anyone get Tactical Ops Assault on Terror working on Win7?

[w0g]

got UT working fine but Tactical Ops Assault on Terror based on nearly the same engine won't work. specs for good measure:

Win7 Ult x64
Radeon HD 4670 w/ CATALYST 10.8
Core i7 820QM.
8GB RAM

I know Unreal Engine games are incompatible with multi-proc/core systems, so I use Windows start command to lunch the game with AFFINITY 1 set (uses CPU 0 only), got the game patched to Retail->3.4->3.5, and installed the AIM IT X-Mas mappack. Also tried the latest UT OpenGL renderer, 3.7? Running in compatibility mode for XP/2000 does nothing, and I installed the game in my user home directory so it has fully write permissions as it requires (at first I installed it into Program Files/but realized it didn't have proper write permissions and couldn't write the TacticalOps.log/User.ini etc - but I corrected that). Run-as admin doesn't help either and shouldn't be required when ran from a directory with proper write permissions like I have, anywho...

There's no error message other than TacticalOps 'has encountered an error' and closes/checks for a solution, which happens when the game is started and immediately after it tries to evoke full-screen mode, no part of the game is ever able to run. TacticalOps.log is usually blank or only partially written to with no useful debug information, it seems like it's actually in the middle of a write process when the crash occurs because you'll find half-written status messages about what 3D features were detected and it cuts off the word and has no information about the crash or any error occurring. Event Log indicates these four events are happening (already checked into using the 'disable desktop composition' compatibility mode, didn't help):

====EVENT 1
Faulting application name: TacticalOps.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x3ca0ffb8
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0062b7b3
Faulting process id: 0x124c
Faulting application start time: 0x01cb47ac2794b7e7
Faulting application path: C:\Users\Todd\tacticalops\System\TacticalOps.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
====EVENT 2
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: BEX
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: TacticalOps.exe
P2: 0.0.0.0
P3: 3ca0ffb8
P4: StackHash_0a9e
P5: 0.0.0.0
P6: 00000000
P7: 0062b7b3
P8: c0000005
P9: 00000008
P10:

Attached files:
C:\Users\Todd\AppData\Local\Temp\WER4CC2.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml

These files may be available here:
C:\Users\Todd\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_TacticalOps.exe_e5aaf2b8b43b77f3b450695e2ca4bc8d1479476_0ec55605

Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 6b9549a8-b39f-11df-891a-0026b91eef15
Report Status: 1
====EVENT 3
A request to disable the Desktop Window Manager was made by process (TacticalOps.exe)
====EVENT 4
The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because composition was disabled by a running application

 

[vbdasc]

I know Unreal Engine games are incompatible with multi-proc/core systems, so I use Windows start command to lunch the game with AFFINITY 1 set (uses CPU 0 only),

I'm not so sure. My UT runs quite happily in both Windows 7 and XP SP3 on a triple-core CPU, without any fiddling with the affinity.

got the game patched to Retail->3.4->3.5, and installed the AIM IT X-Mas mappack. Also tried the latest UT OpenGL renderer, 3.7?

My experiences with the OpenGL renderer and ATI cards are not that good, to say the least. Try some Direct3D renderer - TNSe's for example, or those on the CWDohnal's page. Also see if the problem happens with the software renderer.

P.S. Did you try the free (UT mod) version of Tactical OPs?

 

[w0g]

Confident the game doesn't run without setting CPU affinity properly, it runs out of sync and sort of either too fast or skips around. I don't know all the issue but it's common to have to set CPU affinity with this game, there's some issue with it's detection of CPU frequency and SpeedStep and other advanced CPU power management features as well. I don't know the exact issue I'm running into but setting CPU affinity DOESN'T HURT and it worked for me, this game will never use more than 1 CPU anyway.

Didn't try free UT mod of Tactical Ops because it's unsupported and they never updated it so it's incompatible with most of the servers. Tactical Ops AOT crashes in all rendering modes, soft/Direct3D/OpenGL.

The AOT community forums aren't anywhere to be found, only place to really look for help is Unreal Tournament forums and hope to find someone familiar with the problem since the communities are nearly one and the same.

 

[Delacroix]

There are updates for Tactical Ops UT Mod to AOT level, I will try to find them for you. However, this does not matter much - try the UTGLR renderers, they should work fine. I ran TacOps with D3D9 on Win7 and it ran smoothly.

 

[vbdasc]

Today I installed Tactical OPs AOT on my Windows 7 machine and it ran flawlessly, with all the renderers. Installed the patch 3.4 - everything was still OK. Installed 3.50 - ditto. The only problem is that my Windows 7 is 32-bit.

I would suggest to you to try the "DLL isolation" approach - i.e. try renaming or removing the DLLs in the SYSTEM directory one by one, until something changes. I would begin with MSVCRT.DLL.

 

[w0g]

removed MSVCRT.DLL, still failed (and I see Windows has it's own copy to fall-back on). I decided to eliminate non-essential game libraries/render modes as well, Direct3D, Metal, SGL, and Glide - leaving OpenGL and software support, still no good. Will try again later.