A few things....

I have received answers to questions 1 and 2 and I will post them under each question in bold if anyone has the same problems.


Question :1


Not sure what is causing this, but when I am in the command vehicle in the command view and I skip around the map using the minimap the first two, maybe 3 times of clicking around the screen goes to the correct spot but them it freezes and I can't go anywhere else or use the command menus. I have to press e, go to the vehicle view then press F2 again to bring up the command view. Some maps this rarely happens, but most of the time it happens enough to where I don't want to be commander for some maps. I think I heard one or two other people mention it but most other commanders don't report this problem.

My computer is over the system requirements in system and graphics card, and I am running windows 7.

Question :2

A year ago I was having long loading times when running empires and I read somewhere on the forums about editing an .ini file or adding something to the launch options to make loading happen faster. For some reason it takes a minute for one map to load and sometimes 10 seconds. Sometimes the wait is so long the command vote on the viper server is over

I read the fix added whatever it was to make it load faster and it worked well, but I can't find it in the tech support compilation thread and there is nothing when I search the forums.

For some reason I thought it was related to a thread from the Red Orchestra forums about loading times.

1) Find your Redorchestra.ini file located in the steam/steamapps/common/redorchestra/system folder (hint it looks like a notpad icon with a cog)
2) Change the cache size to better match your ram size
Listed under [Engine.GameEngine].

256 Megabytes of RAM or less
CacheSizeMegs=32

512 Megabytes of RAM
CacheSizeMegs=64

768 Megabytes of RAM
CacheSizeMegs=128

1 Gigabyte of RAM or more
CacheSizeMegs=256

EDIT BY Zetsumei: NEVER make CacheSizeMegs bigger than 256mb unless you like crashes!

Fix2: Turn of PreCaching
Also in your redorchestra.ini under [ALAudio.ALAudioSubsystem]
Change UsePrecache=True to UsePrecache=False
and under [Engine.LevelInfo]
Change bNeverPrecache=false to bNeverPrecache=true
and under [Engine.NullRenderDevice]
Change UsePrecaching=True to UsePrecaching=False
and under [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice]
Change UsePrecaching=True to UsePrecaching=False
and under [D3D9Drv.D3D9RenderDevice]
Change UsePrecaching=True to UsePrecaching=False
and under [OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice]
Change UsePrecaching=True to UsePrecaching=False
and under [PixoDrv.PixoRenderDevice]
Change UsePrecaching=True to UsePrecaching=False

Answer can be found in the optimization wikipage posted by flache http://wiki.empiresmod.com/index.php...t_Optimization

From the wiki

The game takes incredibly long to load!

A good idea is to make the heapsize bigger. The heapsize is like virtual RAM, used only by the game. This means that your computer can keep textures and other game information handy without having to search for it on your hard drive. This often results in faster loading times. The first time the game loads it will still be quite slow, but when changing maps, you'll surely notice the difference. The default heapsize is 64 MB (65536 bytes).

You can specify your heapsize by typing this: heapsize NUMBER

It's a good idea to make your heapsize half the size of your actual RAM. To find out how much RAM you have, follow these steps: Press the Start button and select 'Execute'. Now type 'dxdiag' (without the quotes) into the window that has just appeared.

After a while a window will pop up. (If it doesn't, fire up Google and look for 'DirectX 9.0c Download'.)

Your amount of RAM can be found under the 'System Tab' (Called "Memory").

You must type the heapsize in kilobytes. An example:

256 MB RAM would be 262144 kilobytes. Which means that your heapsize should be 128 MB or 131072 kilobytes, so the final text would be "-heapsize 131072".

More examples:

512 MB RAM: 524288 kilobytes (Heapsize = 262144 kilobytes)

1024 MB RAM: 1048576 kilobytes (Heapsize = 524288 kilobytes)

2048 MB RAM: 2097152 kilobytes (Heapsize = 1048576 kilobytes)
It's also best to add:

+sv_forcepreload "1" (Preloads game assets at start of level)

+cl_forcepreload "1" (Preloads game assets at start of level too)

-novideo (Skips the introductory video)

You can combine the commands, separating them by a space: -heapsize NUMBER +sv_forcepreload "1" +cl_forcepreload "1" -novideo

Thanks to flache

Question

I'm also am having a problem with HLSS and HLDJ, I already posted on the HLSS forum but have not got a response yet. So I will also post it here.

I don't have a mic but HLSS can still be run without it, which I did when I played AoC and had no problems. But when I try to run HLSS or HLDJ it says the autoexec.cfg loaded correctly and the DEL key is correctly configured for the "ToggleWav" command. But when I join the server it says: "Cannot Initialize DirectSoundCapture, other players will not be able to hear you." Another forum member thought it had to do something to do with a mic, and even though they did not use one they enable the mic in the steam voice options menu of the game and that fixed it. I tried the same thing but that did not fix it.
I read the forum post to change the HLSS to sources SDK base 2007 for Empires and it still did not work. I have windows 7 and I read on the HLSS forums people had a few issues with Vista and 7 having a similar problem. The thread said to try setting the compatibility mode to xp service pack 2 and run as administrator which some people said help but this was still not the case.

Thanks for any help,

 

Thanks flache and brutos,

One other question does anyone know if the heapsize edit also work on none source games run through steam.

 

It probably won't, as these are parameters you are giving to the executable, and the workings of these parameters are defined by the programmers.