By all accounts this is a spectacularly awful game.

Are you using an original disk? If you're using a version you illegally downloaded from somewhere, it could easily be incomplete, or you might be encountering a copy protection mechanism.

A ripped backup copy since I don't like swapping disks and my CD Drive is a pain to get to due to my pc sitting well underneath my desks, I tried mounting the backups i guess I will have to break out the actual disks to see if that makes a difference. I can say this did work before on a Windows 7 machine but for the life of me I can not recall how to start the game and i do remember having a similar issue, but that was well several years ago.

So you're using Windows 10 now? Some problems have been reported in other games due to Safedisc being incompatible with newer versions of Windows.
Re: Wizardry 8 used to work, but now it crashes on startup.

Is it using safe disk? Does not appear to be. I know safedisk games won't run natively on Windows 10.

Jorpho wrote:

By all accounts this is a spectacularly awful game.

I don't know. It's bad but I kind of see what they were trying to do.

To answer the OP's question: press the down arrow if you are using the keyboard, or push down if you are using a stick or pad. Also, if you are using the keyboard, make sure that the joystick option is turned off in the option screen. If it's turned on, the main menu will only respond to the keyboard until you try to enter the game through the cerebral cortex option.

Silanda wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

By all accounts this is a spectacularly awful game.

I don't know. It's bad but I kind of see what they were trying to do.

To answer the OP's question: press the down arrow if you are using the keyboard, or push down if you are using a stick or pad. Also, if you are using the keyboard, make sure that the joystick option is turned off in the option screen. If it's turned on, the main menu will only respond to the keyboard until you try to enter the game through the cerebral cortex option.

So that was the problem joystick was enabled and I was using the keyboard.

So now that I am in the game I can see dgVoodoo does not play nice with it. Any tips on how to get the game to go into fullscreen instead of the weird fullscreen with border?

Druuna is probably the buggiest game ever made, period.
Even on its native platform on preferred hardware with ideal settings, that game is UNSTABLE, and possibly unplayable.

If I remember correctly, they wrote on the box something along the lines that if the player saves too often, the savegames will become corrupt and the game will crash. But it's all okay because they try to semi-justify it since it's a game about corrupt and incomplete genetic memories. *coughsalotafterwritingthis*

Presbytier wrote:

So now that I am in the game I can see dgVoodoo does not play nice with it. Any tips on how to get the game to go into fullscreen instead of the weird fullscreen with border?

Are you using the latest dgVoodoo WIP? It works fine here unless you try to force resolution or AA.

Beegle wrote:

Druuna is probably the buggiest game ever made, period.
Even on its native platform on preferred hardware with ideal settings, that game is UNSTABLE, and possibly unplayable.

If I remember correctly, they wrote on the box something along the lines that if the player saves too often, the savegames will become corrupt and the game will crash. But it's all okay because they try to semi-justify it since it's a game about corrupt and incomplete genetic memories. *coughsalotafterwritingthis*

That doesn't jibe with my experience at all. It's perfectly stable on Windows 10, without using something like dgVoodoo. The only issue I've encountered has been audio de-sync in the video cutscenes, which can be addressed by using a framerate limiter. What you're talking about sounds like the gameplay mechanic which limits the amount you can save. That's not a bug, it's a design decision, albeit a questionable one.

Silanda wrote:

Presbytier wrote:

So now that I am in the game I can see dgVoodoo does not play nice with it. Any tips on how to get the game to go into fullscreen instead of the weird fullscreen with border?

Are you using the latest dgVoodoo WIP? It works fine here unless you try to force resolution or AA.

I am using 2.52 and while it works the character is missing from the scene.

EDIT: So I shut off application controlled fullscreen and for some reason the characters now appear. Now aside from the games own many bugs and quirks it runs fine.