About P99 and Trying to Play

[RPGrandPa]

I've tried playing P99 in the past years off and on and every time its just been a bad experience for me.

1) The crashes. 95% of the time when logging to character select the game just errors out and crashes forcing me to relog.

2) Zone crashing. Countless times when zoning, I'll just crash during zoning.

So many crashes or freeze ups, it just makes it so damned hard to even stay motivated about playing P99. It's funny because Live EQ plays just fun but EVERY freeshard EQ server I have tried has crashes like these. Not just P99 but other freeshards for EQ.

I have a top of the line PC, so it's not me trying to play these freeshard servers on a crappy pc. Why is it I have so many issues like this? Anyone else go through this?

Another thing I noticed last time on G99 was I'll set my UI up and play, then log off till another time and when I relog back on, my entire UI has reset. Does this every time on green. It's funny, back when Red99 has a decent population, I was playing it on an Alienware laptop, which is now old . . . like 8-9 years old but whats funny is that old laptop with an old 760 gfx card runs P99 fine lol but I want to play it on my main gaming rig but can't.

edit: Just like now, I figured, I'd give it a go, I log on, go to character select and click on my character and click play and . . . error. I mean seriously? Relogged in a second time, got in and of course UI totally reset as usual. :/

[Seducio]

A couple things to try:

1. Right click eqgame.exe, click Compatibility tab, check box Run this program in compatibility mode for: (select) Windows XP (Service Pack 3).

2. Lower in Settings check box Run this program as an administrator.

The issues you have sometimes happen with people who have machines that are very high end. Try these two items to try and clear up what you are facing.


Lastly regarding UI. You have to camp out the 30 seconds to character select screen for your UI file to save. If you just /ex out or /q out or crash out then the UI changes don't save.

Good luck

[WarpathEQ]

Solid advice from Seducio. 2 other things I've seen help...I run the game in WinEQ. I've done this from initial install but from what I understand it eliminates a lot of crashing issues. Also I read that forcing the game to run on a single core will help eliminate a ton of issues. These old clients weren't made to operate on multi core computers and a single core is more than capable of running the game.

[cd288]

Are you running the game in windowed mode or in fullscreen?

[Sonolin]

I tried running in compatibility mode but then the game won't launch for me... oh well at least it is working without. It would be nice for it to stop crashing on camp though.

[Arakash]

Hey RPGP,

I just bought a new laptop and have been running into the same issues lately.
Compatibility mode does not work with my new rig (internal error etc.) so I just run it in normal mode.
Windowed mode instead of full screen seems to eliminate nearly all the problems.
However, I prefer full screen and it took me a while to figure out, for my rig, what works. Nonetheless, about 1/3 of the time, I still crash when I camp.

[WarpathEQ]

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122972&highlight=service+pack

Link to a longer thread addressing the issue with more dialogue. The Windows XP Service Pack 3 worked perfect for me, never had a crash since. In the thread link there is some clarification of how people might be applying that incorrectly or other issues people determined were the root cause. Hopefully this helps fix your issue

[Ooloo]

The fact that you have a top of the line PC might be a big part of the problem. New OS's and even hardware hate being forced to run old software, which p99 by definition will always be.

P99, by far, runs more stable on an old winxp machine I built in 2004 with some entry level nvidia card than it ever has on any of my more modern systems.

[Swish]

The fact that you have a top of the line PC might be a big part of the problem. New OS's and even hardware hate being forced to run old software, which p99 by definition will always be.

P99, by far, runs more stable on an old winxp machine I built in 2004 with some entry level nvidia card than it ever has on any of my more modern systems.

I can echo this having played on a netbook about 8 years ago running Win8 and no real sign of a graphics card :D ...versus a modern PC with modern components.

[Arvan]

windowed mode stopped the crashing for me

[Ooloo]

I can echo this having played on a netbook about 8 years ago running Win8 and no real sign of a graphics card :D ...versus a modern PC with modern components.

Yeah I'm sure just the onboard graphics chip on a low end laptop mobo can run vanilla-velious eq at like 120fps lol.

I will say one downside of playing on my old winxp machine is that the fps does start to chug on raids and in EC tunnel, but I'll take that anyday over constant crashing.

[RPGrandPa]

A couple things to try:

1. Right click eqgame.exe, click Compatibility tab, check box Run this program in compatibility mode for: (select) Windows XP (Service Pack 3).

2. Lower in Settings check box Run this program as an administrator.

The issues you have sometimes happen with people who have machines that are very high end. Try these two items to try and clear up what you are facing.


Lastly regarding UI. You have to camp out the 30 seconds to character select screen for your UI file to save. If you just /ex out or /q out or crash out then the UI changes don't save.

Good luck

kk will give it a try

Are you running the game in windowed mode or in fullscreen?

Windowed


The fact that you have a top of the line PC might be a big part of the problem. New OS's and even hardware hate being forced to run old software, which p99 by definition will always be.

P99, by far, runs more stable on an old winxp machine I built in 2004 with some entry level nvidia card than it ever has on any of my more modern systems.
Yea, it is not just P99 buit all freeshard EQ servers. Strange though that EQ Live runs fine.

windowed mode stopped the crashing for me


I'm in Windowed mode

And I have an older Alienware Laptop, runs P99 just fine so it could be this monster of a PC I have.

[RPGrandPa]

The thing is start my p99 by clicking the batch file.

[RPGrandPa]

https://i.imgur.com/8rNxEVp.png
I log into character select, choose my character and click enter game and get this.

[Sonolin]

Have you tried wineq2? Fixed most issues for me though it still crashes on camp

[mcoy]

https://i.imgur.com/8rNxEVp.png
I log into character select, choose my character and click enter game and get this.

Change resolution(s) in eqclient.ini for fullscreen/windowed. Remember, it's a 4:3 game.

-Mcoy

[RPGrandPa]

no change

[bhughes]

I read somewhere that NVIDIA drivers cause lockups in P1999 green / blue, I was interested in upgrading my GPU so I decided to ditch geforce and bought an AMD radeon. I haven't crashed or locked up since. I do usually crash when I switch characters but most of the time i just /exit and deal with it.

No zone change crashes or mouse / keyboard lockups with AMD.

I don't play in windowed mode.

Sometimes when I need to get to the windows desktop to do something like edit an EQ screen shot in paint I get a crash, can't create device dialog box, but I learn to expect that to happen and don't try to do that while engaging mobs.

[Zendir]

Strange though that EQ Live runs fine.


EQ Live is now running a new 64bit client meant for newer CPUs. p99 runs the old Titanium client.

[mcoy]

no change

What did you set them to? Start small and work your way up... What's 1600x1200 windowed do?

-Mcoy

[cd288]

Change resolution(s) in eqclient.ini for fullscreen/windowed. Remember, it's a 4:3 game.

-Mcoy

There was something I remember in the ini file where there was a section that showed the current resolution I was using for windowed mode, and there was another section in the ini file that I also had to change to mirror those numbers (so basically making sure both sections had the same numbers). Trying to recall what that second part of the ini file was called, but it reduced my crashes a lot (not 100%, but a lot).