ok you didn’t really provide much info on your computers set up. But if your talking about the movies not playing back smoothly then it has to do with your CD ROM. I played the intro movie off the hard drive (using the bink video tool kit) and it ran fine so I’m guessing my CD ROM is too slow... all so check to see if the IDE channel your CD ROM is running off is running in UDMA mode and not in PIO mode. PIO is evil and slow and for some reason win 2k set it to PIO mode on my pc when I did a fresh reinstall.

all so if any one can tell me how to get the game to run off the hard drive as a CD rip threw D-tools I'd be very happy. The game has some kind of wacky copy protection that I couldn’t get around using clonecd.

Sorry, forgot to mention that my specs are in my profile. It's definitely not a case of the movies running slow, they actually skip audio because of the higher speed. I was looking for a NoCD for it mostly due to the weird & accident prone digipak case but weren't able to find one.

The IDEs are both in UDMA mode, I too have witnessed the evil of PIO

BVH wrote:

ok you didn’t really provide much info on your computers set up. But if your talking about the movies not playing back smoothly then it has to do with your CD ROM. I played the intro movie off the hard drive (using the bink video tool kit) and it ran fine so I’m guessing my CD ROM is too slow... all so check to see if the IDE channel your CD ROM is running off is running in UDMA mode and not in PIO mode. PIO is evil and slow and for some reason win 2k set it to PIO mode on my pc when I did a fresh reinstall.

all so if any one can tell me how to get the game to run off the hard drive as a CD rip threw D-tools I'd be very happy. The game has some kind of wacky copy protection that I couldn’t get around using clonecd.

Well, here's a No-CD patch for the German version, despite the title. I'm fairly confident it will work. It refers to Engine.exe in the documentation, so I am relatively sure it is for "In Cold Blood" and not "Cold Blood" - or maybe the German version had a different title.
http://spacetarget.com/games/pc_cold_blood.shtml

Hopefully, it can work on your version.

Also, search for the "warez" rip by "Warrior". They ripped out 760Mb of speech (there are subtitles), 120Mb of music and 320Mb of movies and bypassed the CD checks. They then did a followup release that added the movies back.

Of course you could always contact either Warrior or TGC for assistance in making your own crack.

There was also a Razor911 warez version, but I believe it's just 3 packages of RARs that make 3 different ISO's and would not help you.

Note: We here at VOGONS do not condone software piracy, but since you OWN the GAME...

Let us know how you make out.

heh oh yes condone software piracy... that we do. Software piracy is evil! 😁

The only down side I can think of is the fact I couldn’t find a way to tell the game to for look files on the hard drive and not the CD. I could install it of a image drive but given that the installer seems to have copy protection and demands the right CD to be in the drive that maybe a hard task.

that’s why making a good one is to one copy would be handy. Maybe my cd-rom can’t rip the copy protection? Ever that or the game is like lands of lore 3 where the game has to be in the 1st cd rom to install! Hmmm I’ll have to try that out latter. Ever that or some could try ripping the game with clone cd then make D-tools the 1st cd rom drive and load the cd threw that and see if it installs all right.

Aliasalpha wrote:

Sorry, forgot to mention that my specs are in my profile. It's definitely not a case of the movies running slow, they actually skip audio because of the higher speed. I was looking for a NoCD for it mostly due to the weird & accident prone digipak case but weren't able to find one.

The IDEs are both in UDMA mode, I too have witnessed the evil of PIO

arh ok, I keep forgetting about looking in the users profile 😉

heh PIO... why is my cpu at 100% when I read a cd??? 😜

Thanks for the advice, shall give it a go. If that doesn't work I'll try clearing some space on my second HD & seeing if I can install from there.

Damn I wish Hyperthreading didn't destroy 98! This was so much easier when I could just dualboot...

Originally posted by Aliasalpha Hey all, anyone managed to get In Cold Blood to run well on XP? even under compatability mode the cutscenes have jumpy and erratic sound & the speed shifts a lot.

Another bewildering thread. Starting right from the first question. It's odd because Dreamcatcher actually specifies that it's XP compatible. Suggest that you might contact Dreamcatcher here since they specify XP compatibility.

Originally posted by Aliasalpha Sorry, forgot to mention that my specs are in my profile.

