With modern technologies and virtualization, getting such an old game to run native is a futile attempt. It is overly complicated and has the tendency to break the OS. QEMU WHPX on Windows 10 x64 runs the game just fine without any patches. Simply run a Win98SE VM, run the installer and play, that's it.

kjliew wrote on 2020-08-24, 20:37:

With modern technologies and virtualization, getting such an old game to run native is a futile attempt. It is overly complicated and has the tendency to break the OS. QEMU WHPX on Windows 10 x64 runs the game just fine without any patches. Simply run a Win98SE VM, run the installer and play, that's it.
tnfsse.png

I am temporarily playing it on QEMU, but more than the breaking of the OS, I am concerned with the fact that it runs on the same OS(Win10) on one PC but doesnt on another PC.

QEMU is a fine option, but like PCem it really needs a PC that can accept the huge performance hit. Most people don't own such a PC.

Besides, Windows 9X tends to be very fragile.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-08-25, 07:29:

QEMU is a fine option, but like PCem it really needs a PC that can accept the huge performance hit. Most people don't own such a PC.

Besides, Windows 9X tends to be very fragile.

The game crashes 75 perc of time on Win98, and the VM is not stable with other operations too. To be honest, there was also a sound problem when I ran the game on DOSBox, the problem also encountered in Doom, that's why I didnt use DOSbox with it. The game was the most stable when running on native Windows NT, it works fine on XP with shims, it was even more stable and ran faster when it ran on Win7 or later

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-08-25, 07:29:

QEMU is a fine option, but like PCem it really needs a PC that can accept the huge performance hit. Most people don't own such a PC.
Besides, Windows 9X tends to be very fragile.

For this one, no you don't. With WHPX/KVM, the game plays very smoothly from Win98SE VM on Core i3-4010U laptop. QEMU with acceleration is way ahead of PCem in performance because virtualization runs the codes most of the time at bare-metal.

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-08-25, 08:28:

The game crashes 75 perc of time on Win98, and the VM is not stable with other operations too.

I see that you have a Ryzen from your signature. Perhaps there are issues with how Ryzen deals with virtualization which I do agree that Win98SE VM is more tricky with Ryzen and I have the same problem with my Ryzen 2500U APU laptop. The old FX and Intel CPUs are better at Win98SE VM with QEMU. WinME/Win2k/WinXP VMs are fine on Ryzen as far as I can see. I did not have the game crashed on me for Win98SE VM, audio sounded normal and I could finish a head-to-head match on the rusty dessert course.

If you have high-clocked performance class CPU, then you don't even need to enable WHPX/KVM to play this game. QEMU TCG has ample performance head room to run this game smoothly and Win98SE VM is stable on QEMU TCG.

kjliew wrote on 2020-08-25, 18:20:

For this one, no you don't. With WHPX/KVM, the game plays very smoothly from Win98SE VM on Core i3-4010U laptop. QEMU with accel […]
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xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-08-25, 07:29:

QEMU is a fine option, but like PCem it really needs a PC that can accept the huge performance hit. Most people don't own such a PC.
Besides, Windows 9X tends to be very fragile.

For this one, no you don't. With WHPX/KVM, the game plays very smoothly from Win98SE VM on Core i3-4010U laptop. QEMU with acceleration is way ahead of PCem in performance because virtualization runs the codes most of the time at bare-metal.

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-08-25, 08:28:

The game crashes 75 perc of time on Win98, and the VM is not stable with other operations too.

I see that you have a Ryzen from your signature. Perhaps there are issues with how Ryzen deals with virtualization which I do agree that Win98SE VM is more tricky with Ryzen and I have the same problem with my Ryzen 2500U APU laptop. The old FX and Intel CPUs are better at Win98SE VM with QEMU. WinME/Win2k/WinXP VMs are fine on Ryzen as far as I can see. I did not have the game crashed on me for Win98SE VM, audio sounded normal and I could finish a head-to-head match on the rusty dessert course.

If you have high-clocked performance class CPU, then you don't even need to enable WHPX/KVM to play this game. QEMU TCG has ample performance head room to run this game smoothly and Win98SE VM is stable on QEMU TCG.

Ryzen 1st gen has a VME bug and it remained unfixed till the 2nd Gen(some 2nd gen users also report this problem), the fix was to disable 32 bit drivers. Yes the game runs fine and fast but I hate the crashes.

Meanwhile, I shall give a last attempt to run this on both of my native machines, I shall try them at same time, it worked on one and didn't on another, and I hope I can find out something.

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-08-25, 08:28:

To be honest, there was also a sound problem when I ran the game on DOSBox, the problem also encountered in Doom, that's why I didnt use DOSbox with it.

BTW, I just tried DOSBox SVN with the game with the DOS version (run INSTALLD.EXE). It sounded as perfect as I would have expected. Using SoundBlaster 16/AWE, 16-bit stereo and 3D sound enhanced on, run through the intro video, menu music and a head-to-head race on the rusty dessert. Everything was perfect on DOSBox SVN, not just the audio, the game also played smoothly.

What could be your problem with sound? Or perhaps is my copy different? I have a re-released USA version ripped into ISO.

kjliew wrote on 2020-08-25, 19:09:

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-08-25, 08:28:

To be honest, there was also a sound problem when I ran the game on DOSBox, the problem also encountered in Doom, that's why I didnt use DOSbox with it.

