MOO3 DirectX surface error

[wanderer27]

Okay, so it's not exactly the latest and greatest game around, it's not even a great game, but it can be interesting and fun at times.

I used to be able to run this without any issues when I had Win98 on my System, at least that's I think that's the last time I played it without issues.

I reinstalled once some time back (running XP Pro), and could play for a while, but eventually it would Blackscreen with the "DirectX Surface error" not found or something along those lines.

Anyone here know of a fix for this?

I'm running XP Pro and DirectX 9.0c, and my System specs are below.

 

[Kadarin]

MOO3 isn't even a "good" game...

 

[shortylickens]

I agree, its not a great game.

I highly recommend you uninstall it and get Galactic Civilizations 2 instead. It works just fine with DirectX 9.

OR........

Dig up a copy of Master of Orion 2, amazingly enough it works great in Windows XP, I never once had a crash. (With a single core. With dual core CPU's you will have to disable processor support for one of them under Moo2.)


EDIT:
I only played master of orion 3 with direct x 8, so I cant help you anyway.

 

[Arglebargle]

I know I still play Moo3 as a form of solitaire. Deeply flawed game, but there is still some decent player mods and patches for it that improve it a lot. I know I do not have the problem you mention. Not at home, or I would provide links, but the player mods are out there...

 

[coloumb]

Dual Boot into an OS that is supported by the game... or just bury the game in your back yard and forget about it.

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: coloumb
Dual Boot into an OS that is supported by the game... or just bury the game in your back yard and forget about it.

Yeah I've thought about doing that, but I don't really want to have to reformat my HD and shuffle all the stuff I have on it to my other HD.



As for the suggestion earlier of going to Galactic Civilizations II, I'm kind of under the impression that it's just a Space based version of Civilization 4. I really don't know enough about it to tell whether that is truly the case or not. I'm a little burned out on Civ 4 right now, it'll been some time yet before I'm in the mood to get back into it again.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

MoO3 is possibly the greatest tragity to ever occur to PC Gaming. Get MoO or MoO2; they are FAR better games and in some ways look better too. A few weeks after MoO3 was released you could get like a 20$ rebate and the game was reduced down to 10 dollars or something on amazon... THEY WERE PAYING PEOPLE TO TAKE THE GAME!

I'm pretty positive MoO3 was out when XP was around.

 

[Borealis7]

IMPERIUM GALACTICA II 4EVA!!~~~~!!~!~!~

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: AyashiKaibutsu
I'm pretty positive MoO3 was out when XP was around.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure XP was out then too, but I was still running Win98 for quite some time. I'm not crazy about all the DRM crap. I'd still be running Win98 if I hadn't received a bunch of XP CD's & Licenses from work (free) since they preferred Win2000 over XP at the time. Even so, I was still quite hesitant about installing it. Right now Vista < WinME, so that's not an option.

More to Topic, I decided to reinstall MOO3 last night. I'm going to give it another run and see if I still get these DX errors - pretty sure I will.

 

[wanderer27]

FWIW, I got hit with the DXSU error again.

If anyone's interested, it seems that the 1.25 Patch actually causes the problem :roll:

The Patch corrupts the Graphic.mob file, so just replace the updated one with the original - seems to work so far . . . .

 

[Fox5]

Your problem is that you're running MOO3 in the first place. Heh, I found that game recently at a 5 and below, a whole huge pile of them. I anticipated MOO3 so much too, but it disappointed so much as well.

What you need to do is:
Get GalCiv 2 with its expansions (there's a 3rd one coming out soon, you can probably get them all in a bundle). By the 3rd expansion, it's included a lot of the features that made MOO2 so interesting. Still lacking on the combat side of things though, no tactical combat option, and you can't bombard planets apart from an invasion force. (latest expansion does give you the ability to destroy solar systems though, but the tech takes ungodly long to get)

Or...
if you've yet to play MOO2, go on download.com and download the demo. Now apply the latest official patch. Now apply the latest unofficial patch (Google it!). Now download dosbox and load up the dos version of MOO2 (less buggy and runs better than the windows version) and enjoy! You may even find some people willing to play online, if you don't mind a 16 hour game... (who's dumb idea was it to make it a turn by turn game and then require dozens of turns for even the most basic functions? it essentially forces the use of the auto turn option, which is disabled in multi for obvious reasons...shame is that GalCiv 2 has no multi, but the game is more streamlined so that it wouldn't be as agonizing among experienced players)

 

[imported_Shivetya]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
Okay, so it's not exactly the latest and greatest game around, it's not even a great game, but it can be interesting and fun at times.

I used to be able to run this without any issues when I had Win98 on my System, at least that's I think that's the last time I played it without issues.

I reinstalled once some time back (running XP Pro), and could play for a while, but eventually it would Blackscreen with the "DirectX Surface error" not found or something along those lines.

Anyone here know of a fix for this?

I'm running XP Pro and DirectX 9.0c, and my System specs are below.

When I get home I will find the links to the official forums, yes the community is alive and well. There are some serious mods for MOO3 that make it close to the game it should have been. It is one of the oldest installs I have on my PC.

One particular player, Bhuric, has a patcher which fixes bugs and activates features let abadoned by the developers.



The game was horrible on release, some of the best reviews I read about it were negative and the the developers and board ops of the official boards actually banned people for posting negative reviews - even professional reviewers were not immune to this treatment. Behold when the game came out it was as bad as some reviewers mentioned.


But, again, patched and modded the game is a gem.


My Absolute Favorite Review of MOO3

The author of that review (came out before game was public available) was ripped apart on the MOO3 forums by supposedly neutral board operators and even the developers. When he came and defended his review they banned him after two posts - because they couldn't prove him wrong!




Official MOO3 FORUMS!

 

[lozina]

Galactic Civs is a poor replacement for Moo. It's not even close. Space Empires V is a better alternative.

 

[wanderer27]

My Wife is supposed to pick up Gal CivII Gold today, but now I'm wondering if I should have her skip doing that.

Space Empire V? Didn't that get hammered by all the reviewers? Of course so did MOO3 . . .


Interesting Review (of MOO3) and rebuttal on that site. Fairly accurate, and the rebuttal for the most part seemed to be grasping at straws.
I have to agree that I don't really grasp the Economy (or Research) of the game, so uncharacteristically I back off that aspect of things. The Ship/Fleet design and overall strategy and planning is mainly what interests me in this one.

It could have been much more, but everyone knows what happened to that.

 

[lozina]

on metacritic users gave space empires 5 an 8.2, but the reviwers seem to give it average of 6.8. still not so bad.

why i like it though is it is most similar to the original MoO playstatyle. you custom design all your ships right down to components. combat take place on a separate field from the game map and is done the MoO way but in real time. you colonize planets and build farms/mines/research facilities as well as other specialized facilities but you have limited space so you really should specialize planets... like one pilot might have really high minerals so you want to just build mineral mines there to be exported to your planets that produce ships. In moo2 they got kinda crazy with buildings where just about every planet had the same stuff as the other.

my only complaint about space empires v is the AI is not all that challenging but galciv's 2 was not great either.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
My Wife is supposed to pick up Gal CivII Gold today, but now I'm wondering if I should have her skip doing that.

Space Empire V? Didn't that get hammered by all the reviewers? Of course so did MOO3 . . .


Interesting Review (of MOO3) and rebuttal on that site. Fairly accurate, and the rebuttal for the most part seemed to be grasping at straws.
I have to agree that I don't really grasp the Economy (or Research) of the game, so uncharacteristically I back off that aspect of things. The Ship/Fleet design and overall strategy and planning is mainly what interests me in this one.

It could have been much more, but everyone knows what happened to that.

Space Empires V, imo, falls almost into the same trap that MOO3 did.

GalCiv2 Gold only includes the first expansion pack (there's a somewhat hidden sku on the stardock website including the 2nd expansion pack, albeit the 2nd expansion pack is still in beta and hasn't met it's official release yet) and while the game with dark avatar is pretty good, the features from twilight of the arnor really had a lot of personality to the game.
For instance, sensible and unique tech trees per race, random galactic events, enhanced diplomacy, and enhanced colonization techniques and terror stars. Funny thing is though, gal civ 1 had all of these already, so why did it take until gal civ 2's 2nd expansion to get them back in?
Regardless, GalCiv2 may or may not be the closest choice to MOO1 and 2, however it and Civ4 are about the only worthwhile 4X games available right now. Nothing else approaches the accessibility of the classic 4X games like Alpha Centauri, MOO1+2 (and even 2 was bordering a little on being unaccessible), and such.

