QUICK TROUBLESHOOTING FAQ

- Just to let you know...
- Kyodai was created and tested on two different configurations, using both Windows 95 and Windows 98. I didn't experience any problem, and when I did, I corrected the bugs rather quickly. I believe Kyodai to be safe to use. If you ever have problems with it (lock-ups, ...), it is probably due to your own configuration : outdated drivers, installation problems, missing files... From time to time, a letter pops up in my mailbox, telling me "well, I've got an Access Violation there and there", and after a while, the problem disappears after the person in question has reinstalled Windows or his drivers... (Or upgraded his video/sound cards)

- If you find no way to fix your problem...
- Try to install an older version of Kyodai to see if it works, like v1.21 (a freeware and very quick download -- 50kb !). You can find it at http://kyodai.com
- Try to check out my site to see if there's a new version out there. The updates history can be found at http://kyodai.com/kyonew.html

- FIRST, THE THING TO TRY WHENEVER YOU EXPERIENCE A PROBLEM WITH KYODAI...
- In your Start Menu, you should have a "Reset Options" shortcut in the Kyodai submenu. Launch it. If you don't have such a shortcut, locate the "kyo*.ini" file in your Kyodai directory (if you have version 14.00, the file is named "Kyo14.00.ini"), and remove it. Then try to launch Kyodai again.

- If this FAQ isn't of any help...
- You can report your bug to me. NOT before you have tried everything in this help file, please ! If you think the problem might be related to DirectX, click on the "Start" button (from the Windows taskbar), then click on "Run", type "dxdiag" and press Enter. You'll load the DirectX diagnostic tool. Then save the information (click on the button at the bottom of the diagnostic tool) and forward this text file to me.

- I liked the look'n'feel of the versions before Kyodai 8.0 ! How can I go back to this...?
- First, disable the "Stretch Tileset" option in the Configuration menu. Choose the "Kyodai" tileset (or your usual favorite old-format tileset, which you just need to copy to your Tilesets directory), and if you're not in 800x600, double-click on the title bar if the window is maximized (it is, by default), and resize it to the good old 800x600. In case you don't manage to resize it correctly, quit Kyodai, edit the Kyo*.ini file and change the WPos and HPos numbers to 800 and 600. Now Kyodai should more or less look like it used to be in version 7.77 and before. As I said, Kyodai is entirely customizable... ;-) (And I like the previous look'n'feel, too ! I like both, actually...)

- MY ANTIVIRUS REPORTS KYODAI HAS A VIRUS...
- I'm regularly performing Antivirus checks on my PC, with several antiviruses. Kyodai is *NOT* infected. But I'm now using an EXE packer (ASPack or UPX, it depends on the mood), and most of the times, the code added by these programs is mistaken for a virus. Don't worry, it is NOT a virus. Just ignore the messages sent by your antivirus, or tell the antivirus authors to make them compatible with ASPack and UPX !! I'm very serious about virus-checking. To say the least. Back in 1991, I even wrote my own full-featured freeware anti-virus for the Atari ST. It was quite popular. The name was Exorcist, for those who remember it... ^^;

- I'm trying to create a tileset for Kyodai, but I can't find ideas for the Seasons and Flowers...
- You don't have to "stick" to seasons and flowers... You can even (and that's the best alternative in this case) make a tile like the others and copy it four times to make a "fake" family... It will then behave like all the other "normal" tiles. Do that for the Seasons and the Flowers (two different tiles copied 4 times, which makes 8 tiles in total).

Performance problems

- The animations are slow on my computer. How can I accelerate them ?
- For optimal speed, make sure you don't have any other program running in the background...
- Make sure you're not in 24-bit mode. Both 2D and 3D modes seem to be affected by this color-depth.

- Why does it takes so long to load a background or a tileset ?
- Kyodai uses a cool resizing technology that gives incredible results. However, to achieve this quality level, the technology uses heavy floating point operations. If you don't have a Pentium II (or better) processor, it may take years... The easy solution is to disactivate Tileset and Background Stretching (Configuration menu, "Stretch Tileset" and "Stretch Background" options). Sorry about that. If you want a "quick resizing" function, uncheck "High Quality Stretching" in the Configuration menu, but the Stretch functions of Windows are extremely limited and the results can vary from correct to awful... I hope you can understand.

