Search the Community

If you have Windows and a Creative X-Fi family sound card then you are not experiencing some sound related features in Steel Beasts. The X-Fi sound card drivers have a problem with DirectSound and Windows but full functionality can be restored with the use of Creative's ALchemy software that comes with the sound card. ALchemy's description says: "Creative ALchemy restores hardware accelerated audio so that you can enjoy EAX effects and 3D Audio when playing DirectSound3D games in Microsoft Windows Vista" (although the same issue is still present in Windows 7 and Windows 8) In Steel Beasts, this means that you will not be hearing positional audio as well as the distance filtering (low frequency filtering for long range sounds), nor are your sounds hardware accelerated (and you probably have buffer issues too). Chances are, you also experience the same problem with all your other games and you are just not aware of it. What you should do: In order to restore full functionality to your games, look in your START > Creative folder for "ALchemy". If it is not there then you should update your sound card drivers from www.creative.com and you should see something there to download the ALchemy program (it is relatively new and FREE of course). After opening ALchemy, you should see an "Installed Games" list on the left (which may or may not be empty) and an "ALchemy-enabled Games" list on the right seperated by a row of buttons. If you see games in the left side list, then you need to select the game and click the ">>" arrow to add it to the ALchemey enabled list (I had to add Medieval II: Total War and four other games to ALchemy enabled Games list on my PC). Problem solved, the selected game(s) will now have full audio functionality. Unfortunately though, Steel Beasts does NOT show up in the list of "Installed Games" on the left. You must add SB to this list manually, but this is simple: 1. Click "Add" 2. In the next window, click the bubble "Use Game Path" 3. Type in the path to the SBProPEcm.exe file on your HDD without "SBProPEcm.exe" on the end (you are just pointing ALchemy to the path of the exe file). The easiest way to do this is to just use the explorer to go to SB's ...\Release folder on your HDD, then in the address bar at the top, right click it and select "Copy Address as Text". Then paste this into the "Use Game Path" bar in ALchemy. 4. Type "Steel Beasts Pro PE" in the Game Title bar. 5. Click OK. You should now see "Steel Beasts Pro PE" in the ALchemy-enabled Games list on the right. 6. Voila, full audio functionality is now restored to SB Pro PE (ALchemy creates a .dll and .ini file in your ...SB Pro PE\Release folder -- it needs them to function properly).

Hello, I recently purchased SB1 and tried to install on my laptop with Windows Vista. When I first launched it I only got the very first intro screen and then the window closed. I read that installing a file ( d3drm.dll ) would help so I did that, and the game started but the main display areas of the game remain black. I see the control panel on the right and the tutorial text and the window frames but the area where the map should be remains black. I also tried several "run as" compatibility options. Has anyone had success with running on Vista? If so can you please advise what I need to do to make it run? Another option I thought was to install XP on a virtual player, has anyone had success there? thanks, steve

I know this was brought up recently dealing with the installation, but I too have Vista and (for the first time) I saw an event where Vista 64 closed down SB because of DEP. This happened as I was going from the execution phase to the AAR phase so it appeared as if SB had a CTD. I ran a search in the forum for "DEP" and "Data Execution Prevention" and it returned no relevant results. So, here is how I disabled DEP was for SB -- it might help some Vista users: ------------ 1) In the Start Menu, right click on "Computer" and select "properties". 2) A new window will open "View basic information about your computer" and on the left side, under "Tasks", select "Advanced system settings". It is important to note that I think this selection will only be available if you are logged in as the administrator. 3) In the next "System Properties" dialog, select the "Advanced" tab. 4) In the "Performance" section, press the "Settings" button. 5) In the "Performace Options" dialog, select the "Data Execution Prevention" tab. 6) Select "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I seelct:" 7) Click "Add..." and then go to the path for ...SB Pro PE\Release and select SBProPEcm.exe. You should see "SB2" show up in the list, now press "Apply" and then "OK". ------------ That should solve the DEP problems with Vista and SB.

Apparently the Data Execution Prevention may step in to block the installation of SB Pro PE 2.460 on some Vista 64 machines. The reason and solution are still unknown. Specific observations are welcome: