http://wiki.oni2.net/Anniversary_Edition

Anniversary is perfectly compatible with new systems (not really sure about XP) and it have tons of useful mods.

I didn't know the existence of this edition, I'll try it on XP right away.
If it doesn't run properly, I'll then play it here on 7, still better than nothing (and perhaps even less lag with my GTX 970 rather than that X300SE 🤣 )

The easiest method to fix is 3dfxvgl.dll + nGlide combo. Copy 3dfxvgl.dll to the game directory, rename it to opengl32.dll, run the game (it will run as ogl -> glide -> d3d9). Needs dx 9.0 support.
The main trouble - there are lights bug, they are sometimes seen through walls.

What makes it actually run in Windows 98 (yet it lags and is unplayable), but not on XP despite I used to play it just fine on XP years ago ?

Oni used to work fine on Windows XP, but it probably broke after Service Pack 1 or 2, I too remember that spectacular error message 🤣 .

What are your system specs for that PC? Perhaps the system is not capable enough for the game or maybe a driver issue is causing the slowdowns on Win98SE.

Your best bet is however to run the Anniversary Edition on your main PC, it works flawlessly, I beat it like that a few years ago 😀.

It's an ASUS A8V-XE motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (single core), as graphics card it has a X300SE, a Creative Sound Blaster PCI128 CT4750 sound card and 1 GB total of DDR1 ram.
Dual boot with 98 and XP on two separate HDDs.

Elia1995 wrote:

It's an ASUS A8V-XE motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (single core), as graphics card it has a X300SE, a Creative Sound Blaster PCI128 CT4750 sound card and 1 GB total of DDR1 ram.
Dual boot with 98 and XP on two separate HDDs.

Bingo. That's a slow card. It has a 64bit bus, so memory bandwidth is atrocious. Oni is a pretty lax game, but maybe you tried to run it on high resolutions?

Otherwise, it could be a driver issue (you could try older drivers perhaps) or maybe even a motherboard driver issue. Via chipsets don't always play nice 🙁.

I do have other PCI-E cards lying around, but I'm afraid I'll then have problems finding drivers for Windows 98SE !!! 🙁

I also have a Radeon HD 3xxx series one, which is more powerful than this X300SE, but then will I be able to get it working on Windows 98 ? 😐

No, probably not. PCI-E and Win98SE don't mix well at all, unless you really know what you're doing. The X300SE is essentially about as fast as an original Radeon 7500 or so, which should be enough to play through this game.
You're probably plagued by driver issues at this point.

Why not just play the game on your modern rig with the Anniversary patch? It really does work fine.

Yeah, that's what I've ended up doing at this point.
I wont play it in 1080p resolution to make it look the most nostalgic as possible though 🤣

Unfortunately, until I can get a working motherboard with an AGP slot, that's the only vintage motherboard I have where I can use Windows 98SE with a graphics card 😒 I'll then get Windows 98SE out of this machine, transform this into an XP-only PC with a better PCI-e GPU and move Windows 98SE on a mobo with an AGP graphics card, such as my beloved nForce 5500 or my S3 Trio without driver issues.

That does sound like a much better plan indeed. Good luck and have fun playing the game!

Yeah, thanks 😁