- Is there any way to improve the performance in Hashira ?
- First of all, make sure you're not running any program in the background. Then, disable the "3D borders on Small tiles" option in the Configuration menu. This should improve greatly the speed by removing some unnecessary raster operations for showing the borders.

- I'm having trouble with DirectX.
- DirectX is a strange thing. Most of the time it works perfectly, but sometimes it will just refuse to run. I've found a rather neat troubleshooting page about DirectX at Electronic Arts' website : http://www.ea.com/techsupp/directx_ts/directx_ts.htm

3D problems / 3D performance problems

- The 3D mode doesn't work on my machine !
- Well, play in 2D ! I'm sorry but I can't check all the video cards around there to see if their drivers are buggy or not... :-(

- The 3D board is awfully slow !!! Help me !!
- Here are the best ways to accelerate the board, in preference order :

[if you have version 10.21]
- Check out your Windows\System directory. If you already have the OpenGL32.DLL file in it, you can safely remove the files OpenGL32.DLL and GLU32.DLL from your Kyodai directory. It might help enable hardware acceleration.
- Get an OpenGL-accelerated 2D/3D card. My own testing board is a Riva TNT 2 and it shows a constant framerate of 100 fps under Kyodai !
- Make sure you have the RIGHT drivers for your video card, with OpenGL support. The best thing to do would be to install GLSetup and let it find the latest drivers for your video card. You can find it at http://www.GLSetup.com
- Make sure you're not in 256-color mode. Switch to a better mode (16, 24 or 32 bits). Hardware acceleration is generally disabled in 256-color mode.
- Disable the background (should be twice faster)
- Disable the lighting. It might additionally fix some visual artifacts
- Disable the Anti-aliased textures
- Disable the Textured borders
- Reduce the window size ! ;-)

[if you have version 11.21 or later]
- Make sure you aren't in 24-bit color mode (use the Control Panel to switch to 16-bit mode for example).
- If you have a relatively (or frankly !) old video card, you will probably get the best performance by using a DirectX Fullscreen mode, that is, by clicking on the DirectX button and choosing a Fullscreen mode (preferably a resolution of 800x600x16).
- Buy a good 3D card ! ;-)

- In 3D mode, the tile faces are blank !
- This may be due to a lack of video memory available on your video card. Normally, this shouldn't happen to you if you have a video card with a least 4mb of Ram. First of all, make sure the "High-resolution Textures" option is disabled. Also, try to change the "Texture as Background" option. If none of this works, try to reload the tileset (by clicking on its name in the Tileset menu). It seems to work for some video cards.

- Using the Mouse wheel in 3D mode doesn't do anything...
- I'm using a routine that works with Intellimouse and compatible mouses. Maybe you're using a Logitech mouse which has a different driver.

- I can't select the tiles !
- When I'm at the center of the screen, the correct tiles are highlighted, but when I'm near the border, I can't reach the tiles anymore !
- This only concerns version 10.21. You have a Z-Buffer problem. Such problems have been reported with ATI Rage and Savage video cards. Make sure you have the latest drivers for your card, or use a later version of Kyodai. Another option might be to disable the Lighting. I have experienced such a case under Windows 2000 in 16-bit color depth.

Startup problems

- I can't launch Kyodai ! It says something like "MMSYSTEM275 File not found"...
- Check out your \Kyodai\Musics\ directory to see if you have all your MIDI files there. If you can't find any *.mid file there, just put a new MIDI file into that directory.

- I can't launch Kyodai ! It says something like "Access Violation..."...
- There are several reasons why this could happen. The main one is that you have not enough memory left. If you don't have a lot of memory, make sure to close all your other running applications before launching Kyodai.

- I can't launch Kyodai ! It says something like "is not an integer value"...
- Remove the "hallfame.ini" file in your Kyodai directory. It should happen only in earlier versions of Kyodai, if you don't enter any name in the Hall of Fame when you win.

