MGE/Chronicles CivII - music probs

[Necrosis]

Lo folks.

I hope you wont look down on me too much for joining the forum over a technical question.


Problem is this - I have installed Civilization Chronicles, the wonder movies are fine, the sounds are fine, but the music refuses to play.

Instructions say to keep CD2 in the drive, tried that, but the game hits me with the popup saying that it wont play music unless the CD is in the drive.

I've read the other threads, I tried disabling autoplay, I tried putting the CD into a normal CD player (it just plays the data track), tried amending the civ.ini, I just cant seem to get anywhere.

The CD does have a Civ2 folder with the Civ2 exe in it, so it SHOULD work.


Since I already have Civ II and all the expansions (you can laugh, but I bought Chronicles for the convenience and it means I can keep my precious originals safe), I inserted a Civ II CD. Strangely, it WORKS PERFECTLY.

So the situation is that if I use a normal Civ II CD in my drive (Drive E), the music plays ok. If I use the Civ Chronicles CD, it doesn't.


Anyone got any suggestions? The MGE disc has more tracks IIRC, and again it saves me having to keep my old copies handy just to listen to my music.


Thanks in advance if anyone has suggestions, sorry for my first post being a begging thread.

 

[Mercator]

No need to apologize. If we didn't want any people asking questions CFC wouldn't have a technical support forum in the first place. Just make sure you stick around rather than run away after, or even before, your question has been replied to (and possibly answered). Welcome.

You say it just plays the data track when you put the CD in a normal CD player. Can you skip to the next track for the music (the data should be the first track, while the other tracks are the music)?

If your CD player can only see the one data track, it is likely that the CD doesn't actually have the music on it. I think more people have that problem.

 

[Necrosis]

Thanks for the welcome, and the reply.

I'll certainly do my best to stick around - it would be poor form to get an answer then run off again


In my CD player, which admittedly is quite old, it can only see the data track, nothing else. I am working off the assumption that the CD is a mixed mode CD, in which case the data track is presumably where it should be. You cant skip past it, but I gather thats a common problem with old old CD players.

My PC only sees the data. I've tried a bunch of media players and they'll only see the podcasts and bonus Civ IV music. I tried a fairly recent MP3 playing CD player, it also only plays the podcasts and bonus music.

I don't have much experience in the field of CD creation, so I can only guess why this is happening.

I've seen other people in the forum having problems, and a few on Apolyton, but there's been no solid answer. Granted, I have the old CDs, and I could probably get out all of them and burn an all-encompassing music CD from Civ II, Conflicts, and Fantastic Worlds, but I'd much rather my purchase worked as intended!


I've fired an email off to 2K's tech support, hopefully the problem is common enough (sorry for being selfish) that they're working on a solution.


As a matter of curiousity, am I the only "old school" Civ fan who bought Chronicles? If anyone else has a copy, maybe they could try theirs out and see if they've got the same problem? Would at least help illuminate the issue, or show whether or not its a region specific problem.

Thanks again for the reply, more solutions appreciated

 

[alboy]

Hi Necrosis,

I have had the same problem as yourself, even posted for help on these forums as well to no avail.
I live in the UK & sent a total of 3 emails to Take 2 who did reply after about 3 weeks, they said i must have a faulty disc & need to return it for a replacement or a refund from the place i purchased it. I returned it to Sendit for a refund as there are quite a lot of people with the same problem.
Todate i have not heard back from them.

Alan

 

[Mercator]

The last thing you can try is read this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=189290
It's a thread describing how to rip a CD. If Audiograbber can't find any music tracks either you probably have a faulty CD.

As alboy mentioned, there have been other people with the same problem. It looks like there are CDs where the music is simply missing.

 

[Necrosis]

Just to clarify, at the moment we're looking at a faulty disc?

Must be a bad pressing. I'm hoping 2K get back to me on the matter, but if not then its time for phonecalls.

I don't relish returning my copy to the shop, its probably outside its 28 days, and being a GAME store they've currently revamped their return policy.

Besides which, they have no more in stock, and I don't see the point of returning my game to get another potentially faulty disc. I can only hope it was a problem with the production process, and that they redo that disc for us customers (like other good CD/DVD producers have been known to do).


Mercator: I had read that particular thread before, I wonder tho is there a way to put all my Civ soundtracks onto one disc, if Civ will recognise it, and am I missing any tracks if I have Civ II, Fantastic Worlds, Conflicts, but NOT the MGE?


