Oh yeah - it's been so long I didn't even remember that. You said Screamer 2, and it reminded me that the game that came bundled with my fathers' voodoo was Screamer Rally which is DOS or Win95 compatible from what I remember...?

Damn - I gotta find that game. I remember the unlockable SUV/4WD thing for the yellow team - that was a beast....

EDIT: Sorry for hijacking the thread! 😜

No problem. Still working on a GTA fix as the free version comes with the Windows version only. I've tried messing with ACT 5.0 options but I still cannot get it to work properly.

I assume it uses VESA for the graphics mode yea...? Have you checked out that stuff and/or alternate TSR's for VESA enablers?

No, it uses DirectDraw.

Oh crap sorry, I thought you were trying to play the DOS version!

Hmm..... DirectX 6.1 I believe. DirectX9 made some changes to the DirectDraw and Direct3D API of older games from what I remember.

Hence the official statement on the Rockstar Classics webpage - "...modified from its original version to enable support for modern PC's and current Microsoft © Windows © platforms"

...I think you'd be better off installing the Classics version, then trying to install London. What exactly is the error that it gives when you try to install London on that version? It might just be missing registry keys. Or does it actually patch the EXE....

...i'm actually gonna try it myself. I have a copy of london somewhere in this mess.

EDIT: Have you come across this page? http://gtamp.com/gta1/ It's a worthy read.

The windows version still works on my Geforce 7900GT (using older drivers, though), so DirectX 9 isn't to blame.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

The windows version still works on my Geforce 7900GT (using older drivers, though), so DirectX 9 isn't to blame.

I mean the actual stack/API of of DirectX, as in the ddraw.dll file in system32 folder. It apparently had a major change in DirectX9, as opposed to DirectX 8.1.

Well i'm going to download the Rockstar Classics version of GTA and see if I can install London over that, later on today (at work right now). I'm sorta keen to get it working anyway, it is a game of mine and i'm still in the process of fixing up my older games - GTA1 was down the list but I just found an excuse to bump it.

While i'm here, is it no option to use the DOS version in, say, DOSBox? It probably runs like crap I assume.

Also, try geting an older version of DDraw.dll (from DirectX 8.1 or older, try even DirectX6 version) and put it in the GTA1 folder, and set it to Win98/Win95 compatibility mode. This will force GTA to use the ddraw.dll in the current folder rather than the Windows installed one. Rarely works, but it's worth a try if you're bored.

EDIT: If you do end up trying that, put the ddraw.dll folder also in the gtawin\ folder, just to be sure (pretty sure that's the actual runtime/working directory).

I think there's something in the drivers, not directx, because the problem happens only with newer cards and drivers (I think I already got it to run using older drivers on this card).

Ah yeah fair enough. That site says there's a known problem with 8800GT and newer cards, as an example.

Well im sorry to say I can't find my London disc anyway, I also have a 9600GT so I would probably have the same issue too, but I don't even have the game apparently.

Bummer. Sorry for wasting your time 🙁

You can get the original GTA 1 for free on rockstar's site. A friend of mine's got a 8800GT and he reported that this issue didn't occur on Vista.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

You can get the original GTA 1 for free on rockstar's site. A friend of mine's got a 8800GT and he reported that this issue didn't occur on Vista.

Are you talking to me? I need London. Not GTA1. I thought I had a copy but I can't find it, and it's NOT freeware. And the issue is that London doesnt work with the freeware version download, that's the problem here.

I see. But anyway, this issue doesn't seem to happen under Vista. He was using driver version 175.16 when he tested it.

An issue under XP but not Vista? Wow, thats a complete backwards-smack to the head!

UK_John wrote:

Quite simply retro WINDOWS gamers (as opposed to DOS games which have DOSBox as an easy solution) need to invest in one of the e […]
Show full quote

Quite simply retro WINDOWS gamers (as opposed to DOS games which have DOSBox as an easy solution) need to invest in one of the emulation titles mentioned above. I use Virtual PC with an old Win98 OS disk I have to give me a Win98 system within my XP system. This allows me to play games like Star Trek Generations and Dune 2000 (to quote just 2 titles!). I also ran 7th Legion in my Virtual PC with no problem, but then found a patch that let the game play in XP. Virtual PC allows you to use your CD/DVD Drive and allows access to shared folders. This means patches can easily be applied by copying to the shared folder then starting Virtual PC and accessing that same folder to bring in the patch/mod whatever. A Win98 OS Disk can be got for very low prices on ebay etc, and is an excellent investment in my book, as I have nearly as many early win95/win98 games as I do DOS games, and it's these early Windows games (especially the ones that weren't big hits so don't get much support today) that Virtual PC can generally run wonderfully!All I hope is that Virtual PC keeps getting upgraded to a slightly more powerful PC, as some laterWin98 won't run on it as it is not powerful enough, and yt they won't work in my XP system because it's too powerful!

