Max S. wrote on 2021-08-10, 04:16:

I have this really old game, "Mickey Saves the Day" (c) 2000 Disney. Too obscure to find much information online about running o […]
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I have this really old game, "Mickey Saves the Day" (c) 2000 Disney. Too obscure to find much information online about running on newer systems, except for one sole post on this forum by ZellSF in 2017:

Re: dgVoodoo 2 for DirectX 11
>Disney's Mickey Saves the Day. Nothing to say here. Works flawlessly, resolution forcing works flawlessly (it's a 640x480 only game):
>[image]

It was made for Windows 95/98 and relies upon DirectX 7 for 3d. I am using an HP Pavilion Desktop 590-p0076 (AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with the AMD Radeon Vega 11 integrated graphics) with Windows 10 Version 20H2.

I ran the disc's setup program under compatibility mode, set for Windows 95. I then copied the DirectX linked libraries from dgVoodoo2 v2.75.1's 3Dfx\x86 folder, into the same directory as the game executable. Finally I ran the game executable with compatibility mode set to Windows 95. I get a black screen and a notification sound as my monitor presumably is stuck in 640x480 resolution. Task view or the start button reveals the hidden error messagebox which reads,

>To use the Motivate Runtime with your own application, an access key is required. Please contact the Motion Factory for assistance.

From credits on mobygames it appears Motion Factory Inc. is a group that worked on this game, I'm assuming they developed a library called Motivate Runtime. I suspect this access key is supposed to live somewhere in the registry, and indeed there is a key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MotionFactory\STEAMB~1\Logger Options, with one string value named "Flags" set to 0.

At this point I'm really not sure what else to try.

~Max

The DirectX libraries are in MS folder, not the 3Dfx folder! Also use compatibility mode/ run as admin.

>The DirectX libraries are in MS folder, not the 3Dfx folder! Also use compatibility mode/ run as admin.

Thank you, I think I used the ones from the MS folder, but just to be sure I went and uninstalled then reinstalled and copied from the MS folder. This time I ran the installer and executable as admin, in addition to Windows 95 compatibility. I also set dgVoodoo2's output API to Direct3D 12 (feature level 12.0), per their instructions specific to Windows 10.

Unfortunately I still get a black screen, and upon Alt-Tab or the Windows key the same error messagebox appears.

>To use the Motivate Runtime with your own application, an access key is required. Please contact the Motion Factory for assistance.

~Max

I had no problem installing and playing the game without dgVoodoo 2.

After the installation (did with otvdm, the installer is a 16-bit one), I launched the game as it is, without any fixes or tweaks.

No black screen, no notification, nothing.

I have Windows 10 too with a 1060 6GB GTX GPU.

Probably your GPU is not compatible/the best with the game, integrated graphic cards are not the best for gaming because they are limited (they will use your system memory (RAM) for the GPU memory, they don't have a dedicated one (1 for the GPU and the RAM).

Daniel

Max S. wrote on 2021-08-10, 04:16:

I have this really old game, "Mickey Saves the Day" (c) 2000 Disney. Too obscure to find much information online about running o […]
Show full quote

I have this really old game, "Mickey Saves the Day" (c) 2000 Disney. Too obscure to find much information online about running on newer systems, except for one sole post on this forum by ZellSF in 2017:

Re: dgVoodoo 2 for DirectX 11
>Disney's Mickey Saves the Day. Nothing to say here. Works flawlessly, resolution forcing works flawlessly (it's a 640x480 only game):
>[image]

It was made for Windows 95/98 and relies upon DirectX 7 for 3d. I am using an HP Pavilion Desktop 590-p0076 (AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with the AMD Radeon Vega 11 integrated graphics) with Windows 10 Version 20H2.

I ran the disc's setup program under compatibility mode, set for Windows 95. I then copied the DirectX linked libraries from dgVoodoo2 v2.75.1's 3Dfx\x86 folder, into the same directory as the game executable. Finally I ran the game executable with compatibility mode set to Windows 95. I get a black screen and a notification sound as my monitor presumably is stuck in 640x480 resolution. Task view or the start button reveals the hidden error messagebox which reads,

>To use the Motivate Runtime with your own application, an access key is required. Please contact the Motion Factory for assistance.

From credits on mobygames it appears Motion Factory Inc. is a group that worked on this game, I'm assuming they developed a library called Motivate Runtime. I suspect this access key is supposed to live somewhere in the registry, and indeed there is a key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MotionFactory\STEAMB~1\Logger Options, with one string value named "Flags" set to 0.

At this point I'm really not sure what else to try.

~Max

I think the Windows 10 black screen would have nothing to do with GPUs. Otherwise, dgVoodoo2 would have been great. For such a game from 20 years ago, any GPUs would have been fine, including any integrated GPUs/APUs, from the past 7 years. I tested the same game on QEMU Win98/XP VMs on Windows 10 21H1 (build 19043.1165) and it ran great at any resolutions. It does not matter what GPU I have.

I guess Windows 10 black screen was attributed by winmm behavioral changes on Windows 10 x64 since 1809 or 1903.

kjliew wrote on 2021-08-13, 03:24:

I guess Windows 10 black screen was attributed by winmm behavioral changes on Windows 10 x64 since 1809 or 1903.

No. It's just something specific with OP's system. Mickey Saves the Day works pretty much perfectly out of the box. I think I'm on Windows 10 20H2. It just works.

I was mistaken about the resolution forcing though. It actually has issues with this game 🙁.

Hi Max I would suggest you to do a clean reinstall of every component required by the game. Maybe some registries didn't install correctly, I personally installed it and haven't faced such issues as ZellSF mentioned.

Meanwhile after a new installation you can instead try DDrawCompat. Why you may ask, Radeon drivers have issues on at least Radeon 500 series GPUs (specifically 560X) where it crashes and this legacy features are generally activated by the drivers which should be common for all Radeon GPUs. Alternatively use WineD3D but I haven't tried it yet.

So, I'd done a few clean reinstalls to no avail. I gave up on the game and went to look through my other old discs.

I ended up finding this homemade disk titled "Mickey Saves The Day Update" in sharpie. It has a ZIP file on it which contains two files,

Disney Interactive Installation Terms & Conditions.txt, 2.92 KB, dated 6/1/2001 1:06 PM
MickeySavesUpdate.exe, 149 KB, dated 1/4/2001 4:40 PM

Per the text file the update was delivered via email. After installing the update the game runs without any errors!

~Max

Can you please help me find this access key? I really don't anything about Motion Factory.

If you read the post before yours, you'll see the problem was solved by applying an update. It's probably this: http://a.disney.go.com/adownload/bvg/support/ … SavesUpdate.exe

eddman wrote on 2024-03-31, 18:54:

If you read the post before yours, you'll see the problem was solved by applying an update. It's probably this: http://a.disney.go.com/adownload/bvg/support/ … SavesUpdate.exe

This link won't open a page or a download and I can't seem to find a working link from a simple google search. Any ideas as to where else I could look?

Opens for me