Support for American McGee's Alice
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FAQs
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Q: How is the error message "Could not load open gl subsystem" fixed? Q: Why are the Strength and Will meters in the centre of the screen? Q: Why does Alice lock up on a Gray or Tan screen? Q: Why is the game running choppy with a low frame rate? Q: Why does Alice crash when selecting a menu option? Q: Why does Alice crash to the main menu? Q: Why does Alice and everything else turn white at Veil of Tears? Q: Why does a resolution change cause a crash to desktop? Q: Why is the bottom half of the screen below the monitor? Q: How do I back up my save games? Q: Why are the Quick Saves not stored on the hard drive? Q: Where are the options to control Alice with a gamepad or joystick? Q: How is the error message "Could not load open gl subsystem" fixed? A: This error indicates a trouble initializing your 3D graphics card. The first thing to check would be to ensure that you meet the games requirements for at least a 16 MB video card with support for OpenGL.
To find out what type of video card you have: Go to Start and select Run and type dxdiag and press Ok. Along the top of the tool click on the tab that says Display. On the left side near the top it will state the name. Also note the Approx. Total Memory a couple lines below the name. It should be a minimum of 16MB. If it say 15.5MB that is OK. Next, ensure that you have the latest drivers installed for your card. You will want to check the card manufacturers web site for any updates and follow any directions that they provide. Also, OpenGL does not work with multiple monitor setups. If you have a dual-display you will need to disable the secondary monitor. Follow these steps to do so:
If you are still receiving this error once both of these things are met check the following: If you do not see the DVA=0 line under the [DrawDib] section, then this is not the cause of your problem. DVA stands for Direct Video Access, and is commonly set to 0 to fix issues with older games or video problems with old software. Unfortunately it causes the game to not recognize OpenGL support on your system as well. The only way to fix this is to remove that line. This should not affect anything on your system. Q: Why are the Strength and Will meters in the centre of the screen? A: This issue is due to a lack of video driver support under Windows XP. It is essential that you have the absolutely most current video drivers installed for your system to ensure compliancy with this new operating system. Many older cards may not be updated with the needed drivers and no solution is possible. This is true of all 3DFX cards since they are no longer in business. Check YOUR video card manufacturer's website for the most current Windows XP drivers.
Q: Why does Alice lock up on a Gray or Tan screen? A: The gray or tan screen lockup is most commonly the result of some trouble communicating with the sound card in the computer. Make sure the sound card is configured properly:
If the sound card is selected properly and the trouble still exists try lowering the sound acceleration level:
Q: Why is the game running choppy with a low frame rate? A: If you are getting a low frame rate or experiencing choppy gameplay, first ensure that you have a 16MB video card with Open gl support. To find out what type of video card you have: Go to Start and select Run and type dxdiag and press Ok. Along the top of the tool click on the tab that says Display. On the left side near the top it will state the name. Also note the Approx. Total Memory a couple lines below the name. It should be a minimum of 16MB. If it says 15.5MB that is OK.
Next, ensure that you have at least 128 MB of ram. If you have less than 128 MB Ram, then you must do a Low Memory Install. This will make the game run a little better. You can lower the details of the graphics down, so you can free up some system resources. In the main menu, click on Game Options, and then click on Video. In the Video Option, you can adjust the Texture Details to low and turn down the Texture Depth to low. This will help the graphic card and the CPU render the graphics faster. You can also try and adjust the game sound. In the main menu, click on Game Options, and then choose Audio. In the Audio Options choose and click the 8-bit sound option, this will help increase better performance for the game to run on your system. Q: Why does Alice crash when selecting a menu option? A: Alice may crash when selecting a menu option due to a setting in your config file for the game. As a quick fix, lower Hardware Sound Acceleration on your computer to "basic". To do this, follow these steps:
If the issue persists, you will need to manually edit the Alice config file. To do this:
Q: Why does Alice crash to the main menu? A: Alice may crash to the main menu due to a corrupted save file. By saving the game frequently, the save file or files can become corrupted and will prevent further progression through the game.
To resolve this revert to a previous save and use Quick Save and Quick Load (F4 and F1) for regular game progression. Starting the game entirely over may be necessary depending on how far back the corruption lies. Q: Why does Alice and everything else turn white at Veil of Tears? A: This video issue indicates that your video card does not meet the minimum requirement of 16MB of video memory. The first thing to do would be to check your video cards amount of video memory. To find out this information:
If your video cards memory reads anything below 15.5MB, you may wish to upgrade your graphics chipset. Q: Why does a resolution change cause a crash to desktop? A: To resolve this, the games resolution must manually be set to default. To do this:
This will reset your resolution to the default resolution of the game, which is 640x480. Q: Why is the bottom half of the screen below the monitor? A: This is due to the game resolution being set to a level that your monitor doesn't support but your video card does. To fix this:
Q: How do I back up my save games? A: In the Alice directory under the Base directory there is a folder called Save. This entire folder would need to be backed up and then restored to the new installations directory.