BTW, I just tried DOSBox SVN with the game with the DOS version (run INSTALLD.EXE). It sounded as perfect as I would have expected. Using SoundBlaster 16/AWE, 16-bit stereo and 3D sound enhanced on, run through the intro video, menu music and a head-to-head race on the rusty dessert. Everything was perfect on DOSBox SVN, not just the audio, the game also played smoothly.

What could be your problem with sound? Or perhaps is my copy different? I have a re-released USA version ripped into ISO.

I used a USA ISO copy too, but DOSBox crashed with a game freeze because of some sound issue. I selected probably another card other than SB16 and it worked fine but crashed mid game, not on first race, but randomly it crashed with a error log in DOSBox. The DOSBox environment crashes that I can save the log.

If both DOSBox and QEMU randomly crashed on your systems, then I would suspect that you might have system instability. I would first check on the thermal because running emulation is typically stressed on the CPU side. Win98SE VM with QEMU TCG is stable for me and I just tried the city course on Ryzen 2500U APU *without* KVM acceleration, the game ran smoothly and audio sounded normal. I knew about Ryzen VME issue but I highly doubt if that would have anything to do with QEMU KVM.

Your Ryzen 5 1600 is more than enough to run the game on QEMU TCG with Win98SE VM or just DOS, effortlessly.

kjliew wrote on 2020-08-25, 21:07:

If both DOSBox and QEMU randomly crashed on your systems, then I would suspect that you might have system instability. I would first check on the thermal because running emulation is typically stressed on the CPU side. Win98SE VM with QEMU TCG is stable for me and I just tried the city course on Ryzen 2500U APU *without* KVM acceleration, the game ran smoothly and audio sounded normal. I knew about Ryzen VME issue but I highly doubt if that would have anything to do with QEMU KVM.

Your Ryzen 5 1600 is more than enough to run the game on QEMU TCG with Win98SE VM or just DOS, effortlessly.

I didn't bother to try on KVM on QEMU so that might be a problem, I was concerned with the performance then, I will try when I reinstall QEMU.
DOSBox crashed because of sound card incompatibility. Yes I could resolve this by changing the sound card selected, but it should not randomly crash. Yet my PC is OCed, but that happened when it wasnt, and PC tems are fine as it remains below 50 C with DOSBox,

kjliew wrote on 2020-08-25, 21:07:

If both DOSBox and QEMU randomly crashed on your systems, then I would suspect that you might have system instability. I would first check on the thermal because running emulation is typically stressed on the CPU side. Win98SE VM with QEMU TCG is stable for me and I just tried the city course on Ryzen 2500U APU *without* KVM acceleration, the game ran smoothly and audio sounded normal. I knew about Ryzen VME issue but I highly doubt if that would have anything to do with QEMU KVM.

Your Ryzen 5 1600 is more than enough to run the game on QEMU TCG with Win98SE VM or just DOS, effortlessly.

Well the good news is, I tried it again on my second PC on Win 10 after reinstalling OS and it worked again, but this time I recoredr the video, I shall be publishing the.video uncut

Ok the good news is it now WORKS on all of my Windows 10 PCs.
I reinstalled Windows 10 on all PCs with a local account and without password. After that I installed the drivers. Then I installed DOSBox to install the game.

I copied the iforce.dll to game directory and also NFS win.exe and renamed it to NFS.exe.

I then took dplayx.dll from SysWOW64 to game directory and then launched the game with DxWnd with a certain profile that you will get in page 2.of this thread. You then should get an error of ordinal.2 from dplay dll. Use the dplay dll from Redist folder of the game and then launch the game from DxWnd. You will get errors regarding dpwsock and something else, click OK.there.and the game will launch.

Edit: the Windows 10 20H2 dplayx.dll works.

I found the culprit of my PC:

I installed driver for C Media Headset even though PC works without it, after installing the game doesn't work.

I uninstalled and it works. I double checked.

I posted the video https://youtu.be/YREBOkwAk1s
Read the description too.

After months, I tried to give it a shot again, and guess what... it worked perfectly. Totally clueless. This was using the recommended version of DxWnd.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2020-08-29, 23:41:

After months, I tried to give it a shot again, and guess what... it worked perfectly. Totally clueless. This was using the recommended version of DxWnd.

Well I tried using with all default drivers and it decided to work too. 😀 No one in this last 26 years thought of drivers causing problem. Btw which version of DxWnd did you use, I used 2.03.69

Same version here, the one you recommended.

filipetolhuizen wrote on 2020-08-30, 05:10:

Same version here, the one you recommended.

The newer ones have removed the functionalities that it needs, dont know why, but thanks to sourceforge it still exists

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-08-30, 05:37:

The newer ones have removed the functionalities that it needs, dont know why, but thanks to sourceforge it still exists

Newer versions of Dxwnd should not be missing any features. However if you have not enabled "Options -> Expert mode" you will only see the basic features.

Dee-Dee wrote on 2020-08-30, 08:51:

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-08-30, 05:37:

The newer ones have removed the functionalities that it needs, dont know why, but thanks to sourceforge it still exists

Newer versions of Dxwnd should not be missing any features. However if you have not enabled "Options -> Expert mode" you will only see the basic features.

Didn't know but I found it, thanks.