Hi. I have NVidia GeForce GT440 so I have to use WindowerD3D to play EAW. But Even wit this program I can't see any movies in game. I've heard, in latest fix16 is this problem solved. but where I can download this? I saw, the link was on Rapidshare, but this <CENSORED> hoster delete files after inactivity. And this link is inactive now!
It will be much better to place this fix on this site!
Can I count, you will help me and give possibility to download this fix? It will be VERY appreciated...

OSH,
in your EAW root folder there is a file called movies.cdf.
In some of the EAW upgrades this was changed basically to save space.
The original movies.cdf was 284 mb in size. Check the size of your
current one.....if it is very small, swap it out for the original movies.cdf
from your EAW CD.

But depending on your operating system and video card, you might not be able to
see the movies anyway.

They might work if you use the D3D Windower to run EAW. They might also work
with your 4400 card and win98 or WinXP.

There should also be a setting in your eaw.ini file that should say:
Video Playback=1

AO

I'm using D3DWindower, end everything except movies works fine. I'm sure they are movies in my version, because I hear sound during playing these movies, and what is more interesting: if I click with LMB for a while I see a played movie. Only for 1 second or 2, but I see it!

early game movies use the MPEG 1/2 codec

Maybe the format for the movies can be changed?
Right now, I do not have a program that can convert them.
Anyone have any ideas? If they could be converted, I could possibly
even mix them with some in-game video!

AO

I can play these movies separately, using MediaPlayerClassic, but this isn't my goal. Movies are in SMK format and I can't understand, why they can't be played under Windows XpP

There is your answer.
Games of the vintage of EAW used a video format called "Smacker" format.
The game developer would actually purchase the right and get to use a program library that would handle and play the Smacker format.
The program library was called "Smacker SDK" ( SDK stands for Software Development Kit).
The Smacker SDK that was used in EAW was a very early generation of program that was meant to be used with Windows 95/98/ME.
By the time Windows 2000 and later came on the market the code in the Smacker SDK, that was integrated into the EAW source code was not stable and always functional with these later versions of windows.
It is possible to integrate a later player code into EAW source but that will take a lot of time to do, and most people of the code group don't have that time to spare.
At one stage I did convert the splash screen video of EAW into WMV (Windows Media Video) format and had it working in a test menu program that was maybe one day going to be the basis of a new upgraded version of EAW, but time is not available to pursue it further for at least another 6 months or so and even after that I still don't know what will happen.

If you want EAW to play how it was meant to be played without having to jump through hoops to get everything working then you will have to get yourself an early generation computer/video card combination and use Windows 95/98/ME for the time being.

Regards sydbod

Really interesting thing is, GLOBE.SMK isn't played I hear only sound) but INTRO.SMK is played! In false colors, very slow, but is played! Of course, only with using D3DWindower...

We are limited with what we can say dealing with the Source code of EAW on this forum so I will talk about the Smacker SDK in general.
It is a bunch of routines that can play SMK files in Black & White mode and also in 8bit Color mode.
These routines are usually limited to operate in 640x480 screen mode or 320x240 screen mode.
How many modern video cards, especially with their drivers, support these video modes and color modes in later generations of Windows.
You will find that both ATI/AMD and Nvidia video card drivers are no longer properly supporting the above screen modes and above color modes .... it is just not financially worthwhile for the companies to waste the time and effort. Pretty soon only 16bit color as the minimum and 800x600 screen mode as the minimum will be hard wired into the video card drivers and hardware. Already some of the LCD computer screens do not support anything below 800x600 screen mode.

EAW is a brilliant game but sadly the generation of hardware that it was written for is slowly coming to an end and unless some talented people can be convinced to take up the challenge to update the video area parts of the game, over time it will tragically become totally unplayable.

Enjoy the game while you can

regards sydbod

Unless someone write an emulator capable to launch such games...