I was a long time MOO2 die hard, but by the 2nd expansion about the only things Gal Civ 2 needs to do to replace MOO2 entirely in my heart is:
The unique tactical combat of MOO2...not going to happen, this is largely abadoned by the genre but it was part of what made MOO2 so special. GalCiv2 reduces it to a rock-paper-scissors trifecta of mass drivers, lasers, and missiles along with the associated defenses.

And multiplayer. Also not going to happen, which sucks since gal civ 2 is one of the more streamlined 4x games and would be better suited to it.

my only complaint about space empires v is the AI is not all that challenging but galciv's 2 was not great either.

Galciv 2 did improve later on, also make sure you're playing on a high enough difficulty. The ai doesn't use all its algorithms until 1 or 2 levels above normal. That said, no AI in any 4X game is good enough to take on an experienced human player without cheating, and Galciv2 is no exception.

 

[wanderer27]

Gal Civ II - Ookkkaaayyyy . . . . going to be a pretty good learning curve here.

Just finished the first Campaign (Dread Lords section).

I won, or I should say the Antarians (?) won.

Me, it was more "Click next Turn" (reminiscent of MOO3). Not a bloody clue of what I was doing or supposed to do
Had a Colony ship which I never could figure how to use to build a new Colony.
Built a Constructor, but couldn't figure out how to find it until almost the end.
I guess you have to build your own Surveyor ship. Wow, that's going to take some time from looking at the screens. Nice touch I guess for those so inclined, but seems a bit much on the Micro management side.

Planetary management is somewhat guess work at this point. I have a rough idea of what things are and what they do, but I don't have a strategic view/understanding of what I should be doing in this area yet.

Nice graphics.

Watched the Tutorial videos. Some good intro information, but they don't address the above.

They should have had the first episode or so be a hands on Tutorial of sorts to tie things together better so you can figure out what's going on quicker. Most 4x's have this, I'm surprised it wasn't part of the package.

Haven't seen anything in regards to combat yet. It's sounding a bit like I may be disappointed from the comments on this thread. I like the combat in MOO3, even though there's not much to see. Jury's still out on this until I get a chance to check this aspect of things out.

Well it's late here. Tomorrow's another day to try to figure some more things out.

 

[StinkyPinky]

The entire game of Moo3 is an error. I picked it up for like 8 bucks a few years ago and was excited at getting such a great deal. I soon realized that waking up and discovering a second scrotum would be less of a trauma than playing that crap ass game again.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
Gal Civ II - Ookkkaaayyyy . . . . going to be a pretty good learning curve here.

Just finished the first Campaign (Dread Lords section).

I won, or I should say the Antarians (?) won.

Me, it was more "Click next Turn" (reminiscent of MOO3). Not a bloody clue of what I was doing or supposed to do
Had a Colony ship which I never could figure how to use to build a new Colony.
Built a Constructor, but couldn't figure out how to find it until almost the end.
I guess you have to build your own Surveyor ship. Wow, that's going to take some time from looking at the screens. Nice touch I guess for those so inclined, but seems a bit much on the Micro management side.

Planetary management is somewhat guess work at this point. I have a rough idea of what things are and what they do, but I don't have a strategic view/understanding of what I should be doing in this area yet.

Nice graphics.

Watched the Tutorial videos. Some good intro information, but they don't address the above.

They should have had the first episode or so be a hands on Tutorial of sorts to tie things together better so you can figure out what's going on quicker. Most 4x's have this, I'm surprised it wasn't part of the package.

Haven't seen anything in regards to combat yet. It's sounding a bit like I may be disappointed from the comments on this thread. I like the combat in MOO3, even though there's not much to see. Jury's still out on this until I get a chance to check this aspect of things out.

Well it's late here. Tomorrow's another day to try to figure some more things out.

Woah, you finish the campaign without knowing how to play? You must have been playing on a really low difficulty, anything below normal and the AI starts getting handicapped in production and your allies get major boosts. You could not click turn your way through the campaign on any decent difficulty level, as the dread lords (antarans) really make the campaign more of a race against time than anything else.

Colonies aren't built, you just click on the colony ship, then right click on a habitable planet.
When you build a ship, it appears in the little shipyard screen on a planet unless you set up a governor for it to go somewhere.
The game usually gives you a surveyor ship to start out with.

I've never actually watched the gal civ 2 tutorial vids (too slow), but I'm surprised they don't cover the basic topics. And I'd really recommend you up the difficulty, at whatever difficulty you're on you're not playing the game, you're just waiting for your inevitable victory. Better off toughing things out until you figure out what to do.

There is no combat to speak of in gal civ 2. There's 3 weapon types and 3 defense types, so building ships is mostly a cosmetic thing (you can put parts anywhere you want, people have even made transformers and the USS enterprise) and picking weapons/armor to counter your opponent and how many engines you want. You can also group ships into fleets to combine attack power. However, combat is fully automated and not very impressive to watch, more like civilization than master of orion 1 and 2. (I think 3 was fully automated?)

You should try some free mode games (non-campaign) in the dark avatar expansion. The campaigns in galciv2 suck (though dark avatar is better than dread lords, but it mainly serves as a tutorial for the new features), the free mode games are where it's at.
Tech tree has so many duplicate techs that it takes a while to learn it. It's a shame they didn't individualize and streamline it until the 2nd expansion.

 

[shortylickens]

The MOO3 review was harsh, but accurate.

I love GC2 but not as much as MOO2 and Imperium Galactica 2.
I just remember I got Space Empires V a while ago and forgot to install and play it. I've been spending more time with simple, fun titles like Titan Quest and Test Drive.

Will have to experiment tomorrow.

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Woah, you finish the campaign without knowing how to play? You must have been playing on a really low difficulty, anything below normal and the AI starts getting handicapped in production and your allies get major boosts. You could not click turn your way through the campaign on any decent difficulty level, as the dread lords (antarans) really make the campaign more of a race against time than anything else.

Colonies aren't built, you just click on the colony ship, then right click on a habitable planet.
When you build a ship, it appears in the little shipyard screen on a planet unless you set up a governor for it to go somewhere.
The game usually gives you a surveyor ship to start out with.

I've never actually watched the gal civ 2 tutorial vids (too slow), but I'm surprised they don't cover the basic topics. And I'd really recommend you up the difficulty, at whatever difficulty you're on you're not playing the game, you're just waiting for your inevitable victory. Better off toughing things out until you figure out what to do.

There is no combat to speak of in gal civ 2. There's 3 weapon types and 3 defense types, so building ships is mostly a cosmetic thing (you can put parts anywhere you want, people have even made transformers and the USS enterprise) and picking weapons/armor to counter your opponent and how many engines you want. You can also group ships into fleets to combine attack power. However, combat is fully automated and not very impressive to watch, more like civilization than master of orion 1 and 2. (I think 3 was fully automated?)

You should try some free mode games (non-campaign) in the dark avatar expansion. The campaigns in galciv2 suck (though dark avatar is better than dread lords, but it mainly serves as a tutorial for the new features), the free mode games are where it's at.
Tech tree has so many duplicate techs that it takes a while to learn it. It's a shame they didn't individualize and streamline it until the 2nd expansion.

No, I just did the first episode/chapter of the DL campaign, not the whole thing. Maybe I didn't explain it that well.

I pretty much tried what you said about colonization, I just couldn't get it to work. I started out with a Scout and a Colony ship, the only other ship in the build options was a Constructor. The parts were there (Survey module) to build a Surveyor I guess, but it wasn't something that was going to be quick and simple as far as I could tell.

Really the only reason I began the Campaign in the first place is I expected the first few episodes to be Tutorial in nature. I actually prefer the free-form games versus the scripted Campaigns, but until I know what the heck's going on that would be a waste of time. Unfortunately the beginning episodes aren't Tutorial in nature, they just throw you in the middle of things and make you figure it out. I'll get through it, it's just not the way things should have been done - maybe this is one of the reasons this game wasn't really on my Radar when it was coming out.

