Trouble running KQ8 MOE

[Spikey]

Never had any troubles in XP, but on my new laptop, the following happens...

...I installed it, which worked fine, launched....and all I get is a tiny part of the upper left corner part of the intro video, and when I press enter or wait till it's over, I just get a standard windows error that something went wrong and that the program has to be closed. Deinstalling, reinstalling and updating to 1.***3 has the same effect.

Compatibility modes won't change the problem at all. It doesn't look very hopeful, and can't find anything like this on the web.

Any suggestions?

Spikey

[Collector]

I have not been able to get MoE to run in Vista 64, either. I assume that Vista 32 would give the same error. I have not played around with the Application Compatibility Toolkit for MoE. You might try experimenting with a virtualizer, but I think that without a Glide enabled graphics card the game relies on DirectX, so there might be problems in a virtual machine, too. Perhaps a glide wrapper in Virtual PC? The performance may be too bad to play. It would be interesting to see if the game works on Linux through WINE. Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate have an "XP Mode", but I have not experimented with it.

[Spikey]

Yeah, you know, what I was trying to say, this is just XP.

It's a mini laptop though, an Acer Aspire One, newest model. On my last model I had no trouble running it.

[Collector]

It might be a graphics adapter driver issue, then. Play around with upgrading/downgrading the driver. You might try using a glide wrapper.

[Spikey]

Yeah, I guess you're right, GK3 is also giving me a headache, while it never was a problem; changing the 3D options and resolutions in that game even results in BSODs (!?). But at least it works with software renderer. With KQ8, I would expect lockups, but not that the game won't even start. It's like what QFG5 does without the XP-patch, though I don't know the technical details of that problem.

It's so weird, how DOSgames used to be our trouble with runtime errors and all sorts of trouble.....it seems that the games between 3.11 and XP are going to be our biggest problem in the future. KQ8 is really the most unimportant of them all, but I cannot...live....without GK3 and QfG5.

I will go and try with the driver adapter and glide wrappers, and report back what I can find.

[Collector]

DOSBox is the reason that DOS games are no longer a problem. Win3x can be installed in DOSBox, so the 3x games usually are not a problem, either. It is the 9x games that are hit and miss. Then there the 9x games that will run on modern Windows, but have installers that do not. You can find a few new installers for 9x games on Squirt the Cat.

[Spikey]

Okay, so I got it working, more or less.

I think I'm having a problem with the default graphic option, DirectDraw. But I didn't know how to change the option to Direct3D before opening the game; so here's what I did; I installed KQ8 on a desktop where it works, changed the graphic options in the game, quitted, and looked which files were changed, with the intention of trying out the Direct3D option.

The important files as far as I can tell are Option.cs & main.kq, although nothing changes in main.kq when you change graphic mode. By opening Option.cs with a text editor like notepad (duh), you can manually switch from DirectDraw to Direct3D by changing the line
'assignGModeName Software'
to
'assignGModeName D3D-display'
and then save of course.

All other options remain the same, even though the Brightness is automatically set (I THINK) to 47, 48 or 49 when you launch the game in D3D.

Launched the game, and....voila...intro video was perfect, everything works fine, the game itself maybe a bit slow, cause it's still heavy work for this little laptop.

Didn't update with the 1.3 patch yet, I'll first see what in-game bugs I'll encounter.

Interesting, no? Collector or anybody know what can cause this to happen?

[Collector]

I assume it has to do with the graphics driver and how it interacts with DirectX. I suspect that this is also why it won't work on Vista. I think that it is more of a matter with DirectX 10 than Vista itself.

[Spikey]

I think it's mainly a drivers issue. Intel GMA 500 doesn't support DirectDraw very well, from what I understand. Intel doesn't really know how to make drivers, or so it seems.

I'm going to experiment some more with downgrading DirectX, even though that can be dangerous, and experimenting with emulating OpenGL (yes, Intel says the GMA 500 supports OpenGL, but the drivers don't, wtf?) and then emulating the voodoo board in the emulated OpenGL.

[Collector]

I tried experimenting with a Glide wrapper to bypass the need for DirectX on Vista, but no go. I might try it on Vista 32 to see that makes any difference.

[Spikey]

I'm really interested in getting it running in Vista as well, but I don't have anything to experiment with, since I'm avoiding Vista (for obvious retro gaming reasons).

[Collector]

Vista 32 does have the advantage of being able to run the Windows version of KQ6 natively.

I haven't experimented with it, but there is a Windows version of WINE, which might be the best approach for the old Win9x games on modern Windows. They are able to run DirectX games/apps on Linux, so it might be the way to go for legacy DirectX games, as that is the failing of virtual machines.

[Spikey]

It may not be an optimal solution, but I simply LOVE running kq6 from windows 3.11 within DOSBox.

When I get a machine with Vista, I'll probably be around here a lot more asking questions.