QUICK TROUBLESHOOTING FAQ

- Just to let you know...
- Kyodai Mahjongg was created and tested on a lot of different configurations, using Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000 and XP. We didn't experience any problem, and when we did, the bugs were fixed quickly. I believe KMJ 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 If you ever have problems with it (lock-ups, ...), it is probably due to your own configuration : outdated drivers, installation problems, missing files...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 Mahjongg (such as v10.21 or v18.75) to see if it works, or the 2D version. You can find them at http://kyodai.com
- Try to check out my site to see if there's a new version out there. The update history can be found at http://kyodai.com/kyonew.html
- Try to uninstall Kyodai Mahjongg, restart your machine, and reinstall KMJ. Check your video card and sound card drivers. Try to close every program running in the background. Sometimes, there are unusual things that can help. For example, a user managed to fix stability problems by installing QuickTime 4.05 ! Don't ask me how this could have helped...

- 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.

- 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).

Registration problems

- I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Kyodai Mahjongg. 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. Contact the company where you purchased your license, and request your user name & password again.

- Kyodai Mahjongg 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).

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 color depth mode. Some video cards aren't optimized at all for this mode.
- If you have a 3Dfx card, only use 16-bit color depths.

- 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. Please contact your video card manufacturor.

3D problems / 3D performance problems

- The 3D mode doesn't work on my machine !
- Play with Kyodai Mahjongg 2D. I did my best. No 3D game can work on ALL machines (at most, 90-95%). It's not even the case for 2D games (at most, 99%).

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

- 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 ! ;-)

- The particles and removed tiles remain on the screen after the end of an animation.
- I haven't been able to track down this problem (which doesn't appear on my two machines), but I would simply recommend to go to the 3D menu, "Background Type", and select "Normal Background" instead of "Background Cube".

- 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.

- The mouse wheel 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.

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 "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 8.0...

- The screen is black after startup.
- Check whether there's a window on top of the Kyodai Mahjongg window. This is probably the source of the problem. Two solutions : either you click on the game's window, or you choose the "Threaded" timer type in the Configuration menu.

Various crash problems

- Kyodai freezes after some time. I have an ATI 128 or ATI Rage Pro 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... A specific driver version that works is : J5.11.1B20 (4.12.2632), available at http://www.ati.com/na/pages/spdrivers/drivers.html

- I'm getting an "Infinite Loop" crash (Blue Screen of Death) after some time.
- I used to have this problem in the Selector screen with a Radeon 8500 and a VIA chipset. I managed to get rid of it by applying the "PCI Latency" fix found at http://www.viahardware.com - just go there if you have a VIA-based motherboard, and try it !

- Other crash problem.
- A user notified me that he had lock-up problems on his Windows 98 SE configuration, and he managed to fix them by applying the solutions given by Microsoft on their knowledge base at entry Q238096. Try this URL if it hasn't changed in the meantime : http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q238/0/96.ASP
- As painful it is to say that, reinstalling Windows (preferably on a fresh new partition) is the solution to 99% of the crash problems. Usually, crashes are caused by other programs modifying the Windows system files. And it's always better to start from scratch in these conditions ! ;-)
- Make sure you have the latest drivers installed for your videocard. Please visit a driver-related website such as http://www.futuremark.com/community/drivers/

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).
- If you enabled the "Mouse trails" option in the Mouse control panel, try to disable it.

- 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 ("5" key to reset).

- The taskbar doesn't hide automatically when I double click on the caption bar to maximize the game.
- Click on the taskbar itself and then click again on KMJ.

- 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 (Control 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 (and their file names end with ".mod", not ".MOD"). 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.
- I have a problem with the MCI port not being open.
- 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.
- Launch the explorer, go to your Windows directory and open the "Win.ini" file. Find the section [MCI Extensions] and add below the line "mid=Sequencer" (without the quotes). It might fix your problem.

- 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 if it's four tiles and not two, press Back twice and then Shuffle...

- 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.

Other problems

- 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... You should uninstall the previous version first, but make sure to use the same directory name when installing the new 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 adrenalyn 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-mails in my box. Many of them are related to KMJ. 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 !

Kyodai Mahjongg is © Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 by René-Gilles Deberdt.
All rights reserved.