SHP Forums

The idea for this thread started over here, but this place is much more appropriate, since it is a technical discussion about GK compatibility with newer OS.

Since I like to be schematic, I'll put up a little tab of what I already know. If someone has addition information I'll edit this, and - in the meantime - I invite Collector to edit it right now to correct my eventual errors.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Windows XP:

• Hendroz Installer for Windows (Yes)
  Collector Installer for DOSBox (Yes)

Windows Vista:

• Collector Installer for DOSBox (Yes),
  Hendrox Installer for Windows (???)

A Gabriel Knight Mystery: The Beast Within

Windows XP:

• Hendroz Installer for Windows (Yes)
  Dos Installation within DOSBox (Yes)

Windows Vista:

• Dos Installation within DOSBox(Yes),
  Hendrox Installer for Windows (???)

Gabriel Knight III: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

Windows XP: Works directly under Windows XP
Windows Vista: Works directly under Windows Vista

**********

My questions are:

• Do the patches/installers released by Hendroz for the first two games work even under Vista?
• Will they work under Windows 7?
• Can I play GK2 with Dos Box without creating/mounting images of the CD, thus using the original CD?
• What about GK3 and Windows 7? Will Virtual PC be the only possible solution?

It is a little more complicated than that. The Windows version of GK1 & 2 may or may not run on Vista 32. I would tend to think they would, but I can't test as I am running Vista 64. The main problem here is more of a matter of bit depth than compatibility issues between different versions of Windows. Neither 1 or 2 Windows versions will run on XP64, but will on XP32, at least with Hendroz's installer. What will or will not run on any given version of Windows depends on a number of factors, bit depth, compatibility (differences in APIs, system file versions and the reliance of some games on specific versions of things like DIrectX. This is all complicated by differences from one PC to the next (hardware, drivers, incompatible programs, etc.).

Bit depth - 64 bit vs 32 bit.
64 bit Windows has no NTVDM (Windows' highly imperfect built-in DOS emulator) or not WOW (Windows on Windows, allows 16 bit Windows programs to run on NT flavors of Windows, such as 2K, XP32 and Vista32). No 16 bit Windows games, no DOS games without an emulator like DOSBox or a Virtualizer like VMware. Virtual PC will not install on a 64 bit version of Windows.

The following is a list of issues may have on newer systems.

• OS Incompatibilities
  APIs (Application Programming Interface) are how programs, including games, interface with an OS. They evolve and change with each new version of Windows.
  
  Newer versions of system files that come with newer versions of Windows and changed APIs cause compatibility problems. Older programs and games will encounter problems when they are looking for missing or changed functions and not find what they expect. These problems can run from not even starting to various crashes or lockups. Compatibility mode can occasionally address some of these issues, but more often not.
  
  Hardware Incompatibilities
  The most known of these is the timer bugs as PCs become faster and faster. Some games do not like Hyper Threading or Multi-core CPUs. Ancient games may choke on too much memory.

Considerations of what to include in your list of OSs:

• 1) Windows 2000 - Can be ignored. Not many still have it and is possibly the wost platform for gaming.
  
  2) Windows XP32 - At this point, still the most widely used OS. We mostly know what does run, doesn't and does with issues.
  
  3) Windows XP64 - For the most part we can dismiss XP64, as not many people have it, nor would they be gaming on it.
  
  4) Windows Vista32 - Becoming more common. Has the NTVDM and WOW, and can run 16 bit Windows and DOS games. Comes With DirectX 10, so no EAX or Direct3-D and can't run fullscreen DOS games that use certain graphics modes unless you install Windows XP drivers (not recommended). Most games written for XP should run it.
  
  5) Windows Vista64 - Much more common place than XP64. This is the future of Windows. Has all of the problems that Vista 32 has, but has the extra issues of the greater bit depth. This one cannot be ignored, as more and more users have it. Many, if not most, Vista install discs come with both 32 and 64 bit versions.
  
  6) Windows 7 - Unless the marketeers get their hands on it like they did Vista it will finally drop most legacy compatibility. The loss of this backwards compatibility will be more than made up for by dramatically improving performance and stability. Part of the reason that Vista is as much of a resource hog is it tries to keep its backwards compatibility by things like loading multiple versions of systems files to provide old games what they expect. While we can ignore it for the time being, we have to remember it when creating solutions that may be broken with its release. If DOSBox breaks, expect the DOSBox devs to quickly fix it after Windows 7 is released.