BVH should've checked there first. Naughty BVH.

It's definitely not a case of the movies running slow, they actually skip audio because of the higher speed.

So you're saying the game is speed-sensitive? Geez. A 2001 game still tying itself to processor speed...

I was looking for a NoCD for it mostly due to the weird & accident prone digipak case but weren't able to find one.

Are you referring to the in-game videos? From BVH's description, they're Smacker video format.

Originally posted by BVH heh oh yes condone software piracy... that we do.

Somebody shoot him...no, wait. We offer him as a sacrifice when the BSA shows up.

Originally posted by Aliasalpha Damn I wish Hyperthreading didn't destroy 98! This was so much easier when I could just dualboot...

You're saying Win98 can't run on your processor?

I was aware that basic Win98 can't handle any Intel processor faster than 2.1 GHz (without a "special request" patch) but I hadn't heard about other processor/OS conflicts. Would this be true for 98SE and ME as well?

One of the things that makes it confusing for me is that apparently XP Home will support it, even though (like the Win9x OS's) it only has support for one processor.

It was actually the ingame cutscenes rather than the Bink movies, right after the intro movie you get a 3D sequence with a briefing over the top, the audio of the briefing skips forward because the 3D sequence is moving too fast. Are there any good CPU slowdown programs that work in XP or better yet programs that allow you to allocate a certain percentage of the CPU to the runtime of a single process so it doesn't slow my entire system down?

Hmm, there's a thought, I wonder if manually setting the priority of the program could help...

EDIT: Nope. Setting it to run on the single CPU (Well, thread process really) and setting the priority to the lowest possible didn't make a bit of difference.

As for 98 not liking hyperthreading, it seems that it was what killed me 98SE install, it kept getting a major error on boot & didn't finish loading explorer. I should have thought to test it with my mate's copy of ME, not like he ever uses it... I may do so next time I format & re-install everything, if nothing else it can only waste a few hours.

Originally posted by Aliasalpha a 3D sequence with a briefing over the top, the audio of the briefing skips forward because the 3D sequence is moving too fast. Are there any good CPU slowdown programs that work in XP or better yet programs that allow you to allocate a certain percentage of the CPU to the runtime of a single process so it doesn't slow my entire system down?

I wish. Oddly enough, from what I've heard running DosBox in the background is a good idea. You can gradually increase the # of cycles it uses, so it would gradually eat more and more processor power. Possibly run 2 instances of it.

As for 98 not liking hyperthreading, it seems that it was what killed me 98SE install, it kept getting a major error on boot & didn't finish loading explorer.

Got a similar response with Win98 (original) and a 2.2GHz Celeron...except that was a fresh install.

Sadly the DOSbox thing didn't seem to help, I managed to get it eating up 50% of the CPU & the only effect it seemed to have was to make DOSBox lock up...

Just as a bit of a time waster, I decided to install the Bink tools & it suggested an update. I looked through the list of changes & saw:

Worked around buggy Windows XP sound drivers that report bogus playback positions (which was causing occasional skips).

Sounded perfect. Shame the damned thing STILL skips! I'm beginning to think it may be better for my sanity to unearth my PS1 & find a copy for it...

Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

BVH should've checked there first. Naughty BVH.

Meh

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut Somebody shoot him...no, wait. We offer him as a sacrifice when the BSA shows up.

heh that was a small typeo resulting a whole word been missed... but then I'd be lying if I said I hadn’t copied copyrighted software before...

Originally posted by Aliasalpha Sadly the DOSbox thing didn't seem to help, I managed to get it eating up 50% of the CPU

Did you try starting up another instance (or two) of DosBox? It worked for QBix.

I see you have a SoundBlaster Live!. Its drivers in Win2K/XP are b0rked (um, I think, it could be just the Audigy 1, but I'm not sure). Reduce sound hardware acceleration to "basic" (2 notches?) and BINK movies will play correctly. Regarding everything else... well, I have had no problem playing this one on my machine, so, I dunno what to tell you.

Definitely a solution I'd not considered before but sadly still ineffective. The Bink movies play perfectly with the standard bink player, it's just when the game calls them.

Yup yup. Try another version of BINKW32.DLL. They're out there...