- I can't launch Kyodai ! It says something like "MCI driver not found"...
- I found out that, most of the time, this problem can be resolved by simply replacing the "kyo*.ini" file with a new copy (see earlier in this doc). I have no explanation why this "MCI Driver not found" problem pops up. I think it has nothing to do with drivers anyway. In Kyodai 3.01, the problem happened sometimes when I tried to show a dialog box with ShowMessage instead of MessageBox before the main window was shown. Microsoft, please ? What's the problem ? I've noticed that, on certain configurations, the problem is still present even if I use the MessageBox function. Gosh...
- If the problem is related to your soundcard, try to modify the "Kyo*.ini" file in your Kyodai directory, and add the line "PlayMusic=0" (without the brackets). If you already have such a line, make sure its says "0" and not "1". Then run Kyodai. If it still doesn't work, try to do the same thing with "PlaySounds=0" and "StartMusic=0".

- I can't launch Kyodai because of a DirectX problem.
- Try to install or re-install DirectX. Make sure you have at least version 6.1...

Various crash problems

- Kyodai regularly hangs up with a "Accession violation in NPMOD32.DLL"-like message...
- So far, this bug only happened in version 10.21. Edit the Kyodai.ini file (in your Kyodai directory) and replace "EnableMOD=1" by "EnableMOD=0". The reason is due to some cheap sound cards not supporting correctly the NPMOD32.DLL file (it's actually the MOD Digital Music player). The equivalent in later versions is MPPSDK.DLL and it seems to work without any problems.

- What does "Canvas does not allow drawing" mean ?
- You may not have enough resources or memory left. Please close your other applications and everything should go back to normal. There are also some situations where Kyodai is very resource-demanding (and can result in such an error message) : whenever you change the tileset, resize the window or call the "Cool Tile Borders" option.
- You changed the resolution or used a fullscreen not correctly handled by Kyodai. In some cases, the error message would say that DirectX 6.1 is not properly installed (which is wrong), or that the current color depth is not supported. You should then restart Windows and, if the problem was not due to switching between different resolutions, remove the "Kyo*.ini" file from your Kyodai directory.

- Kyodai freezes after some time. I have an ATI 128 video card.
- I've been told that version 4.11 of the drivers caused a crash after some time, a bug that was fixed in version 4.12 from March 30, 2000... So, just update your drivers on www.ati.com...

Visual problems

- The mouse cursor flickers or disappears.
- Try the "Texture as mouse cursor" option in the 3D Compatibility menu.
- If you're under Windows 2000, try to disable the cursor shadow option (Control Panel > Mouse).

- In 3D, the board is too small or too large for me.
- Use the "+" and "-" keys of your keyboard, or even easier, the mouse wheel to adjust the board size.

- I can't hide the taskbar automatically when I double click on the caption bar.
- Click on the taskbar itself and then click again on Kyodai. The taskbar will disappear.

- I can't see the Hall of Fame panel, even if I specifically ask Kyodai to show it !
- Well that's a reported bug I haven't been able to reproduce in Kyodai 8.0... Neither did my beta-testers... So I guess it's not related to Kyodai itself. If you experience it, send me a mail.

- The tileset looks stretched. I don't like this ! What happened to the size of the tiles ?
- The tileset is programmed by default to adapt itself to the size of your screen. You can select the default size by disabling "Stretch Tileset" in the Configuration menu.

- I was used to the previous tileset and tile size ! (before v8.0)
- Select the "Kyodai" tileset in the Tileset menu, then again, uncheck "Stretch Tileset" in the Configuration menu. It's as simple as that !
(I can't believe how many messages I've received that asked me this question !! ;-))))

- What's that "Kyodai DX" logo in the caption bar ?
- Well, it stands both for "DirectX" and "Deluxe"... I happen to like this. Although Kyodai is still called Kyodai. Don't ask me for more, I'm only the author ;-)

- My tiles are so ugly in 2D mode !
- You're probably in a low resolution such as 640x480. You should absolutely enable the "Total Immersion" mode in the View menu, or double-click on the caption bar, or use a fullscreen mode. Or you could select the high-quality stretching mode, but be aware that it can slow on large tilesets.