As I don't have Vista 32, it would be good if someone that does and has many of the classics to help out with testing. We will leave this thread open for comments, questions, contributions and corrections. It may be assembled into a FAQs for this site.

Thanks Collector for the in-depth answer. I tried to make this post sticky for future references, but I can't find the correct option

GK1 is now completable in ScummVM also, thus removing OS woes.
Check info here --> http://clone2727.blogspot.com/2010/08/y ... devil.html. (It's not 100% yet)

The only real advantage that ScummVM will have for the first two GK games is for those with handheld devices that don't have the guts for DOSBox. About the only SCI games that I would recommend ScummVM for is for the few Windows only games or the couple that the Windows version is preferable over the DOS version. On top of that, SCI is still not officially supported, yet and the SCI32 (read the Windows only games) games will be an even longer wait.

When the time comes, I will certainly be modifying my KQ6 installer to create a ScummVM shortcut, but that won't be until at least the next stable release.

Hi! I am having trouble getting to run gk3 on windows xp

I installed the game from the new installer (found here http://www.sierrahelp.com/forums/viewto ... ?f=5&t=851). When I try to run it in full screen mode (my resolution 1280x1024) I get the same kind of trouble I was having with the old, normal installation, i.e. I can't see the intro video, I only hear its sound and after that I have a black screen no sound no nothing and i have to ctrl+alt+del to get out of the game.

When I try to run the game in window mode (I tried different resolutions) I instantly get an error "Sorry, the program requires support for 16-bit color mode" and the game won't even try to begin.


Thank you in advance for any help you might be able to give me

It sound like you do not have the right codec installed. Try renaming or moving the sierra.avi from the Data folder and see what happens.

It worked! Game runs properly now A million thanks Collector

Do you know, by any chance, of a way to mess around with any settings that will give me larger fonts for the subtitles? They seem so tiny, I can imagine it getting really annoying after a while.

Only to lower the resolution that the game uses.

Well, what do you know, you were right again It seems anything more than 1024x768, which the highest you can choose from within the game, makes the letters too small to be easily read.

Once again, thank you for your help Collector, much appreciated!

I've been experiencing some game crashes at certain spots

The first one was at Day 2, 12pm-2pm. Insinde Montreaux's office, while trying to get the mechanism for getting to the basement work, the crashed at some point. It seemed to me it was happening when the music file was ending and the next was about to begin (or the same played from the beginning?). I managed to get past that spot by rushing to the solution.

Now I'm at a dead end though. I'm at Day 2, 5pm-10pm. Just as the Day begins, I get into Sindey. The game crashes when I ask Sidney to "view geometry" at parch_1 or parch_2. The processing cursor appears, the music keeps playing, but after a few seconds the music ends and the cursor stays there forever, nothing happens and I have to terminate the game from the Tast manager.


Could that be a problem of the new installer? I don't recall having any trouble with the game playing for the first time, but that's quite a few years ago.

No, the installer adds no patches that could explain it. The problem is with the game becoming dated. It calls on APIs and codecs that have become outdated, depreciated or no longer are included with modern Windows. It will only get worse over time. This is one reason that DOS games are so much easier to run on modern Windows. Windows may no longer include a DOS or an emulator for it, but DOSBox make that all moot.

I am not at home right now to see what codec it is that GK3 uses, but you might try looking on the CD to see if there is an installer for the codec used. Some third party codecs can sometimes cause conflicts, especially with older videos/games.

You could also try recopying the large resource files from the 2nd CD, overwriting the files on the hard drive.

Ok thank you. I'll see what I can do with what you said and report back

I couldn't find any codec installers in the CDs. I also copied the files from CD2 in the game directory overwriting the old ones but with no luck.

I also installed a new codec pack. The change I saw with that was that once I clicked on "view geometry" a windows message appeared notifying me that gk3 was trying to access ffdshow (or something like that, sorry for not taking notes of the whole message) and if it was a trusted program. I said yes, trust always, but after that nothing new happened, the game still won't get past that.

FFDShow is known to have compatibility issues with older games. Try starting the game from GK3.bat.