-CD command Dosen't Work if There aren't any Cd-roms in the PC and slow game launching issue

[superluigi949]

as the title say's,if the actual number of cd-roms (INCLUDING VIRTUAL ONES) is zero then the -cd command WILL not work.

also when loading the game,and when loading a map,the game is seriously slow.

##### STEPS TO REPRODUCE #####
delete the CD rom checking codes?.
i think the no cd crack for YR delete's some file checking codes which result in faster launching of the game.

##### ADDITIONAL INFORMATION #####
if you try cracking a no cd crack then you might find something interesting(resource hacker?)

[Black Temple Gaurdian (black-temple-gaurdian)]

Uh... Incorrectly filled AND not true much?!

[superluigi949 (superluigi949)]

that is true,try removing your cd rom drive from your PC and check it out.
(unless you mean by much something else)

[cranium (cranium)]

the -cd isnt going to work without the entire contents of the cd copied to your RA2 folder. use a flash drive and a usb port to accomplish this if no cd drive is present. and how did you get the game on your laptop if no cd drive is present?

[superluigi949 (superluigi949)]

Through Copying the Whole CD to a USB flash,and that is not illegal anyway,also i copied all of the file even before i thought about posting,this problem is solved through a virtual CD drive however,but not most people love that stuff you know.

[superluigi949 (superluigi949)]

i did it another way,through hex editing gamemd.exe
details at:
http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=404695#404695

[Black Temple Gaurdian (black-temple-gaurdian)]

Well, I'll put it this way;
There is no disk in my disk drive...
I've just successfully run Yuri's Revenge using -CD

[WoRmINaToR (worminator)]

@luigi: you have to copy the game files do your /RA2 folder for it to work, you can't just have it on a USB drive.

Also, are you saying physically remove your entire CD drive from your computer, or just remove the disk from your CD drive?

If you mean the former, then I can see why you've got problems...

Get a friggin CD drive.

[superluigi949 (superluigi949)]

hey people READ READ READ,I ALREADY SOLVED IT AND IT'S NOT LIKE COPY PASTE FILES FROM THE DISK!!!!!,I DID THAT TEN THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE POSTING THIS!!!.

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Irrespective of whether this is solved for you or not, I'll still regard this issue as erratic behavior. It truly takes the best of the best programmers and designers in the world to cache all needed files on the faster hard drive instead of letting them reside on the much slower compact disc - and then, against all odds and expectations, have this masterpiece afterwards load slower rather than faster. And maybe they should have added something like a -DRIVE switch to also remove the requirement of having a CD drive when in No-CD mode.

Ok, enough sarcasm for today. A little story: As a coder I start YR quite often, almost always together with Ares. After some time one goes blind about certain facts. Even though I noted YR took quite some time to start a match / campaign mission, I put the blame on the added Ares code. But it turned out the game is loading much faster when the -CD switch is off. It turned out two days ago - only after months of waiting, gazing at the loading screen(*).

Then I looked into this weird drive requirement. After I commented out an Ares hook concerning the search for the correct disc the game loaded as fast as vanilla YR, but only as long as there was a disc (any disc) in at least one of the drives - otherwise it would load slowly again. Only the TFD version. The original version stopped working with that hook removed, asking for the YR disc. Fixing one broke the other. I could get both versions to fail at the same time, but that didn't help either. There must be some kind of logic to that, some reason behind the obvious... If you know, please call me.

I added some new code. For me it saves some seconds of loading time for every match started. If you don't experience the problems described in this issue, you should not notice any difference. For the others this better be helpful...

Testing should thus focus on the issues mentioned above (this is what the story is for). Namely, the TFD/Standalone difference, the enabled/disabled -CD parameter with/without discs in drives. And no drives at all (in Windows you can disable the CD drives in the Device Manager). All in all, that's twelve different cases. Have fun!

(* not continuously, mandatory breaks apply)

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

Code related to this issue has just been checked in!
Author: AlexB
Location: trunk, r874
Commit contains DLL: Yes
Revision comment:
Fixed issue 1326: -CD switch behavior changed to support true No-CD mode with no need to still have a drive. Also, this should improve performance considerably when no disc is inserted into any CD drive.
SVN: http://svn.renegadeprojects.com/Ares/874

[cranium (cranium)]

I did notice that when no cd drives are present it does in fact break the -cd command with ares, however, having a virtual drive allowed it to function correctly. So computers with no drives installed only need a virtual drive to make it work. Virtual drives are free for download
My only concern here would be the load times, though I really dont experience really long load times as others do. I will go test this code to see if it does improve loading times.

[cranium (cranium)]

Just tested, and I have to say, using this decreased the game load time dramatically. normally it would take 10sec to load a game and now it takes a mere 2-3 sec. also removed all drives and game functions correctly without any drives installed. Works perfectly Alex.

[reaperrr (reaperrr)]

Can confirm that loading times are just a fraction of previous Ares versions.

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Has anyone tested the YR CD edition or just TFD? Or the vice versa? Would be good to know there are no differences between the versions. (If the screen stays black for the CD release, press Return. There's a message box there that might not be obvious. Then copy the mix files from the CD to your YR folder - only multimd.mix and mapsmd03.mix are mandatory, though.)

[cranium (cranium)]

I use the individual RA2 and YR cd's, I dont own the TFD so cant give any info for that. I didnt experience any black screen, but probably because my YR disk files have been copied to the RA2 folder for awhile now. I can say that this works great for the individual disks, both loadtimes and without any drives present.

[Chanterier (speederyr)]

I have updated Ares and it seems that sometimes when I run the game in -WIN mode and start skirmish game, game reports that CD is missing before the loading screen appears (I'm using disk image) and then proceeds to load.

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Is that with TFD or the orignal release?

[Chanterier (speederyr)]

Original release.

[modder666 (modder666)]

Gotta say, the TFD YR is loading the game much faster than before with the new -CD function.

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Speeder, did you copy all mix files from the disk to your YR installation folder? With NoCD mode the CD and thus the disk image is not accessed any more. I could not reproduce this problem with the original release.

[Chanterier (speederyr)]

NoCD mode works fine when all mixes are copied to the directory and there's no CD for YR available.

The problem I encountered is that when I had disc image on and launched Ares in windowed mode it reported that there's no YR CD (windows report though, not ingame report with that Brute screen) but then it disregarded that and played the game properly. It happened only once though.

-CD command works just fine in the original version.

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Is it the Windows dialog with three buttons like "Abort", "Retry" / "Try again", and "Ignore" / "Continue" saying something like "There is no disk in the drive. Insert a disk into drive X:"? If it is: I've seen that dialog but I can't pinpoint its cause. For me this happens if I have a drive open when I launch YR. It could be a YR thing, could also be a driver problem. It will most likely go away if you insert any disk into that drive.

Looks like it's safe to close this issue then.

[Chanterier (speederyr)]

Yes, it is exactly that Windows dialog.

[AlexB (alexander-b)]

Thanks cranium, reaperrr, modder666 and Speeder! Closed.