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Zombie Game Tips:
1. Yes, Pastor Bob is
supposed to be floating off the floor in the sanctuary!
2. Fling donuts at the doors to open them. If it doesn't open, you
may need to step back and try again.
3. At the end of the game when you're told to go clean the chocolate
off of you, you must go into the men's bathroom.
4. Read all our game tips in our Study Guide &
Worksheet
(3mb pdf)
Zombies Tech Support:
If suggestions on this
page don't work, please
email me with DETAILS of the problem and your computer.
neil@sundaysoftware.com
If you encounter a
problem, please check your system specs and minimums to make sure
your hardware is up to snuff. You can do this by clicking START,
then RUN, and typing "DXDIAG" to open Windows' DirectX Diagnostics.
Click the 'save as text' option and email me that information, or,
click the DISPLAY tab and write down the videochip brand/model,
videodriver date, and amount of videoram and send it to me. I'll
need complete details.
Make sure your video
chip is good enough. Some Windows Me and early XP -era computers may have
inferior video/3d capabilities. See my notes above about DXDIAG to
learn more about your system. You can also learn more about
videochips/ram at
www.sundaysoftware.com/videocard.htm
Make sure your video
chip's DRIVER is the latest version from the manufacturer. They
update video drivers to solve problems. If your computer is more
than 6 months old, odds are they have improved the driver. Run the
DX Diagnostics program described above and read the date of your
videodriver. Then....Go to the
computer manufacturer's website and look up your computer in their
drivers/download area. This is true EVEN
FOR NEW COMPUTERS. It's not uncommon to receive a brand
new computer which the manufacturer has ALREADY released a video
driver update. Happened to me twice!
Reported Problems and their
solutions:
After installation,
the game engine ("acknex") crashes or stops working at the opening...
This could be caused
by several things.
1) If you have
Vista or Windows 7, read the Vista section below.
2) The
game opens with a
video clip. It uses the Windows Media Player format (wmv).
Crashing could be a sign of not enough video ram on your system.
Or it could be that your version of Windows Media Player is way
out of date. Make sure you have a recent version of Media Player
loaded on your computer. It's free from
www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer
One way to test
and see if this really is the wmv videoclip crashing is to try
and run the wmv clip APART FROM the game itself. To do this:
"Explore" the Zombies files where they have installed on your
harddrive (the default location is c:\zombies or c:\program
files\zombies). Locate a file with the extension ".wmv"
and double click it. It should run. If not, upgrade your version
as Windows Media Player as described above.
When opening the game, it won't
open and it gives you an error message...
"3d compatible device not found"
...or some similar message. It means that your computer doesn't
have a compatible or modern-enough videocard and you need to
install one.
Other things you can do to
workaround start up problems:
In XP, right click the Zombies
desktop icon, then select "properties" then "compatibility" and
set it to "Run as in Windows 98" ...this will tell XP to take
things easy.
Pastor Bob is floating 6 feet
above the pews in the Sanctuary:
He's supposed to! You can aim the
donut flinger UP by either using pageup/pagedown or with your
mouse. He will come down once Super Kenz has talked to him.
Sound Volume too low:
Press the ESC key
and pull up the Zombies menu to adjust sound properties.
Note: Laptop sound is notoriously soft. We recommend playing
Zombies with amplified computer speakers.
At end of game, I
can't get all the zombies to go to sanctuary:
The game told you to
go into the men's bathroom. Be sure you do! This triggers
a final setup for the last scene in the sanctuary.
I keep running out of
donuts:
There are boxes all
over the place. Go into one of the classrooms and load up. You
might also check your game options menu to adjust level of
difficult.
Windows Vista
&
Windows 7
Notes for Zombies:
Zombies requires
several possible Vista tweaks to get it to
run in Vista. In several cases with Windows 7 machines,
these same tweaks solved the problem there as well. The tweaks are fully documented in the Readme-Vista.txt file
located on the Zombies CD. Read and follow those instructions! I have
added more notes here....
To find the Readme-Vista.txt file on the
CD:
-
Put the Zombies CD in the drive. If
it attempts to install, click CANCEL.
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Click the circular Windows "Start"
button on the lower left portion of your Windows screen
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Click "Computer"
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RIGHT click the
Zombies CD icon and select "EXPLORE"
-
Double click the
Readme-Vista.txt file and follow the instructions.
It is really
important to follow those instructions TO THE LETTER.