By default you will find the Alice game directory under C:\Program Files\EA Games\American McGee's Alice. Here open the Base folder then make a copy of the Save folder to a safe location where it can be transferred. Q: Why are the Quick Saves not stored on the hard drive? A: The Quick Save function will store all the information of the character's location to a cache (temporary) memory, so you will not have to start the level over if Alice dies in the game. It does not save data to a hard drive. If you end the game and return back to the desktop of your computer, your Quick Saves will be erased. Be sure to save to a file instead of using Quick Save before you exit the game.
Q: Where are the options to control Alice with a gamepad or joystick? A: Your Gamepad or joystick will not work because American McGee's Alice does not support joysticks or gamepads. All controls are handled with the mouse and keyboard.
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Troubleshooting
General Problems If you've made a settings change to Alice, that keep you from playing the game, you can usually fix this by deleting the "config.cfg" file located in the BASE subdirectory where you installed Alice. The default directory where you would find this file is: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\American McGee's Alice\Base If you delete this file, you will need to reset your key bindings next time you run the Game. Alice will automatically regenerate the config.cfg file for you. If you've changed your video resolution to something your computer cannot support, you can run Alice from the command prompt, manually setting the resolution. Open a command prompt window and change the directory to where you installed Alice. Then type: alice +set r_mode 3 And press the enter key. This will launch Alice in 640x480 resolution mode You can then try to change your resolution again. Before you change the display resolution in Alice, make sure that your computer supports that size. Some screen savers can cause problems if you leave Alice running idle long enough for your screen saver to turn on. If you have issues with this, try disabling your screensaver. Player cannot assign any command to the wheel mouse (up or down) until the game has been run and restarted. Wheel mouse commands may be issued the second time the game is started. If you have difficulty removing the game from your system using Add/Remove Programs from the Windows Control Panel, you may successfully Uninstall the game from the Start Menu (Default placement is Start/Programs/EA GAMES/American McGee's Alice/Uninstall Alice) or from the Autorun Menu on Disk 1.
If you're having framerate problems, there are a few tweaks you can do to speed up the game on your machine. These settings will free up more memory, thus placing less of a load on your hardware. In Video options (Settings Menu):
In Audio options (Settings Menu):
There should not be a big difference in the visual and audio quality when using 16-bit textures and 8-bit sounds, but it can help to make the game run faster.
If your computer is constantly accessing the hard drive as you play Alice, you may need to make a few changes. It's recommended that your machine have 128MB of RAM, but the game can run on 64MB machines with a few small tweaks. If you chose the "Low Memory" option in the Alice installer, those options should already be set for you. If you chose "Typical", as your installation option:
If you still can't get it to speed up, try uninstalling the game and reinstalling using the "Low Memory" option.
If your machine locks up frequently or crashes a lot, there are a few general tips to help stabilize it. If you have other programs running at the same time as Alice, consider turning them off. Make sure you have the latest drivers. Manufacturers are always improving their drivers to fix bugs and improve performance. Check the web sites for your Video Card, Sound Card, and Motherboard, and try out the latest drivers. Make sure your machine has the latest BIOS installed. Many hardware components get improved BIOS/Firmware after they're shipped, so make sure you're up to date. The stability of video cards and motherboards can vastly improve with updated BIOS. Once again, check your equipment manufacturer's website for newer BIOS versions. Be sure to read and understand any instructions and warnings before you try to update BIOS on any hardware component. It usually updates without a problem, but you can render your machine unusable if you don't do it right, or if something goes wrong and the proper action isn't taken to fix it. If you purchased a pre-assembled PC, check with your PC manufacturer for updates. If you've had your operating system installed and running for a long time, it may be time to reinstall. This usually is only a problem for real power users who change system settings and hardware often and work with their machines a lot.
Some video cards have problems with the fog effects that we're using in Alice. We've noticed that some objects don't seem fogged enough. This seems to occur most often on Voodoo 3 cards. In some scenes, distant objects may appear to have black lines moving across them. This seems to happen on a variety of video cards, and is a direct result of the distance from the player to the object. The current drivers for the Voodoo5 seem to have some trouble when changing resolutions, switching from full-screen to windowed mode. This usually means your computer will lock up or crash. There are also some visual problems when you run in windowed mode. We expect 3dfx to address these problems in future driver releases. As always, make sure you have the latest video drivers for your card. |
Support Downloads
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If you are experiencing any technical problems with Matrox graphics cards please download and install the patch. To install the patch do the following:
To remove the fix, just delete the "pak6_update01.pk3" file and restart Alice. This patch fixes slowdown issues that occur when running Alice on machines equipped with Matrox video cards. Areas that had transparent shafts of light would slow the machine down tremendously when those lighting effects were on the screen. This issue originally occurred on Matrox G400 based video cards, but may appear on any Matrox video card. If you are having this slowdown on another video card, you can try this fix. |
Contact Technical Support
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If you can’t find the answer to your problem in the information above, please get in touch with our Technical Support team – they’ll do everything they can to help |
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