So far this has been a typical Monday....

 

[Mercator]

Must be a bad pressing.

Indeed.

I don't relish returning my copy to the shop, its probably outside its 28 days, and being a GAME store they've currently revamped their return policy.

I'm not sure, but I would think that asking for a replacement, because your copy is faulty, is slightly different from asking for a refund or so, because there's no possibility that you've just pirated the game and want to get another one.

But you're right, there's no guarantee they'll be able to get you another copy, nor that that other copy won't be faulty as well. I guess you'll have to wait and see what 2K wil reply.

Mercator: I had read that particular thread before, I wonder tho is there a way to put all my Civ soundtracks onto one disc, if Civ will recognise it, and am I missing any tracks if I have Civ II, Fantastic Worlds, Conflicts, but NOT the MGE?

As far as I know, MGE just has the same music as FW (I don't have MGE either). CiC added some compared to classic, and FW added some to CiC's again. So FW has all Civ2 music tracks (except for the few new ones in ToT).

You can easily create your own Civ2 soundtrack:
- burn a mixed-mode CD.
- the data track should contain a folder called Civ2, and that folder should contain a file called Civ2.exe. It doesn't actually have to be the proper executable. You could create an empty file with that name to maximise the space available for the music. That's all Civ2 needs to think there's a Civ2 disc in the drive.
- fill up the music part of the CD with whatever music you like.

 

[Necrosis]

I think that I'm going to be holding that as my last line of defence - simply copy all the bonus content AND the appropriate music tracks (I'll use the tracklist in that thread as a guide, at any rate) and create my own hackjob CD.

I'm going to give 2K a week, which is fairly standard, and then I'll progress to phonecalls and proper complaints about selling dud products as time goes on.


In the meantime, I may as well install the other Civs and have a gander at that fancy Martian/War of the Worlds scenario from the forum....


Thanks for your help so far, if I get any success I'll post it here, just as a hopeful guiding light to others.

 

[Zotmeister]

I've browsed around this website and these forums before, but I registered to commiserate: I am a dissatisfied Chronicles purchaser.

I indeed have the same issue, and my explorations have turned up a few things:

- Regarding the music in Civ 2: Funny, everything works just fine for Test of Time. But playing Multiplayer Gold, the "Pick music" option on the menu doesn't work - it says I need to have a Civ 2 CD inserted. I can turn on music, and it will play the music tracks on the doc disk (sometimes there's a sizeable time delay, sometimes there isn't, but they WILL play), but it will just blindly cycle through them. I'm led to believe that the disc was set up for use with Test of Time only. Needless to say, this is frustrating for a Fantastic Worlds fan such as myself. I know I can just have Media Player open in the background with "Jules Verne" on loop if I need to, but I shouldn't have to.

- The Civ 2 games are provided UNPATCHED. Updating Multiplayer Gold to version 1.3 doesn't fix the music issue. Test of Time CAN'T be updated to 1.1 - the patcher insists the game is not installed, probably due to the lack of a particular set of registry keys the Chronicles installer doesn't bother with. GRRRRR! Providing the games unpatched is inexcusable; providing one unpatchable is just reprehensible. (I'm working on a workaround for ToT.)

- I'm so glad that a friend of mine actually had the original Microprose CD for Fantastic Worlds, because if I'd known in advance that the SimTex scenarios were removed from the collection, I wouldn't have bought Chronicles. Missing those from back in day was half the reason I was willing to shell out for the set (the card game was the other half). Thankfully, they are now properly restored (along with the X-COM scenario, natch). Maybe I can get him to loan me the disc again so that I can make a copy of it that will hopefully fix the music issue! - ZM

 

[Necrosis]

You got the music to work??

Does the "You must have.." message just go away if you leave the game to "warm up"??




I dug out my old CDs so that I could at least provide some semblance of music. Second thing I did was dig out the MoO, MoM, and XCom scenarios, and create a zip file in my Big Directory of Patches so that I don't have to dig the CDs out again.

Right now I'm looking at burning my own Civ II cd with a data track of the missing scenarios, then ALL the music.

I didn't notice the games were unpatchable, I quite naively assumed they were fully patched out of the box.



I phoned Take 2 (thats the only UK support number), and they've "fast tracked" my tech support complaint. It's with their next tier of problem solvers, hopefully I'll have an answer soon for all of us.

In the meantime, you may wish to consider contacting them yourself regarding the patch issue.