Here's the short
version of what's in those instructions for installing and
running Zombies in Vista:
a. When you run
the setup.exe file, don't let it install to the Program
Files folder if you have Vista. Rather, change the default
installation directory on the appropriate screen during the
installation -to a folder on your Desktop of your own
creation. The reason: In Vista, Zombies won't run from the
Windows program files folder due to Vista's obsessive
security.
b. After you have installed Zombies to that Desktop folder,
right click the Desktop Icon for Zombies that was installed
and select "properties" then "compatibility" and set it to
"Run as in XP" to get Vista to chill-out. (you may also have
to do this for the Start-Zombies.bat file in that folder.
c. You may also have to turn OFF Vista's annoying UAC's
(user acct controls) to stop those annoying pop ups from
interfering with Zombies start up. Turn them off in the
Windows Control Panel's User Acct options.
Other
Tweaks to get Zombies running in Vista...
I recently installed
Zombies on a brand new Vista Home Premium laptop and followed
the instructions in the README file on the CD, and it still
didn't run. Tried everything. Now... my laptop hard drive
just happens to be partitioned into a "C" drive and a "D" drive.
The C is for the operating system and main files, and the D
drive part of the hard drive is labelled as "Data". I don't like
that, but that's the way it came. Not all hard drives come
with "partitions" and generally speaking, I think partitions are
annoying. And please note that most "D" drives are the label
given to the DVD/CD drive. Not so on my laptop. Realizing
that Vista applies different security protocols to different
parts of the system, I copied the entire Zombies folder from my
Desktop (where I had installed it -per the readme file
instructions) to the "D" partition on my laptop's hard drive.
And guess what,
Zombies started up fine from the D partition of the drive.
I didn't even need to "run as administrator" or set the
compatibility option to "run as xp". Who knows why. But
Zombies worked from my "D" partition and not from the C side of
my hard drive.
I also uninstalled
the Norton 360 security suite which came with the laptop. It was
sticking it's tendrils into everything, and I don't trust that
it's not blocking some functions from running, such that a game
might want to call. I prefer to run AVG antivirus/malware
program --the free edition, and let Windows Defender take care
of other security needs.
Bottom line: get
used to trying various tweaks with Vista.
Windows 7 and
Zombies...
In January of 2010
when I first installed Zombies to my new Windows 7 office laptop
it worked great. Then 3 months later a customer said "I
can't get Zombies to start in Windows 7." It was crashing
right at the opening and giving that "acknex has to close"
message. So I immediately tried to start up Zombies again
on my Windows 7 office laptop, and lo and behold, it crashed for
me too. Weird. What had changed? Nothing,
except Windows 7 had been automatically updating itself. Looks
like they changed something.
So, following my
Vista experience, I first copied the entire installed Zombies
folder to a new desktop folder I had created, and tried to
execute the START-ZOMBIES.bat file from there. No dice.
[Tech Note:
Start-Zombies.bat is the file which 'turns on'
sanctuary.exe --Zombie's main application. You must always
start the game using the Start-Zombies file.]
So I continued to
apply my Vista tech advice to my Windows 7 laptop. I right
clicked the start-zombies file and selected Compatibility, then
"run as Windows XP." That didn't work either. So I right clicked
the sanctuary.exe file in that folder and selected
Compatibility, then "run as Windows XP" ...and double clicked
Start-Zombies.bat again. Still nothing. I double checked my User
Account Control settings in the Windows Control Panel (made sure
they were turned off). Then I logged off my computer
and logged back on. Viola! It worked.
This is a new tech
wrinkle, so I'm interested in your experience with Zombies on
Windows 7. Email me at
neil@sundaysoftware.com
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 System Requirements:
Minimum: Windows Me*/XP/Vista*/7,
800 mhz, 128 mb Ram, 16mb videoram minimum.
Even if you have
Windows Me, the computer still needs to come with a decent video
chip and video driver. In some cases, people upgraded their old
Win98 computers to Me without upgrading the hardware. To
discover your system's full specs, run DirectX Diagnostics. See
my note above about how to do that.
If you have Vista or
Windows 7...
see my tweaks above.
Questions?
Email
neil@sundaysoftware.com |
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The Story Behind the Zombies CD
I've been teaching Sunday School and
youth groups for nearly three decades. And in nearly every class or
group, I've found it important to ANSWER "WHY"
kids should want to come to church and Sunday School. ...Because
let's face it: worship and lessons aren't exactly fun things to do in
the minds of our kids.
Our kids (and some adults) have a lot of complaints. They say "it's
boring" or "I
don't need to come in order to be a Christian."
(see the list of zombie complaints above) The typical answer
of "because it's important" or "because I said so" isn't good enough. The answer needs to be
grounded
in scripture and delivered with creative
insight. The answer also needs to come with
suggestions kids can implement to make their experience come
alive. Zombies CD does this.
