It runs in SVGA, so depending on your graphics card you may need univbe to help out.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-02-02, 19:36:

It runs in SVGA, so depending on your graphics card you may need univbe to help out.

My computer has a GeForce 4 ti 4600 AGP video card. I've run about 50 other DOS games and they've all been fine so far (besides the system being too fast for a small handful of older games).

Do GeForce 4 ti cards need DOS drivers? I don't have anything loaded for DOS (do have Windows 98 drivers of course). I have noticed that I get about half the framerate (if not even less!) in Quake 1024x768 in DOS vs the WAY faster performance when Quake is run inside Windows 98 (which I always thought was totally weird...should run faster in DOS as it's a DOS game and there's no overhead from Windows either, right?).

I don't know much about Univbe - I did try running it before and it says "Supported video card not detected - installation aborted". When I run it with "-s0" for "force detection of SuperVGA" it gives me 21 choices - I just tried all of them and it still says not detected. When I try the "-c0" flag it goes through ~5000 to 20,000+ "Invalid SuperVGA id" lines of code...and it seems like it counts up and down forever so I had to reboot 🤣. Googling turned up nothing so far...

**EDIT** found this one topic, which links to a fix in the 2nd post...but it's honestly Chinese to me and I don't understand if it'll help.

Since you didn't mention your graphics card in your first post, I was just throwing that out there to cover the bases. It's possible there's some issue with the GF4, and Univbe won't work with it (it's too new and should already have Vesa BIOS Extension support). It is kind of an overpowered graphics card for a P3 700. Do you have something more period correct you could try?

Another thing to try is to disable L1 cache (either through BIOS or with Setmul). It will likely be too slow to play Crusader, but just as a troubleshooting step to see if the game is having problems with the cpu being too fast.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-02-02, 21:58:

Since you didn't mention your graphics card in your first post, I was just throwing that out there to cover the bases. It's possible there's some issue with the GF4, and Univbe won't work with it (it's too new and should already have Vesa BIOS Extension support). It is kind of an overpowered graphics card for a P3 700. Do you have something more period correct you could try?

I have a 140Hz CRT monitor so I wanted overkill for the video card to push it as hard as I can for the older games I used to play 😉 --it's only 2 years different from when my computer came out to when this video card did. I have a Nvidia TNT2 M64, 32MB, AGP Video Card I can try.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-02-02, 21:58:

Another thing to try is to disable L1 cache (either through BIOS or with Setmul). It will likely be too slow to play Crusader, but just as a troubleshooting step to see if the game is having problems with the cpu being too fast.

I don't think my Dell's 440BX based motherboard allows me to do that (only have an option in the BIOS for "L2 Cache ECC Support" which seems to be for error checking only - nothing else I can find). I can look into Setmul - but that would make this game like 5, maybe 6 years newer than the last game which gives me issues because the computer is too fast.

Crusader engine is quite picky. Try not to do anything "overkill" for this series. Stay as old as possible when it comes to hardware. What soundcard are you using? Try running without sound.

I once had problem with Crusader No Regret and a 440BX mobo with 256MB RAM. Limiting the available memory by using the xmsdisk utility which creates a RAM drive enabled me to play on pure MS-DOS 6.22. I always had an ISA AWE64 in this system. I limited the available memory to 64MB RAM. Also works with 128MB RAM. All after using the ramdisk xmsdisk utility.

FYI, Crusader series are 2 of my most favorite games.

If you still can't play it, and want to play, DOSBOX runs it well in modern systems.

Relevant thread, maybe?
VESA Testing Thread - Work Vesa Work!

Malik wrote on 2020-02-03, 00:35:

What soundcard are you using? Try running without sound.

I once had problem with Crusader No Regret and a 440BX mobo with 256MB RAM. Limiting the available memory by using the xmsdisk utility which creates a RAM drive enabled me to play on pure MS-DOS 6.22. I always had an ISA AWE64 in this system. I limited the available memory to 64MB RAM. Also works with 128MB RAM. All after using the ramdisk xmsdisk utility.

In pure DOS mode I'm using an ESS ES1869F (slight update of the popular ES1868F). In Windows 98 it defaults to the Audigy 2 ZS (which doesn't have DOS drivers loaded at the moment).

I tried it with no sound. I can try pulling the sound card(s) as well as pulling a stick of RAM so I only have 128mb. Will have to google amdisk xmsdisk utility. Thanks. ...but honestly, I'm not going to be pulling ram and cards and installing other video cards so this game might just be a lost cause (and my system is only 4 years older than the game - you would think it would still run on a P3 without issue!)

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-02-03, 07:26:

Relevant thread, maybe?
VESA Testing Thread - Work Vesa Work!

I read through that, and the very first post mentions my GeForce 4 ti 4600 working in UNIVBE 3.0 (and it seems like UNIVBE goes up to version 7?). Maybe Crusader uses an earlier version which doesn't play nice with my card? I can't even find out what year 3.0 was released...

But beyond that, I'm honestly lost with how this could help. Should I find the 3.0 (or look for v7?), download it, run the program (would have to know what flags to run, if any) and see if Crusader then runs?

I was looking at lesser mode support for NV cards and wondering if that had a role to play.

I know this is an old thread, but I want to share my experience about this.

I came across the same issue recently and had a really hard time trying to find the solution. I first downloaded an installed version of this game(configured for DOSBOX). For the life of me, I could not get it to work with my physical machine. I mounted the game folder as a drive using the SUBST command, then ran the Install.exe from there and got the error saying:

1Unable to open file (null), in file FILE\FASTFLEX.C, line 38.

If I run the game directly by launch the Crusader.exe, I get the black screen with the system freeze.

I decided to find the original CD image of the game and try to install the game from there. After downloading the CD image, I copied all the content to a hard disk location, SUBSTed that location as a virtual drive(because there is no program able to mount the .bin format CD image file in pure DOS). This time when I ran Install.exe the installation screen appeared. (Yes!) The game then ran successfully after the installation.

I decided to make more exploration to figure out the cause of the black screen issue. So I unmounted the virtual drive and ran the game. Now it gave me the same black screen.
Emm, it seems the CD is the cause of the issue. Then I re-mounted the drive, but this time I ran the previous version of the game(the installed version with DOSBOX configuration). Again, I got a black screen. I then unmounted the drive and re-mounted it with the game folder of the installed version and ran the game I manually installed before. And it worked! There must be other thing causing the problem. After some researching I found the culprit. There is a file in the game folder called Crusader.cfg. The file includes many configuration of the game. I compared the two files of the two different version and there are some difference between them. For example in my manually installed version, it has the line "cdletter=h" which is "cdletter=c" in the DOSBOX version. I changed "=c" to "=h" and it worked!

Closed.
Old thread.
So called "abandonware" not supported here.