I only had an hour or so last night to mess with it, I'm sure I figure more of it today after spending some more time with it. It really is sounding like I'm not going like the combat, hopefully there's something else in the game that make up for it if that is truly the case.

 

[wanderer27]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
The MOO3 review was harsh, but accurate.

I love GC2 but not as much as MOO2 and Imperium Galactica 2.
I just remember I got Space Empires V a while ago and forgot to install and play it. I've been spending more time with simple, fun titles like Titan Quest and Test Drive.

Will have to experiment tomorrow.

It has been so long since I played MOO2 that I don't even remember all the details of it. I may have had some problems with it (or my Computer) back then, or I was involved in another game, because I know I didn't play it a lot for some reason.

I'm not even sure I still have it, I got rid of a lot of games on my last move.

 

[Fox5]

Wanderer77 - You should really try MOO2 again.
http://www.download.com/Master...0247352.html?tag=lst-1 Here, download the demo.
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=1792 Now download the latest official patch and apply it.
http://lordbrazen.blogspot.com/2005/01/download.html Now download and install the v1.40 patch.
http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1 Now download and install the latest version of dosbox. It's not too hard to set up, but I can give you some help making a config file if you need it.

Presto!

Oh, and I'm really not sure why right clicking didn't work for your colony ship. Perhaps the planet you were clicking on wasn't hapitable? Not all are. Anyhow, Galciv 2 is really more of a diplomacy, wheel and deal type game. The combat is just as hands off as the rest of the game. There are a few different ways to achieve victory, and by exploting the diplomacy abilities you often can achieve victory without having a dominant military force. It's a strategy game, not a tactics game. And yes, you're not the only one who would like to see tactical combat in galciv2, I would and there's a whole legion of fans that would as well. It's the main reason I can't completely let go of MOO2, which is a shame since everything else in galciv 2 (especially after both expansions) is done so well and really beats out or equals moo2.

 

[wanderer27]

Well, several hours later I've figured out a lot more about GCII.

There's still quite a bit more to investigate and learn, but to me it's just not worth it.

I find myself actually forcing myself to play this game - it's just not that interesting. It's even more of a clickfest than MOO3, and that's hard to even imagine One game I was playing (I was several hundred clicks into it) I just had to quit - nothing was going on, it was just next, next ,next, new Tech, next, next . . . .

Sure, there's an occasional break when somethings built/researched, or when you have to go micro manage your taxes (for happiness).
I actually had to go search the net for a FAQ to figure out you have to build another Constructor for each upgrade to your Starbases. There's nothing in the game to indicate you have to do this, even the manual (gasp! I read some of it) doesn't explain this.

As for the Diplomacy, I can't really say much about it one way or another. I can't keep interested enough to get to a point where that would come into play (outside of Tech trading).

I really wanted to like this game, I've been looking for a good Space game for a long time.
GCII has a nice interface and decent graphics, seems like the story might be okay, and it has lots of options - it's just not fun.
Maybe one day I'll come back to GCII, but for now it's just not entertaining.

As flawed as it is, MOO3 is far more interesting, and since I think I've got the DSXU error fixed I'm going back to that for now.

 

[Fox5]

I find myself actually forcing myself to play this game - it's just not that interesting. It's even more of a clickfest than MOO3, and that's hard to even imagine One game I was playing (I was several hundred clicks into it) I just had to quit - nothing was going on, it was just next, next ,next, new Tech, next, next . . . .

Honestly, if stuff isn't happening, you're just not playing right. Unfortunately, it takes a while to figure out to play the game correctly, and the campaign is such a snore fest it won't build your interest. Mainly you have to initially focus on infrastructure (take economy/production race picks) and then switch to military production to keep the game up to pace. But yes, the game is rather non-intuitive. For what it's worth though, it's the only recent 4x game besides civilization 4 to reguarly get over 9.0 review scores.

I'd really recommend you try out master of orion 2. It is far far superior to moo3, and I gave you all the links you need to get setup with it.