S.T.A.L.K.E.R. / X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Prob

Question

Has anyone been able to play STALKER using Creative's new X-Fi Titanium Fatalty Pro?
Since installing that sound card I have not been able to get the game to work. It starts to load and then stops responding before it even has a chance to go full screen. The XR-3DA.exe process keeps running, using about half my CPU, but just doesn't do anything it just sits there.
**If I disable the sound card through device manager the game starts up and works fine.**
I've updated every driver on my machine, I've cleared the sound card drivers, reinstalled the card, reinstalled the game, disabled onboard sound.
Is there anyone out there who has experienced a similar problem or knows of a means of fixing it's I freakin love this game, and I want to play it with an EAX enabled sound card.
Cheers!

Answer 1

Darn, I was hoping that was it. I have read that one of the Stalker patch programs attempts to replace?the ct_oal.dll file (which is a?creative driver file.)? You could try doing a repair install of the soundblaster drivers from the Titanium CD, while leaving the game installed and patched. After that you can test (feel free to test using different combinations of the?original two openal files with the two from your system32 directory.)? If you have already re-installed your sound card with STALKER installed and patched already then I wouldn't bother with this. For reference my ct_oal.dll is 6.0..34, which should be yours if it is installed off the Titanium CD. You could check this prior to doing the repair reinstallation to see if it is even an issue.
I also found this note regarding STALKER from [url="http://www.tweakguides.com/STALKER_6.html">tweakguides[/url]?(with yet another version of openal32.dll, which appears to be older (...0.)?You can try using that, if you want.
Unfortunately the download location of the 'more recent' versions of OpenAL doesn't work any longer. I sent you a PM with my email if you want me to email you the installer (taken from the Vista X-Fi CD, which is more recent than the Titanium OpenAL.)
Your card does work with other openAL or ALchemy games, right? If you don't have any handy to try, you could try running the Creative diagnostics; maybe there is something screwy with your hardware.
And I got this from the GSC support site, maybe it will help us locate the cause of the crash:
2. Find your log file.
STALKER uses two places on your hard dri've to store information. The game and associated resources are in the STALKER installation directory, which by default is on the C: dri've in the \Program Files\THQ\S. T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl\ directory.
The saved games and logs are on the C: dri've by default in the STALKER-SHOC subdirectory. In Vista this subdirectory is under \Users\Public\Documents\ while in XP this is found in \Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\. You can also access this directory by entering %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Documents\STALKER-SHOC in the Windows Explorer address bar.
The latest error log, called xray_<your_user_login>.log* is under STALKER-SHOC in the logs\ subdirectory, while the saved games are stored in savedgames\.
*<your_user_login> is usually your name, the one you see at the top of the menu when you click on the start button on the taskbar in XP. If your user name is Robert, for example, then you would find a file named xray_Robert.log.
At the end of that file is usually a section that starts with "FATAL ERROR" and has lines beginning with "[error]". Include those lines in your post to give us an idea of what is wrong. Sometimes there is only a single error line, but it might be enough.
Message Edited by balthazor on 07--2008 08:0 AM