As a 20 year plus PC gamer, I can see the writing on the wall for AAA PC titles. The choice will become drastically small, and any genre outside of action games (FPS's/TPS's, etc) likely to practically disappear. Those that do arrive are likely to be further dumbed down as each generation arrive with more and more publishers looking at the console/casual market alone. You only have to look at the Morrowind/Oblivion debate, or the 'streamlining' of games like Dawn of War 2 versus Dawn of War, or Empires Total War versus Rome or Medieval II TW, or even GTA IV versus GTA San Andreas!

I have been quietly building up my retro game collection via ebay, etc, and now have over 300 PC games from 1990 onwards, and now own pretty much every game I originally bought and loved but lost over time fo various reasons. Games like the Thief series, System Shock 1 and 2, Ultima Underground 1 and 2, Wasteland/Fallout 1/Fallout 2, Terra Nova: Task Force Centauri and Darklands!

I would recommwend every reto PC gamer to invest in a Win98 OS disk and downloading Virtual PC or one of the others. It will be an excellent long-term investment! 😀

But dont most of those old windows games need some type of hardware 3d support, which isnt available under a virtual environment?

Umm.... what!?!? 🤣!

Sorry.

"Hardware 3D" exists in games that are 3D. "Old windows games" such as Quake and such did have Glide (3DFX) modes, and that was bleeding edge for its' time. Before that? No such thing as "hardware 3D" as we know it today. And by 'hardware 3D' i assume you simply mean Hardware Acceleration, such as Glide, OpenGL (Opensource Glide), or Direct3D, which back in the day could be run via software on an S3 Verge for instance (like, DirectX 5 days)

What kind of games are you talking about that needs hardware 3D support? Dune 2000? It's 2D. Fallout 1 and 2 are 2D, System Shock 1 is 2D, but System Shock 2 is Direct3D which can use hardware or software 3D....

.....VMWare supported DirectX 8.1 since version 5 i'm pretty sure, emulating Direct3D games of the same version via whatever software methods it used. It probably actually could use your hosts' hardware 3D card to help, i've never actually tried it so i don't know. Dunno about how VirtualBox handles DirectX or OpenGL acceleration.

So.... forgive me for asking... but what was the point of your question and how does it tie in with the GTA1 + London Expansion graphic corruption on a new machine? Running it in a Windows 98 Virtual Environment might not work? Well GTA1 is software renderered, and it's not even 3D - its 2.5D like Doom or Duke3D is. The 3DFX component is optional for fancy bilinear filtering and faster-at-higher-resolutions and whatnot, doesn't really do much else..... just going off memory there.

What if i want to run not so old games like Arcanum or Sacrifice in a virtual environment nowadays? Both games need DirectX, i dont know if they need hardware acceleration. But if any game does need it, would they run at reasonable speed in a guest system under Virtualbox for example?

temptingthelure wrote:

What if i want to run not so old games like Arcanum or Sacrifice in a virtual environment nowadays? Both games need DirectX, i dont know if they need hardware acceleration. But if any game does need it, would they run at reasonable speed in a guest system under Virtualbox for example?

Sacrifice runs pretty good in Windows 98SE under VMWare for me, dunno about Virtualbox. Arcanum doesn't use Direct3D, only DirectDraw (I assume so, because D3DWindower has no effect with it)

Just to let you guys know, the new 195.39 drivers fixes the original GTA, but only the free version available to download at Rockstar's website. London 1969 and 1961 still have garbled graphics (as well as the menus on Motoracer), which is completely strange because they both had the same garble and share the same engine.

have you tried limiting the refresh rate in dxdiag ?

It's a problem with the textures, not the monitor. The problem persists in every resolution.