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First post, by yochenhsieh

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There's a RTS game "Star Trek New Worlds" that have a strange issue on newer graphic cards: It will popup a dialog window like the attachment, saying there's a runtime error.

Last successful run was on a laptop with ATI X1250, Windows7 x64. I think it may have problems with newer drivers that supports directX10 or later. Tried 3danalyze, dgvoodoo2, but without success. It won't run in vmware or virtualbox.

All the dlls referenced in the exe is found in C:\Windows\Syswow64, except mss32.dll which is in the game folder. Tried copied all dlls to game folder, same result.

Has anyone seen other games with similar problem? Is there any solution?

Thanks.

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Last edited by yochenhsieh on 2017-01-06, 15:40. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 19, by yochenhsieh

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Never thought I will be able to play it one day...
My specs:
Windows 7 64bit
AMD FX6300
AMD RX470
DDR3 8GB RAM

1.install New Worlds. I recommend to install it in a custom folder like D:\games\
2.copy movies folder from CD to your hard drive root. For example, D:\
3.run regedit, go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Interplay\StarTrekNewWorlds\1.0.0] and change the CDrom key to the drive where you copied movies folder to.

Download wind3d for windows here:
http://adolfintel.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag

4. extract wined3d.dll, libwine.dll, ddraw.dll to New Worlds folder.
==
[OPTIONAL]
A hex editor is required. I use xvi32:
http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freewar … xvi32/xvi32.htm

5. rename ddraw.dll to ddra2.dll or any 5+3 filename.
6. use the hex editor to open STNW.exe, find ddraw.dll and change it to the new filename you just renamed to.
==
[OPTIONAL] open game.ini and edit the content:

[STNW]
GAMEXRES=1366
GAMEYRES=768
FedLevel=100
KliLevel=200
RomLevel=300
TauLevel=400
MetLevel=500
HubLevel=600

GAMEXRES and GAMEYRES is your resolution. Yes it supports widescreen without stretch.
The six Level value will unlock all single player campaign missions.
==
7. right click on STNW.exe, select Properties, and then select the Compatibility tab.
check "disable visual themes" and "disable desktop composition" (on windows 7)
8. Start STNW.exe, press Esc to skip intro video, press space to pause it.
If a widescreen resolution is set in game.ini, be sure not to change anything in in-game options.

Star Trek New Worlds is a RTS game which you can construct ground colony and build little shuttles. But the dev forgot to add a button to savegame.

Last edited by yochenhsieh on 2018-09-06, 14:30. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 3 of 19, by guardian_gryphon

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😲 Holy jumping plate of live gagh... You actually solved it!

I have been trying to find a solution to this problem for quite literally eighteen years. This game was one of the first Windows 98 games of my middle and late childhood, and still stands (despite the flaws) as one of my favorite Star Trek games of all time. It was one of my first 3D games, my second ever RTS, and it holds so much nostalgic value for me.

I can still remember how insanely excited I was unwrapping it Christmas morning that year, and how many zillions of hours I monopolized my father's top-of-the-line (for the time) win98 machine so I could play this. I was, and still am, a lover of all things Trek.

Thank you, sincerely, for figuring this out.

All I can add is that I had trouble with your fix until I moved the game onto a FAT32 formatted flash drive. Something I learned about STNW during my own quest for a solution is that it won't run off an NTFS formatted drive. The simplest workaround is to get a cheap gigabyte-sized thumb drive, and use it as the install location.

Again, sincerest thanks; Live long and prosper!

Reply 4 of 19, by yochenhsieh

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Strange, I have it running on my NTFS D: drive. My STNW.exe is a cracked no-CD file, not sure if it matters.

Don't thank me though. Wine is a opensource project that helps running windows programs on Linux, insteresting that wined3d ported to windows also helps old programs/games. https://www.winehq.org/

The person who builds the binary .dll files is also a star trek fan! He has a page for running Klingon Honor Guard:
http://adolfintel.com/?p=khg/index.frag

Reply 6 of 19, by guardian_gryphon

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yochenhsieh wrote:

Strange, I have it running on my NTFS D: drive. My STNW.exe is a cracked no-CD file, not sure if it matters.

It might... I'm running a non-cracked original version off the original CD. Then again, I'm also running on Win 8, whereas you're on 7, so that brings with it a whole host of complicating factors too.

yochenhsieh wrote:

Don't thank me though. Wine is a opensource project that helps running windows programs on Linux, insteresting that wined3d ported to windows also helps old programs/games. https://www.winehq.org/

I'd reached a point where I knew it would come down to wrapping the game's dlls, and modifying the exe, but I'd never been able to get it working successfully, and I'd tried quite a few different ideas. Using wine3d was a master stroke...

yochenhsieh wrote:

The person who builds the binary .dll files is also a star trek fan! He has a page for running Klingon Honor Guard:
http://adolfintel.com/?p=khg/index.frag

I'll have to give that a try as well! I have just about every single other Star Trek game working on my current machine. New Worlds was always the worst standout misbehaving one though.