- My colors are all messed up !
- I can't distinguish the tiles in the Clicks, Slider and Hashira games !
- Are you in 8-bit (256 colors) mode ? Well, if you are, you're lucky enough to have been able to launch Kyodai at all ! ;-) Just switch to a resolution with a higher color depth.
- If you don't know how to switch to a higher color depth resolution : right click on an empty area of your Windows desktop, select "Properties", then the "Settings" tab, and change the "Colors" settings.

Sound problems

- I can hear the sound effects, but not the music !
- Check out your audio configuration... More exactly, the "MIDI" tab in the Multimedia section (Configuration Panel). Try different outputs and restart Kyodai. Also, make sure the "Play Music" option in the Configuration menu is enabled... ;-)

- I can't see any MOD file in the music menu !
- I'm unable to play MOD music !
- First, make sure you have the file mppsdk.dll in your Kyodai directory. Now, check your Kyodai\Musics subdirectory and verify the MOD music files are there. Run Kyodai, and check the "Enable MOD music" in the configuration menu (if it wasn't already checked, relaunch Kyodai). If there is any problem, it is probably due to your configuration. The ModPlug DLL (which was not written by me) doesn't seem to be compatible with all sound devices and operating systems.

- I'm unable to play MIDI music. Only MOD files would play.
- This problem seems to happen on several sound cards. Try to disable the DirectSound engine from the Configuration menu. You'll lose MOD files but should now be able to play MIDI files.

- I'm unable to play MP3 music !
- If, after you dropped your MP3 files in the Musics subdirectory, Kyodai refuses to play them, you probably don't have a MP3 codec installed. I would recommend to install the Windows Media Player from http://www.microsoft.com. Then restart Windows and Kyodai should be able to play your MP3 files.

- MP3 music still doesn't work !
- There may be a conflict with your MCI devices. I helped someone fix this problem by having him remove the MCI device for his Cinemaster DVD software engine. Try to modify your settings in your Control Panel -> Multimedia -> Video codecs page.
- Blame your sound card drivers, your Windows installation, or anything else. Try to install another external MP3 player. But please don't blame me. I only added this feature because a lot of users requested it, but I only use the Windows capacity to play MP3 files, Kyodai does not include its own MP3 decoder and probably never will. This feature is only provided as a bonus.

- Can Kyodai play another digital music format ?
- Kyodai uses the ModPlug DLL and can play any music recognized by this cool program (MOD, S3M, XM, IT, ...). If you have a XM music file, for example, you just need to change its extension to MOD and Kyodai will recognize it...

- When using the Random Music option, sometimes a MOD music will stop playing immediately and switch to another music.
- I managed to reproduce this problem only once. I guess it's a very minor problem in the ModPlug DLL. Nothing important, and I don't think I can do anything about it.

- I have trouble with sound when launching Kyodai / Kyodai is very slow.
- Try to disable the ModPlug DLL (Configuration menu) and restart Kyodai.

Game problems

- Games often end with two tiles of the same type ontop of each other. This way, the game never ends...
- No, you can end it... <Back> then <Shuffle>. That's all !!! :) And it's four tiles and not two, press <Back> twice and then <Shuffle>...

- Each time I click on a pair of tiles, I get a "... is not an integer value" error.
- You probably edited the Hallfame.ini file... This file must not be modified. To make the answer short : remove Hallfame.ini from your Kyodai directory. This problem was fixed in Kyodai 10.21 and later.

- The "Specific" option doesn't always reproduce the same board !
- Make sure you entered a number different from 0. Also, disable the "Winnable" modes in the Configuration menu.

Registration problems

- I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Kyodai. How do I get to be registered again ?
- Always keep a copy of your user name & password somewhere on a floppy disk or a piece of paper, so you can be sure to find it when you need to re-enter it. In case you registered at Getsoftware.com, you can write to them (webmaster@getsoftware.com) and request your user name & password again. You may also access your account on their site, where you should be able to find a copy of your registration information.