On the lighter side, at least the games fundamentally work - I bought the C&C Decade pack (yes, I already have all the game, but I wanted the convenience. Again.) and the bugs in it were just not funny at all.

 

[Zotmeister]

You got the music to work??

Does the "You must have.." message just go away if you leave the game to "warm up"??

That error message only pops up for me if I select "Pick Music" from the File menu. If I instead passively go into the game options and turn on music, then music starts to play. No error message ever comes up. Sometimes, the music doesn't start right away, and sometimes it does, but if I give it some time (or if I toggle the music option off and on again) the music will eventually start. I just don't have any control over which tracks are played.

This assumes I'm playing Multiplayer Gold, with the CD with all the manuals on it in the disc drive. If I'm playing Test of Time, with that same CD in the drive, I have no issues whatsoever - the "Pick Music" option very much works.

Silliness: If I put in a Call to Power CD, the "Pick Music" option works! The track listing is incorrect, obviously, but I can pick from the tracks on that CD without a problem. I hasten to note that there is no Civ2 folder with a civ2.exe file on the CtP disc, so something here is definitely screwy. [In case you're curious, my computer has two CD drives, and CtP just happened to be in the other one at the time - apparently the program only looks at the first CD drive.]

I didn't notice the games were unpatchable, I quite naively assumed they were fully patched out of the box.

The original Civilization and Civilization III are both up to date, as far as I can tell. I can't vouch for IV, but then it's still an actively supported product with an available expansion pack, so there's no guarantee it wouldn't be updated in the future anyway. Only the two Civ II games are unpatched. Multiplayer Gold can be fixed, but Test of Time cannot.

In the meantime, you may wish to consider contacting them yourself regarding the patch issue.

I still have a trick or two up my sleeve there, but failing those, the lambasting shall commence. - ZM

 

[Mercator]

Silliness: If I put in a Call to Power CD, the "Pick Music" option works! The track listing is incorrect, obviously, but I can pick from the tracks on that CD without a problem. I hasten to note that there is no Civ2 folder with a civ2.exe file on the CtP disc, so something here is definitely screwy. [In case you're curious, my computer has two CD drives, and CtP just happened to be in the other one at the time - apparently the program only looks at the first CD drive.]

The Civ2 folder etc. is only needed for the CD check when starting up Civ2. Once Civ2 is started, I'm pretty sure you can just swap in any audio CD and it'll play it. And yes, I think Civ2 only looks at the first CD drive.

Multiplayer Gold can be fixed, but Test of Time cannot.

I created a registry file once with all the ToT registry settings. I'm at the wrong computer now, but I should be able to tell you which settings you're missing.

 

[Necrosis]

I think we have differening problems then. Neither my ToT nor Civ II work with that disc. How strange indeed. I tried both my drives, nothing.

No word from their advanced team yet, but naturally I don't expect any while they take a looksee.

Good luck with your tinkering!

 

[Zotmeister]

The Civ2 folder etc. is only needed for the CD check when starting up Civ2. Once Civ2 is started, I'm pretty sure you can just swap in any audio CD and it'll play it.

That's just it - that's not happening. Select "Pick Music" from the File menu, and an error message pops up saying that this function only works if a Civ II disc (original, CiC, FW, or MG) is in the drive. At least, that's what it says if the provided audio disc is the one in the drive, one that is supposed to be counted as a Civ II disc.

Tonight I'll try other random music discs and see if the one included with Chronicles is the ONLY one it doesn't like...

I created a registry file once with all the ToT registry settings. I'm at the wrong computer now, but I should be able to tell you which settings you're missing.

The trick up my sleeve is the ToT demo version freely downloadable from several direct-to-drive websites. Tonight I'll try installing it and seeing if that magically fixes the issue. If not, then I'd greatly appreciate your help. - ZM

 

[Zotmeister]

I think we have differening problems then. Neither my ToT nor Civ II work with that disc. How strange indeed. I tried both my drives, nothing.

Maybe we do, and maybe we don't - maybe we're just seeing different manifestations of the same issue. Given that you're from the UK, and another also from the UK reported the same, maybe there's some regional variance causing this. It occurs to me (I often forget about it given how rarely it comes up) that, although my copy of Windows is US, I currently have it set to JP. I'll add trying-it-in-US-mode to my list of things to try tonight... - ZM

 

[Necrosis]

Excellent, it would be good to know.


