We have fixed all the known crash bugs for the full version but unfortunately the demo still has a few major issues. Some of the issues may be overcome by following the help below. Please note that the full version does not have these issues at all.
A number of people have reported issues where GameSpy "simple doesn't work". So I tried it myself on my home PC and found that they were right! The reason is that the game fails to register itself as a DirectPlay lobby aware application correctly. However this doesn't affect everybody - just a few of us. (GameSpy issues an error dialog with a title APHEX and an error message which basically says check your settings).
I wrote this little program to fix the issue.
The Art of Magic (full and demo) both require DirectX8.0 or higher. You can find the latest information about DirectX on Microsoft's website here.
This is a tricky one. 1) Its one of the crash bugs that were still in the code when the demo was created (about two months before the final code) or 2) it may be a driver issue. Update to the latest drivers and latest version of DirectX.
Connect to internet using Dial-up networking (or similar technology).
On Win98, 98SE and ME Use winipcfg (start menu->run->winipcfg) and use
the drop down box to select PPP. Look for the external IP address (not the
default gateway address).
On Windows2000 use ipconfig (start menu->run->cmd then type in ipconfig).
Tell other players what this IP address is (note it changes every time you dial
in unless you are using a permanent conenction e.g. cable modem, DSL, T1, etc).
Start AOM.
Select Battle->multiplayer->create
Other players start AOM.
Select battle->multipler->join then they type in IP address, a completely
ficticious example would be 1.2.3.4, including the dots, note there is no
trailing . and no spaces.
The game name should appear almost immediately.
In principle games should be found without entering an IP address - however we
failed to make that work yesterday. Possibly it times out too
quickly (it has 2.5 minutes to find games before it resets the list).
On a LAN please check that TCP has been installed by looking at My Network Places->properties and looking for TCP/IP.
Start AOM.
Select Battle->multiplayer->create
Other players start AOM.
Select battle->multipler->join then they can either type in IP address, a
completely ficticious example would be 192.168.1.1, including the dots, note
there is no trailing . and no spaces or leave it blank.
The game name should appear almost immediately.
This is almost certainly your video card drivers. Please update to the latest version. Currently you can find the new XP drivers here. If this fails to work then you can disable the hardware cursor support. You can find zip file here which contains 4 reg files. These reg files will activate/deactivate hardware cursors for the demo and for the full version.
This is almost certainly due to AOM attempting to use too much texture memory. Download SysMemConfig.zip and export the file SysMemConfig.dat to the installed demo directory.
We've never actually come across this but one of our user using an Intel 810 has reported that the startup sequence fails with the message: "Linear texture mip-mapping is not supported. this engine doesn't work without it."
You can disable the check for the mipmapping. The Intel chipset is quite capable but often the drivers lie about the caps and that's actually the cause of the problem. Download the zip file containing the registry file here. This has now be confirmed as working. Thanks to Iain for slipping the code in just before it shipped and thanks to Lesley Golightly for confirming the fix.
You can also disable the mipmapping. This doesn't fix the problem (see below) but I leave it here anyway. I have no idea if this will actually fix the problem, I hope so. You can find the download here.
This has been reported as solved by one user by downloading the most up to date viatech 4-in-1 driver. Thanks to Vortak for that one.