[Resolved] openttd 0.6.3 will not start on my win98

[markzl]

Hi there,
I'm a loooooooooong time fan of tt/ttd + ttdpatch (& have tried openttd before a few years ago but kept to the original-ish - being patched I mean), but recently after reading the improvements in the current openttd, like MUCH bigger maps (never thought that would EVER happen to ttd!!!), internet play with 8 players (WOW!!!), how it incorporates many of the old & new ttdpatch options & other things I could no longer read about on the openttd homepage through all my tears & drooling after reading only a few lines of the improvements!!!

Although all came to nought when upon installing the win98 version onto my Pentium 166 MMX 64MB win98SE, it kept coming up with

OPENTTD executed an invalid instruction in
module OPENTTD.EXE at 0197:005688cc.
Registers:
EAX=00000007 CS=0197 EIP=005688cc EFLGS=00010202
EBX=00b1616c SS=019f ESP=00acf690 EBP=00acf738
ECX=00000006 DS=019f ESI=00000001 FS=2a2f
EDX=00000006 ES=019f EDI=00000013 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f 47 45 a4 85 c9 75 31 8b 5d 14 be 40 01 00 00
Stack dump:
00000000 00000000 0098b06c 00b4cc7c 00103418
7803b6c0 000000b4 00acf6c8 00000000 bff741f7
bffc9490 bff7b796 bff741f7 bffc9490 bff7b84e
00000001


Although the same win98 version works quite fine on the p4 vista.
After spending much time perusing these pages & forums, all I could find was a faq suggesting:

openttd.exe -m win32

...but to no avail. Please help as I love this game although the p4 I mentioned is not mine & I think all will be easier once I finally upgrade (yes I know it's a LITTLE old, but I "upgraded" to win98SE from win95 in 2002, I only upgrade as I need to).

thank you fellow ttd lovers!!
hopefully I'll see some of you on the multiplayer servers!!
cya & all the best in the new year!


longliveDOS

[Yexo]

Although all came to nought when upon installing the win98 version onto my Pentium 166 MMX 64MB win98SE, it kept coming up with

Although the same win98 version works quite fine on the p4 vista.

Are you sure you're using the win9x version and not the win32 version? The win32 version won't work in win95/win98, but will work on vista. AFAIK the win9x one doesn't work on vista, but I'm not entirely sure there.

[markzl]

Are you sure you're using the win9x version and not the win32 version? The win32 version won't work in win95/win98, but will work on vista. AFAIK the win9x one doesn't work on vista, but I'm not entirely sure there.

I have tried both the zip (openttd-0.6.3-windows-win9x.zip) & the installer (openttd-0.6.3-windows-win9x.exe).

EDIT:
& it worked on XP, it wasn't vista, my mistake.
thx

[Aali]

Actually, your CPU is too old to support some of the instructions used in the precompiled nightlies, you'll have to compile it yourself or someone MAY be able to hook you up with another binary.

(the instruction it's failing on is CMOV, any modern x86 CPU supports that)

[markzl]

Actually, your CPU is too old to support some of the instructions used in the precompiled nightlies, you'll have to compile it yourself or someone MAY be able to hook you up with another binary.

(the instruction it's failing on is CMOV, any modern x86 CPU supports that)

Thanks for your help. Even if I could compile it myself, realistically (even though I rarely use more than 30 trains, I much prefer it for the laying & improving of tracks since after 2 decades the money easily rolls in) I doubt my poor computer can support double the ttd playing field let alone the possible 64x map sizes (which is my main reason for getting openttd). I think it's time for a new computer.
Thank you all for your time & happy playing See you all soon I hope!

[athanasios]

Same specs, it works here (Pentium MMX CPU is overclocked to 200MHz) and in 32bpp (a bit slow, 8bpp recommended):

[Aali]

Well, CMOV was introduced with the P6 family of Intel processors (starting with the Pentium Pro) so it's very possible that you have a similar CPU (same clock frequency doesn't mean it's the same model) that does support these instructions.

[Conditional Zenith]

Even with a 512x512 map (four times default TTD size), openttd was only using 28MB of ram (resident set size on linux) for. Admittedly that was with only about 20 trains. OTTD is not a memory hog like lots of games out there. I would try it before you upgrade your computer, the results may be better than you expect.

[markzl]

Even with a 512x512 map (four times default TTD size), openttd was only using 28MB of ram (resident set size on linux) for. Admittedly that was with only about 20 trains. OTTD is not a memory hog like lots of games out there. I would try it before you upgrade your computer, the results may be better than you expect.

Do you mean try linux? If so, I have always wanted to many years ago but now I wouldn't have a clue as to where to start.

Same specs, it works here (Pentium MMX CPU is overclocked to 200MHz) and in 32bpp (a bit slow, 8bpp recommended):

Also I havn't tried higher colours, I normally set my colours just 1 level above 256 to give me a tiny bit of extra speed. I have found that VERY rarely an occasional game, program or movie player will not work properly, or even crash, if not set to the maximum colours.

Thanks for the hope everybody!!!

[DaleStan]

If it's dying on CMOVcc, which I'll assume to be the case, you have three options:
1) Buy a new processor and/or computer.
2) Compile OpenTTD yourself.
3) Use TTDPatch. (TTDPatch contains no instructions that cannot be executed by a 386.)