Reply 8 of 19, by urdman

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Where did you get a crack no-CD file? I'm running it on a FAT32 drive with windows 95 compatibility mode and I get an error stating "insert my AUTHENTIC ORIGINAL disk" If I had a crack no-CD file, I might get around this.

Reply 9 of 19, by pjpsyco

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Dozer1001 wrote:

It seems like you did it yochenhsieh!

Can you (or anyone else) please give a quick step-by-step how-to on the Hex Editor?

Thanks in advance

Once you download a hex editor and open it, load the file you want to edit. Click on 'search' at the top to find what you need. In this case it will be "ddraw.dll" (it works just like the search in word). Then edit the text by typing over it. In this case it was suggested that you type over the w in ddraw with a 2 to make it ddra2.dll. Then save the file.

Reply 10 of 19, by Dozer1001

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Thanks, that was not as complicated as I thought it would be! Apparently the hex editor search requires the complete string.

But now I have the same issue as urdman. The "AUTHENTIC ORIGINAL" cd is inserted and recognized by the system, but the STNW launcher won't have it. Any ideas?

Reply 11 of 19, by Dozer1001

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urdman wrote:

Where did you get a crack no-CD file? I'm running it on a FAT32 drive with windows 95 compatibility mode and I get an error stating "insert my AUTHENTIC ORIGINAL disk" If I had a crack no-CD file, I might get around this.

You'll have to change back to your optical drive in Regedit

Reply 13 of 19, by ThunderRunner19

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I've done all the steps, but i still keep getting the runtime error. Can anybody help?

Update: nvm I got it to work completely, If you are using any other file format besides FAT32, then don't change the ddraw.dll file name or the regedit key. Also make sure you are using the old 1.7.52 version of wined3d if you're a AMD user. Don't forget use the unofficial Star Trek New worlds patch 1.1 too.

Reply 14 of 19, by carmar

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ThunderRunner19 wrote:

make sure you are using the old 1.7.52 version of wined3d if you're a AMD user

Sorry for necroposting.

I have Intel and I still needed the older version, so thank you for that.

And thanks to yochenhsieh for the overall solution. 😀

Reply 15 of 19, by Jez2k

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Running this natively on Windows 7 x64 NTFS.

Didn't need to set the resolution in the ini file because the bonus missions includes a replacement ini set at my monitor's native resolution (1280 x 1024). I set compatibility to Windows 98/ME. Selecting anything else, even Run as administrator, causes the game to crash before its even loaded.

Each time I load the game however, I get this Bink error pop-up window.

SHRINKER.ERR
Pager initialisation error 5 - The parameter is incorrect.

When I close it, a second identical window pops up, but when I close that, the game seems to load okay. BUT the movies with the full-screen blue grid during the briefing which are supposed to show the entire terrain, are empty. Its annoying not seeing what is being described, but its not a game-stopping bug.

Also, the vehicles don't always respond to destination clicks. I have to repeat the order until they move. On the first mission, I built a new science vessel to get the second opinion on the native's home, but after building the second science vessel, neither vessel responds to the scan order. I don't know if this is a compatibility issue or a bug.

Reply 16 of 19, by yochenhsieh

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Jez2k wrote:

Running this natively on Windows 7 x64 NTFS.

You can run it natively in Win7 x64? Without wined3d?
Would you share your hardware specs and vga driver version?

Reply 17 of 19, by Jez2k

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Sorry, I neglected to mention that I extracted the 3 necessary files from WineD3D v1.7.52 into the game's folder. Burnt a backup of the game's folder and put the CD in with the commercial CD. I do this for every game that's a pain to get running on Windows 7.

Didn't edit the exe in a hex editor, simply because I couldn't. The right window doesn't show any english (its all ASCII gibberish), so it was never going to find ddraw.dll.

Reply 18 of 19, by yochenhsieh

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OK. I edited second post to make the hexedit part optional. It seems many people can get it work without renaming and alter the exe file.

Reply 19 of 19, by Gdevash

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Got this to work in Windows 10 x64 following a mix of the above info.

1. Couldn't get setup to run - > made ISO of disk and spun up Win XP SP3 VM using VMWare workstation (other VM providers will likely work, I just already have workstation). Mounted ISO and installed. Used ImgBurn to create ISO from disc.
2. Copied installed game directory (used default installation path and was NTFS file system) from XP VM to W10 box in simplified path "C:\games\stnw"; again to NTFS filesystem.
3. Downloaded and extracted the 3 WINED3D files into this directory.
4. Created Registry Key matching the one from the XP system in WOW6432NODE (HKLM\Software\WOW6432NODE\Interplay\StarTrekNewWorlds\1.0.0\CDRom (string)" and set value to DVD drive containing installation disc.

That's it. No compatibility modes, no hexedit, or any other modifications. Game runs in full screen at 1024x768 and movies / voiceovers appear to work fine.