- Kyodai doesn't accept my password !
- Make sure you entered the user name and password correctly... The user name is case-sensitive. If your name is John Smith and you received the user name "John Smith", you can't type "john smith", it won't work... You should use the Copy & Paste functions to enter this information, especially for the password. Some people may think that they need to enter a password before they register. It is not the case. The password is assigned to you when you register (for example, by visiting the link in the Registration dialog box). Finally, some people think that the user name they receive from GetSoftware (something like "1234-MyLastName") is to be used in Kyodai. Not true. It is used to connect to GetSoftware's protected areas. Don't mistake it with Kyodai's user name and password.

Other problems

- In Total Immersion mode, most of the keyboard shortcuts don't work anymore !
- Since the menu is hidden, Windows "forgets" the shortcuts associated with its items... The only way to activate the shortcuts is to show the menu. So, disable the Total Immersion mode, and manually hide every visual component except for the menu.

- Why does Kyodai always load the last game automatically ? I don't want that !
- Disable the "Automatic Quicksave" option from the Configuration menu.

- What does "Malus" mean in the Hall of Fame ?
- It's the opposite of "Bonus"... It's the time added to your score when you click on Hint or Shuffle. It's included in the final time shown on the left column... If you want to know exactly how much time you needed to complete a board, without the malus, you just need to subtract this value from the overall time...

- How can I get back my previous high-scores when I install a new version ?
- How can I be automatically registered when I install a new version, if I've registered earlier ?
- Simply, install it over the previous one... If you have any problems when launching the new version, launch the "Reset Options" version of Kyodai from the Start Menu.

- How do I add/remove tilesets, backgrounds and tilesets in the menus ?
- They are stored in your Kyodai directory, in the subdirectories Tilesets, Backgrounds and Layouts, simply ! Run your Windows Explorer, go to these directories and deal with the files as you want !

- I can read Chinese/Japanese, and I can tell you that the romanizations on your flower & season tiles do not match the characters represented on the tiles !
- Some of the tilesets my users sent me did not follow the rules I provided with my template tilesets. At first, I modified some of them to match the characters, but finally I decided not to alter the original works and leave the errors where they are. It isn't THAT important, is it ? Romanizations are useful to spot the special tile families (seasons and flowers), don't ask too much from them ! ;-)

- How do I upload my best scores to your website ?
- Strangely, that's a question I've been asked sometimes... Well, there is NO "world hall of fame" available. Why ? Because Kyodai is a meditation program, not an andrenalyn machine. It is designed to calm you down when you're stressed, not to enhance that stress... Don't turn your habit to beat your high scores into a philosophy. Finishing a board in ten minutes is no worse than finishing it in two minutes... It's just a relaxation game. Not a competition.

- I found another bug that isn't mentioned in this FAQ !
- Please drop me a mail, including details about your configuration, a copy of your Kyo*.ini file, and the way to reproduce the bug. I'm doing everything I can to find all the possible bugs during the beta-sessions, but I'm alone, and sometimes these bugs are related to a specific configuration, not a programming mistake.

- Why don't you answer my e-mail ?
- I'm getting a LOT of e-mail in my box. Many of them are related to Kyodai. I can't answer to ALL of these mails without causing Kyodai to be delayed a bit more each time. I think I reply to about 75% of the mails I receive. So if you really need an answer, make sure you registered, and enclose in your e-mail your user name and your registration date (or order ID). And if I still don't answer your mail, feel free to re-submit it after 24 hours. I'm doing everything I can !

And my all-time favorite :
- What's with these strange version numbers...?
- I don't like these unoriginal "8.01" version numbers.. ;-) I tend to use these ones : x.21 (my age when I started making Kyodai, my birth date as well, and one of my favorite numbers), x.28 (a character's age in my favorite anime, Saint Seiya), x.42 (read some Douglas Adams to figure out... And it's also 21 multiplied by two), x.75 (my birth year) and x.xx (because it looks cool ;-)).

Kyodai Mahjongg is © Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by René-Gilles Deberdt.
All rights reserved.