Cyna Games > Troubleshooting

---

Last updated on September 16, 2006. Most of the information here applies to version 18.75 of the game.

Windows compatibility
Is there any Macintosh version?
If you find no way to fix your problem...
First, the thing to try whenever you experience a problem with Kyodai Mahjongg
If this FAQ isn't of any help...
MY ANTIVIRUS REPORTS KYODAI MAHJONGG HAS A VIRUS...
I'm trying to create a tileset for Kyodai Mahjongg, but I can't find ideas for the Seasons and Flowers...

> Registration problems
I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Kyodai Mahjongg. How do I get to be registered again?
Kyodai Mahjongg doesn't accept my password!
I bought Kyodai Mahjongg on another website and cannot update from your site, why?

> Performance problems
The animations are slow on my computer. How can I accelerate them?
I'm having trouble with DirectX.

> 3D problems / 3D performance problems
The 3D mode doesn't work on my machine!
The 3D board is awfully slow!!! Help me!!
The particles and removed tiles remain on the screen after the end of an animation
In 3D mode, the tile faces are blank!
Using the Mouse wheel in 3D mode doesn't do anything...

> Startup problems
I can't launch Kyodai Mahjongg! It says something like "MMSYSTEM275 File not found"...
I can't launch Kyodai Mahjongg! It says something like "Access Violation..."...
I can't launch Kyodai Mahjongg! It says something like "MCI driver not found"...
I can't launch Kyodai Mahjongg because of a DirectX problem.
The screen is black after startup.

> Various crash problems
Kyodai Mahjongg freezes after some time. I have an ATI 128 or ATI Rage Pro video card.
I'm getting an "Infinite Loop" crash (Blue Screen of Death) after some time.
Other crash problem.

> Visual problems
The mouse cursor flickers or disappears.
In 3D, the board is too small or too large for me.
The taskbar doesn't hide automatically when I double click on the caption bar to maximize the game.
My colors are all messed up!
I can't distinguish the tiles in the Clicks, Slider and Hashira games!

> Sound problems
I can hear the sound effects, but not the music!
I can't see any MOD file in the music menu!
I'm unable to play MOD music!
I'm unable to play MIDI music. Only MOD files would play.
I'm unable to play MP3 music.
Can Kyodai Mahjongg play another digital music format?
When using the Random Music option, sometimes a MOD music will stop playing immediately and switch to another music.
I have trouble with sound when launching Kyodai Mahjongg / Kyodai Mahjongg is very slow.

> Game problems
Games often end with two tiles of the same type ontop of each other. This way, the game never ends...
The "Specific" option doesn't always reproduce the same board!

> Other problems
Why does Kyodai Mahjongg always load the last game automatically? I don't want that!
What does "Malus" mean in the Hall of Fame?
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?
How do I add/remove tilesets, backgrounds and tilesets in the menus?
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!
How do I upload my best scores to your website?
I found another bug that isn't mentioned in this FAQ!
Why won't you answer my e-mail?

- 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 Kyodai Mahjongg 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)

- Not for now, sorry, but you can use a PC emulator for Macintosh machines.

- Try to install an older version of Kyodai Mahjongg 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 Kyodai Mahjongg. 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...

- In your Start Menu, you should have a "Reset Options" shortcut in the Kyodai Mahjongg 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 "Kyo18.75.ini"), and remove it. Then try to launch Kyodai again.

- 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.

- I'm regularly performing Antivirus checks on my PC, with several antiviruses. Kyodai Mahjongg 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... ^^;

- 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).

- 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. You can also contact the support service here.

- 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).

- The company you bought Kyodai Mahjongg from uses a different registration system, please wait for *their* update and download it from their website.

- 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.

- DirectX is a strange thing. Most of the time it works perfectly, but sometimes it will just refuse to run. If you have problems with your video card, please contact its manufacturor.

- 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%).

- 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 choosing a lower desktop resolution.
- Buy a good 3D card! ;-)

- 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".

- 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.

- I'm using a routine that works with Intellimouse and compatible mouses. Maybe you're using a Logitech mouse which has a different driver.

- 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.

- 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 Mahjongg.

- 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 Mahjongg 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 Mahjongg. If it still doesn't work, try to do the same thing with "PlaySounds=0" and "StartMusic=0".

- Try to install or re-install DirectX. Make sure you have at least version 8.0...

- 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.

- 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 here.

- 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!

- 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

- Try the "Texture as mouse cursor" option in the 3D Compatibility menu. I hope you have a 3D card because otherwise your mouse cursor will move very slowly. But it won't flicker anymore ;-)
- If you're under Windows 2000 or XP, 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.

- Use the "+" and "-" keys of your keyboard, or even easier, the mouse wheel to adjust the board size ("5" key to reset).

- Click on the taskbar itself and then click again on Kyodai Mahjongg.

- Are you in 8-bit (256 colors) mode? Well, if you are, you're lucky enough to have been able to launch Kyodai Mahjongg 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.

- Check out your audio configuration... More exactly, the "MIDI" tab in the Multimedia section (Control Panel). Try different outputs and restart Kyodai Mahjongg. Also, make sure the "Play Music" option in the Configuration menu is enabled... ;-)

- 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 name ends with ".mod", not ".MOD"). Run Kyodai Mahjongg, and check the "Enable MOD music" in the configuration menu (if it wasn't already checked, relaunch Kyodai Mahjongg). 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.

- 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.

- If, after you dropped your MP3 files in the Musics subdirectory, Kyodai Mahjongg refuses to play them, you probably don't have a MP3 codec installed. I would recommend to install the Windows Media Player from Microsoft. Then restart Windows and Kyodai Mahjongg should be able to play your MP3 files.
- 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 for not being a specialist on MP3 playback. I only added this feature because a lot of users requested it, but I only use the Windows capacity to play MP3 files, Kyodai Mahjongg does not include its own MP3 decoder and probably never will. This feature is only provided as a bonus.

- Kyodai Mahjongg 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 Mahjongg will recognize it...

- 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.

- Try to disable the ModPlug DLL (Configuration menu) and restart Kyodai Mahjongg.

Go to the menu Configuration > Allow stacked matching tiles. When disabled, Kyodai Mahjongg makes sure that the next board you launch (or the next shuffle you do) will never have two identical (matching) tiles stacked on each other. Obviously this makes the game easier (stacked matching tiles are disabled by design in Two-Player mode), but it is recommended to leave it enabled, as your game will still be winnable, only it will require more strategy. Please note that the feature is taken into account only when the corresponding "Winnable" option is checked. Additionally, it will not work on boards physically unable to offer anything else than stacked matching tiles, such as two columns with four tiles each.

- Make sure you entered a number different from 0. Also, disable the "Winnable" modes in the Configuration menu.

- Disable the "Automatic Quicksave" option from the Configuration menu.

- 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...

- 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 Mahjongg from the Start Menu.

- 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!

- 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! ;-)

- Strangely, that's a question I've been asked sometimes... Well, there is NO "world hall of fame" available. Why? Because Kyodai Mahjongg is a meditation program, not an andrenalyn 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.

- 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.

- I'm getting a LOT of e-mail in my box. Many of them are related to Kyodai Mahjongg. I can't answer to ALL of these mails without causing Kyodai Mahjongg 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!