Right now I'm flying under the flag of "borked discs for the UK", but it would be useful to see how that bears up to the other versions.

 

[Zotmeister]

Right, so I finished my experiments, and the short version of the results is that they all failed.

- I tried other music discs with Multiplayer Gold to see if the program liked those. No dice. Still no "Pick Music" option, although turning music on and off still works. It occurred to me that maybe the reason it likes the CtP disc is because it has exactly nine music tracks, just like the original Civ II disc! That would also explain the occasional delay in the music starting when I was using that disc, since the ninth music track on the disc is actually blank.

- I thought of something new: I had the CtP disc in the first CD drive when I installed Chronicles via the second. Wondering if something subtle caused the program to think the CtP disc was the proper one to have in the drive during play, I uninstalled and reinstalled Chronicles, making sure the doc disc was in the first drive that time. I also had the region setting on United States, in case the Japanese install was the issue. No dice. All was the same. Necrosis, you may be right - the UK may well have gotten soundtrack discs even more screwed-up than the US did.

- I tried installing the Test of Time fully-playable demo version from Trymedia and seeing if its presence would permit me to patch the Chronicles installation of ToT to version 1.1. No dice. The patcher still said ToT was not installed. Curious note: the Trymedia version was 1.1 straight off the install. Funny that the reseller has their act together better than the original company! Mercator, if you could remedy this for me, I'd be in your debt. - ZM

 

[Necrosis]

Well I certainly suggest making a pleasant phonecall to customer service.

I know it may sound trivial to some, kicking up a stink over a game I already technically have, but its the principle of the thing.

 

[vipkl]

I have the same problem as you Zotmeister. With the Civ2 manual disc in the drive, the MGE "Pick Music" option generates the "incorrect CD" popup message, whereas it works in ToT.

I *thought* that music playback from this CD doesn't work at all, but I only tested each game by running it for a few seconds before exiting. You mentioned that it can take awhile for Civ2 to start playing the CD music tracks (randomly)...

I'm also disappointed to hear that the Civ2 games in the Chronicles collection are unpatched

I bought the C&C Decade pack (yes, I already have all the game, but I wanted the convenience. Again.) and the bugs in it were just not funny at all.

What a coincidence, I just bought these last month:

- Civilization Chronicles (Civ 1 - 4)
- Civilization 4 - Warlords
- Command & Conquer - The First Decade (all Tiberium/Red Alert/Generals games on one DVD)
- Starcraft Battle Chest (including Brood War)

After years I'm just now getting back into gaming and feeling sentimental for the TBS/RTS classics. I only played the early Civ and C&C games (so very long ago), but they were very addictive! The Starcraft package isn't a new recompilation mind you, but then again I never played this game at all

It's funny that I have GameTap to thank for my re-addiction, as they offer such games as Civ3 PTW, C&C, C&C Red Alert, etc.

Anyways I'm mostly playing on my underpowered ultraportable (ThinkPad X40T convertible tablet notebook, Pentium M, Intel 915 integrated graphics, 1.8" 4200rpm HDD, no built-in optical drive). Civ4 and C&C Generals supposedly require hardware T&L, but surprisingly I can play them tolerably.

I'm also using FarStone's Virtual Drive app to load the game disc images as virtual optical drives. Unfortunately there's no more space on the notebook's hard drive for these disc images (especially the C&C DVD), so I moved them to a small 1.8" USB hard drive, which I have to attach before playing.

FWIW though, I haven't yet found a problem with C&C (about half the games can even run fine without the DVD disc inserted)...?

 

[Necrosis]

C&C? Some videos don't play properly in Red Alert, at time of release some of the older games couldn't be patched to the current versions existing at the moment.

May seem trivial, but it meant "new" C&C players couldnt play online against the older folk. Not that online play was supported mind you, but it was added in by a patch (which the DVD version just wont take). EA just released what they had, which wasnt an awful lot. I believe the new C&C game will have a preorder pack and collector's edition which include C&C again, and will no doubt carry the same problems.

But hey, nostalgia always gets shafted.

At the moment I'm looking at turning a laptop into my personal Win98 portable "game console" and filling it full of MoO, Civ, AvP, Empire of the Ants, X-Com, SMACX, Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, and anything else that balks at XP. Just install, patch, and never touch install/uninstall anything on it ever again. Problems solved!

In 2 days time it'll have been a full week since I spoke to customer service, I'm hoping to hear something back by this Monday. I do so very much hope it is positive.