Edit: I have no pointers, I'm sorry.
Never heard of it.
Neat.

This game is just broken:

Carnivorous Successfully Avoids Review […]
Show full quote

Carnivorous Successfully Avoids Review

IGNPC loses another battle with the roadkill budget title.

By IGN Staff

Updated: Jun 20, 2012 8:18 pm
Posted: Sep 29, 1999 2:00 am

Carnivorous, MacMillan publishing's car-based "hunting" simulation, allows you to kill deer, fowl, and bears while never having to leave the comfort of your truck. And once again, it has slipped out of the hands of the review staff of IGNPC. Five computers have tried, and failed to execute the program, which suffers from fatal crashes before it ever reaches an options menu. The official company website has refused to answer questions regarding the games whereabouts, or any possible patches that are available for download, even after prolonged interrogation and probing. When questioned, the game only offered that it suffers from painful psoriasis.

-- IGN Staff

https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/09/29/carni … y-avoids-review

Firtasik wrote on 2023-05-23, 21:45:

This game is just broken:

Carnivorous Successfully Avoids Review […]
Show full quote

Carnivorous Successfully Avoids Review

IGNPC loses another battle with the roadkill budget title.

By IGN Staff

Updated: Jun 20, 2012 8:18 pm
Posted: Sep 29, 1999 2:00 am

Carnivorous, MacMillan publishing's car-based "hunting" simulation, allows you to kill deer, fowl, and bears while never having to leave the comfort of your truck. And once again, it has slipped out of the hands of the review staff of IGNPC. Five computers have tried, and failed to execute the program, which suffers from fatal crashes before it ever reaches an options menu. The official company website has refused to answer questions regarding the games whereabouts, or any possible patches that are available for download, even after prolonged interrogation and probing. When questioned, the game only offered that it suffers from painful psoriasis.

-- IGN Staff

https://www.ign.com/articles/1999/09/29/carni … y-avoids-review

Oh yeah, it most definitely is, one thing that gets me is that on the Amazon page that is up, there are a couple people talking about actually playing the game and implying to have got it to run somehow, same as in other spaces where I have heard of very few people talking about it, there were at least a few who managed to get it to run somehow.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00002S6KK/ref=olp- … v_ov_lig_uan_ol

I can't get it to work on any of my emulated systems (pcem, vmware).

So called "abandonware" is not supported here. Edited op and removed links

Covers are processed now at MobyGames, thanks.

I've managed to extract the resources/scripts in hope of being able to move them over to another, less janky version of the 3D GameStudio A4 engine. So far no luck, but at least I can tell you some cheat codes - looks like Ctrl-Alt-1 puts you in a truck, -2 a SUV, -3 is a Mad Max buggy complete with rocket launcher, -S spawns more critters. Here's hoping we get to try them eventually.

Btw I don't think that loading screen is frozen. The "Quit" button reacts to a click -immediately-, so it's doing -something- under the hood. I think I even get a bit of loading bar before it crashes/exits.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-05-24, 13:02:

I've managed to extract the resources/scripts in hope of being able to move them over to another, less janky version of the 3D GameStudio A4 engine. So far no luck, but at least I can tell you some cheat codes - looks like Ctrl-Alt-1 puts you in a truck, -2 a SUV, -3 is a Mad Max buggy complete with rocket launcher, -S spawns more critters. Here's hoping we get to try them eventually.

Btw I don't think that loading screen is frozen. The "Quit" button reacts to a click -immediately-, so it's doing -something- under the hood. I think I even get a bit of loading bar before it crashes/exits.

very interesting, I hope we could eventually get it running!

On Windows 10,

1acknex.exe Start.wrs

gets rid of "Genesis failed -invalid WDL file". Sadly, the game won't go further.

Someone who commented on my upload said this: "Game was tested & runs on windows 98 only. Does not run on
XP or up. How to run it extract ISO contents into new folder transfer to desktop of win 98. Run Setup file not auto-run will install then you can run it. Will also need graphics card with drivers installed for its time.
This game needs dos mainly to run it however could not get it to run in dos-box only win 98. Hope this helps."

Despite this, I tried this exact thing on my Win98 PC (my drivers are updated to the latest version), I still could not get it to run. 🙁

armani wrote on 2023-05-27, 00:25:

Someone who commented on my upload said this: "Game was tested & runs on windows 98 only. Does not run on XP or up. How to run i […]
Show full quote

Someone who commented on my upload said this: "Game was tested & runs on windows 98 only. Does not run on
XP or up. How to run it extract ISO contents into new folder transfer to desktop of win 98. Run Setup file not auto-run will install then you can run it. Will also need graphics card with drivers installed for its time.
This game needs dos mainly to run it however could not get it to run in dos-box only win 98. Hope this helps."

Despite this, I tried this exact thing on my Win98 PC (my drivers are updated to the latest version), I still could not get it to run. 🙁

The fact that this commenter can't tell the difference between a DOS and a Windows game doesn't inspire confidence (acknex.exe appears to be a native Windows executable).
I'd love to see some screenshots or video.

Just set the system date to something earlier like 1999 and you'll be surprised 😉 What a terrible little game, I love these oddities.
(PIII 1.2Ghz, 128MB RAM, Voodoo3 2000, Win98SE)

Nice one, konc!

It does work with dgVoodoo2 on Windows 10 but the game runs too fast (limiting FPS helps).

Also there's no music. Does the original disc have audio tracks?

konc wrote on 2023-05-27, 14:10:

Just set the system date to something earlier like 1999 and you'll be surprised 😉

That's....incredible. Never would have thought to try something so stupid 😁

Neither would I, since I tried sightly older as well as newer games on (other version of) the same engine and they ran just fine without having to do that. Huh.

As for the music - I don't think there is meant to be any. While background music playback is supported by the engine (using their own format at least - no clue about CDA), skimming the game scripts I couldn't find any references to something like that here, and this dev's other games don't include any either.

Firtasik wrote on 2023-05-27, 14:45:

Nice one, konc!

It does work with dgVoodoo2 on Windows 10 but the game runs too fast (limiting FPS helps).

Also there's no music. Does the original disc have audio tracks?

I still can't get it to work in W10 even after changing the date. Did you do anything else apart from dgvoodoo?
Runs okay in PCem tho.

armani, could you post a scan of that manual? I think that's not against the rules.

feda, only added the Start.wrs parameter after acknex.exe in a shortcut.

On my Windows 11, the game starts to the splash screen and then crashes... dgVoodoo2 doesn't help either.

Ok the game works without dgVoodoo2 a well.

I was trying to use DxWnd's fake date method, but probably there's a bug that doesn't work with this game. What I did was change the date to todays's date in 1999 and run the game.
Using DxWnd I was able to window the game, and avoid the crashes during loading a race or changing resolutions (I enabled single core affinity, limited the memories and exception handling, not sure which one fixed it). The only issue is speed. If I use its timing to limit it to 20FPS, the race runs identical to that I get on my Pentium 2, but also the menu runs at 20FPSS(unlike Win98 where the menu FPS is not limited), the menu speed should not matter otherwise.