Mauz
11-03-07, 04:50 PM
Ok, so recently I have encountered yet another bizarre problem with Silent Hunter 4: after I messed around with the codecs in order to play HD movies normally the game refuses to load, getting stuck at a black screen after the initial loading without showing the menu.
I figured the problem is with the background video (no problem with intro movies, since they're in .wmv format, while the background is in .bik).
Tried every trick I could think of: reinstalled the game, launched it raw without any mods, uninstalled the old and installed a new set of video codecs, cleaned the registry, reinstalled video\audio drivers, DirectX - nothing worked.
Tried installing a different version of SH4 in another language, and got an even worser result - the menu loads, but it's unusable, since all menu options are piled up in the corner screen, the menu movie plays in the upper right corner of the creen, while the bottom half is simply empty. I could post a screenshot - but trust me, you would not want to see this.
So I started messing with the game files. First I attempted to simply delete or replace with a dud-file the background movie (Back1.bik). Game doesn't load, gives out a file missing error right before the menu. Then I edited the menu_1024_768.ini configuration file in the Data\Menu\ directory - deleted the [GF0 I9] (Movie) and the [GF0 I2] (Movie Transparency Filter) blocks. Game gives out an error anyway.
So the question is how do I delete that background movie (and see if the game will start normally after that, since I'm already not hoping for an easy resolution)? I know that the one thing that will deffinetly help me is the extreme "format c:/" measure, but I'm trying to hold off that one for now, since I am not happy with the idea of reinstalling Windows only because there is a problem with SH4.
Any help appreciated.
I figured the problem is with the background video (no problem with intro movies, since they're in .wmv format, while the background is in .bik).
Tried every trick I could think of: reinstalled the game, launched it raw without any mods, uninstalled the old and installed a new set of video codecs, cleaned the registry, reinstalled video\audio drivers, DirectX - nothing worked.
Tried installing a different version of SH4 in another language, and got an even worser result - the menu loads, but it's unusable, since all menu options are piled up in the corner screen, the menu movie plays in the upper right corner of the creen, while the bottom half is simply empty. I could post a screenshot - but trust me, you would not want to see this.
So I started messing with the game files. First I attempted to simply delete or replace with a dud-file the background movie (Back1.bik). Game doesn't load, gives out a file missing error right before the menu. Then I edited the menu_1024_768.ini configuration file in the Data\Menu\ directory - deleted the [GF0 I9] (Movie) and the [GF0 I2] (Movie Transparency Filter) blocks. Game gives out an error anyway.
So the question is how do I delete that background movie (and see if the game will start normally after that, since I'm already not hoping for an easy resolution)? I know that the one thing that will deffinetly help me is the extreme "format c:/" measure, but I'm trying to hold off that one for now, since I am not happy with the idea of reinstalling Windows only because there is a problem with SH4.
Any help appreciated.