either due to the way Vista is processing the data or
> something to do with the lines used in the coding being read by Vista
> wrongly.
>
> Any ideas on how to get something like this resolved?
> vista should NOT be reorganizing/editing the files within a game !?
> It doesnt not appear to be an issue with the game not running or
> installing, it has to do with the actual processing of the data by Vista.
>
>

Heck, I had old games that wouldn't play on Windows XP!! I'm still having
problems with programs and games that are only 3 or 4 yrs old on Vista!!

Good luck!

Betty

"Dale M. White" wrote:

>
> The short answer is going ot be, probably by Talon soft. That Vista is not
> supported by their game. EA and a few other companies take this apporach
> with their latest released games like Battlefield 2142. Iin BF2142's case,
> it works fine, but if you have any problems under Vista. EA will offer to
> refund you money and that's it.
>
> Seems odd that Vista would make actual changes to the game files. How are
> you determining that it's actually modifying the file ? It might mark the
> files for superfetching and such, but I would be surprised it would\could
> make any other changes. Odds are, the code is just not executing correctly
> because of the way Vista runs different, probably in more protected mode to
> prevent games from crashing the system
>
> If they Talsonsoft doesn't offer a vista ptach, then you might be out of
> luck
>
> "Randy P" <RandyP@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:85896B42-82A9-48F0-AAAF-E4EFFDC01858@microsoft.com...
> > The Campaign Series by talonsoft sofware, while over 8 years old is still
> > higly regarded and sought after in wargaming circles. The games have
> > installed and run fine thru all Windows versions, until Vista.
> >
> > Vista appears to Make some changes in the actual files within the game,
> > notably the OBX, PDX and OOB files which control the data of the units
> > used
> > in game play.
> >
> > What happens is upon installing to a vista OS, the ranges for units to
> > fire
> > at hard targets becomes ZERO and makes the games unplayable as one cannot
> > engage another hard target.
> >
> > The games install and start up fine in vista just the internal coding
> > becomes re- arranged either due to the way Vista is processing the data or
> > something to do with the lines used in the coding being read by Vista
> > wrongly.
> >
> > Any ideas on how to get something like this resolved?
> > vista should NOT be reorganizing/editing the files within a game !?
> > It doesnt not appear to be an issue with the game not running or
> > installing, it has to do with the actual processing of the data by Vista.
> >

Talonsoft has been out of business for a few years, so there's nothing going
to come from them Matrix games however bought the license to redistribute the
series.

What is noticable is that the Vista OS reads these files and converts the
ranges for hard target to a 0 within the file,
the file itself is an non-encrypted txt based file that can be read with
notepad.

the soft target ranges are not affected and neither are the movement costs
and action point costs. Just the ranges for hard targets. This issue is not
present in any other OS

We have a few coding gurus looking at it within our community, and matrix
games is working on a re-release that will hopefully work with Vista.

I was taking a chance on perhaps one of the techs here might have an idea on
the reasons for the foul up.