I've downloaded and tried to run each of the new beta clients on my 800 MHz PIII running XP, but each time I run the executable file all I get is a dark screen with flashing red pixles all over and a star that slowly moves from right to left. This is all accompanied by a 30 second loop of intro/theme music.

Each time I've given up troubleshooting to enjoy playing on the old client.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks!

800MHz?? Windows XP??? Are you Crazy man?

on a more serious note, how much RAM do you have available? The Beta clients are bound to be tougher on your machine's power than the general client, but perhaps there's a way (or should be? devs?) to set everything at lowest power and get it to run...

The game runs nicely on 400MHz P2's with XP, so I doubt it's a CPU issue. I'd be much more interested in what graphics card and RAM he has in there. For now, he could try switching from DirectX to OpenGL. Not that I remember exactly how to do so. Something to do with editing config.ini...

Why yes, I am krazy...I'm actually surprised that VO runs too. I tried a few other mmorpgs before VO, but none of them ran (thankfully!)

I have 256 MB of ram and my video card is an ATI Mobility 128 AGP 2x...it's only 8MB of video ram. I would definitely like to have a better computer, but that's a little further down the road.

I'll look into OpenGL. I've also thought about setting up my computer as a dual boot linux/windows machine again so that I could play VO through linux. Do you have any recommendations on the best version? I'm somewhat familiar with red hat, mandrake and OpenBSD, but those were all a few years ago.

If this doesn't fix it, do you think I'll be able to run VO at all once the devs make the new client an official update to the game? Thanks.

Ubuntu is pretty good for low-level Linuxers....

I'd increase the RAM if I were you. And that video card will propbably want OpenGL @ 640x480 16-bit to run cleanly...

Hmm. Unfortunately, we are requiring 800x600 now and the frame buffers alone will take up almost 3 megs of vram. I don't know if setting the video texture depth to 16bit and res to lowest will be enough.

The problem you described in your first post sounds like you are just seeing the background sun and red flashing lights of the station that spins in the login menu. Turning off the station in the Graphics Options will hopefully make it better.

VO 1.5 works great so the problem is no longer an issue. Everything looks pretty sweet. Well done devs!

Thanks.