Installing Linux is unlikely to help, as I expect the Linux binaries are also compiled assuming a more recent processor than yours.

[Conditional Zenith]

Even with a 512x512 map (four times default TTD size), openttd was only using 28MB of ram (resident set size on linux) for. Admittedly that was with only about 20 trains. OTTD is not a memory hog like lots of games out there. I would try it before you upgrade your computer, the results may be better than you expect.

Do you mean try linux? If so, I have always wanted to many years ago but now I wouldn't have a clue as to where to start.

I was meaning try and build OTTD yourself and get it running on your current machine before assuming that your current machine is not powerful enough.

I only pointed out linux as the RAM measurements aren't exactly the same on different OSes, ie. different OSes measure different things, load shared libraries differently, etc., so I felt it was important that the RAM measurement was made using linux. On trying linux, I would recommend that you do it one day, but it is off topic and wont solve your immediate concerns

Regarding DaleStan's 3 options, option 3 wont allow you to have bigger maps.

[DaleStan]

It's also easier than #2 and cheaper than #1.

[Conditional Zenith]

That is true, but given the OP was largely interested in larger maps, I felt it was beneficial to point out that option 3 wont provide that. It also doesn't provide reliable multiplayer over the internet. I'm not meaning to say option 3 is useless or anything, I just suspect it's not what the OP wants.

[markzl]

Thanks everybody. Now for the next question... and I don't want this to go off topic, but:
> 1. How/where can/do I compile it? Obviously I need the "openttd-0.6.3-source.zip" file from the download page, but the compiler?
> 2. Do I need to compile it on my own computer or can I use a faster one but tell it to ignore/bypass the CMOVcc instruction? Although I would leave my computer running for DAYS if I have to (just like the old days of playing tt/ttd & leaving it over night in order to get money-then came the TSR which sped up the game like the ttdpatch now does)!!!
> 3. Is there a "gamecopyworld.com" type of web site, but for compiling that can explain?

Thanks again everyone.
cya.

[Conditional Zenith]

http://wiki.openttd.org/wiki/index.php/Coding_Tools

Should give you enough of an overview to get a compiler, etc. set up.

In theory you can build it on any computer, but having the compiler generate code that runs on the old box is specific to the tools you are using. With Cygwin or MinGW, both of which are GCC based, you want to have '-march=pentium-mmx' flag given to the compiler (passing "CFLAGS='-march=pentium-mmx'" to configure should do that, someone who knows the OTTD build system better should be able to confirm), with all the MSVC stuff I have no idea (others might). If you are building it on the target machine, hopefully the build system will handle all this for you and you wont need to worry about the above. I don't think it will take days, I would guess with you machine it would take hours to compile at worst, but not days.

[markzl]

http://wiki.openttd.org/wiki/index.php/Coding_Tools

Should give you enough of an overview to get a compiler, etc. set up.

In theory you can build it on any computer, but having the compiler generate code that runs on the old box is specific to the tools you are using. With Cygwin or MinGW, both of which are GCC based, you want to have '-march=pentium-mmx' flag given to the compiler (passing "CFLAGS='-march=pentium-mmx'" to configure should do that, ...

SUCCESS-ish!!! Thanks A LOT Conditional Zenith. After a few bad runs I finally compiled with no errors, I seem to have a working copy of openttd for xp/vista! Well, it at least start up & tells me I need to download the win9x version since I have win98 . How can I compile a win98 version?

so close... but so far! thanks for any ideas.

EDIT
Also, when it's done, do I get the files/folders from \openttd.src\bin & not the \openttd.src\objs\release folder? Judging by the original zip from here it would be the \bin folder & just copy over anything missing off the win98 zip I have from here.

thanks again.

[Conditional Zenith]

The only thing you really need from this build is the actual binary itself, and the ones in the 2 locations you mention should be the same, so grab either. You can just drop it in over the top of your old win98 install. As for building it for win98, that's something I don't know, I'm hoping someone else can answer that. What happens when you copy over the binary you just build and try to run it?

[DaleStan]

You'll have to reconfigure and remake, I'm afraid. As with most programs, "./configure -h" and "./configure --help" will provide useful information. Since you've been making an honest effort, I checked "./configure --help" for you. It says that, to make a win9x build, you need to add the option --disable-unicode to whatever other options you've been passing to ./configure.

If the working ./configure command was:

Code: Select all

./configure CFLAGS='-march=pentium-mmx' --with-zlib

you need instead to do:

Code: Select all

./configure CFLAGS='-march=pentium-mmx' --with-zlib --disable-unicode

(AIUI, network gaming won't work if you don't ./configure --with-zlib. It may be that LAN gaming where the host is --without-zlib will work, but that will cause absurdly huge transfer costs for joining any Internet game, and likely will just plain Not Work.)

[glx]

You can't build the win9x version with MSVC. You have to use mingw or cygwin.

Please also try a nightly build and tell us if it works or not.

[markzl]

You can't build the win9x version with MSVC ... and tell us if it works or not.

So sorry for this extremely very late reply. I see you're still active here so I'll add to the history of this thread by stating IT WORKED!!!!! I was playing soooooooooo much that I COMPLETELY forgot to come back here !

Thanks to ALL of you with your help - & also a BIG Thank You to you all that keep OpenTTD going as I still play it to this day/year!!