I've experienced similar while playing some graphic games on my Win98SE tower at my mother's house. I think it's caused by the monitor not being able to support your screen mode. Try getting the program to use a standard screen mode. BTW, sorry for not being more specific: I never played the game before. 🙁

Harry Potter wrote on 2025-09-25, 20:09:

I've experienced similar while playing some graphic games on my Win98SE tower at my mother's house. I think it's caused by the monitor not being able to support your screen mode. Try getting the program to use a standard screen mode. BTW, sorry for not being more specific: I never played the game before. 🙁

Hmm. Interesting. Okay. How would I go about that exactly? I don’t recall seeing an option on my monitor, but I’d have to take another look.

Thanks

I don't know: as I said, I never played the game before. Try reading the manual: maybe there's a switch you can apply.

Like it was said in the locked thread, Apogee provided an "alternate install file" that might fix this problem (or maybe not). This file is called rottcdi.zip (I'm not sure if the legacy 3D Realms site is down or what, but the Wayback Machine link worked for me).

Harry Potter wrote on 2025-09-25, 20:22:

I don't know: as I said, I never played the game before. Try reading the manual: maybe there's a switch you can apply.

Okay, I’ll take a look. Worst case, I might have to have another play around with one of those VBE tools again.

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-09-25, 20:57:

Like it was said in the locked thread, Apogee provided an "alternate install file" that might fix this problem (or maybe not). This file is called rottcdi.zip (I'm not sure if the legacy 3D Realms site is down or what, but the Wayback Machine link worked for me).

Oh perfect! Thanks for sharing the link. I couldn’t seem to find any mention of it when doing a Google search, or what it was even called. 😄

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-09-25, 20:57:

Like it was said in the locked thread, Apogee provided an "alternate install file" that might fix this problem (or maybe not). This file is called rottcdi.zip (I'm not sure if the legacy 3D Realms site is down or what, but the Wayback Machine link worked for me).

It worked perfectly! Thanks again. All I need to do now is fine tune the controls; see if there's a similar no vertical movement patch like with Doom.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-25, 21:37:

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-09-25, 20:57:

Like it was said in the locked thread, Apogee provided an "alternate install file" that might fix this problem (or maybe not). This file is called rottcdi.zip (I'm not sure if the legacy 3D Realms site is down or what, but the Wayback Machine link worked for me).

It worked perfectly! Thanks again. All I need to do now is fine tune the controls; see if there's a similar no vertical movement patch like with Doom.

The standard novert.com utility causes the menu to constantly scroll up. However, there is a hex edit you can do to fix this. I followed this guide on the steam forums (skip to the "Messing with hexes" part). You basically need to change offset 31-32 from "33 D2" to "B2 64". After loading the patched novert.com the menu does not scroll up and there is no vertical mouse movement in game. However, I could only get this utility to work for ROTT under DOS and not Windows 98. For some reason ROTT under Windows 98 dosbox does not care about novert.com, patched or unpatched. I also used this patched utility for other games that had vertical mouse movement as well as the menu scrolling bug, like Wolf3D. The hex edit is simple to do with the HxD app, but I also attached my patched version to this post. And note that if you have previously loaded the unpatched novert.com to play Doom or something, you need to reboot or unload it with the /u flag before loading the patched version to play ROTT.

wiibur wrote on 2025-09-26, 03:30:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-09-25, 21:37:

MrFlibble wrote on 2025-09-25, 20:57:

Like it was said in the locked thread, Apogee provided an "alternate install file" that might fix this problem (or maybe not). This file is called rottcdi.zip (I'm not sure if the legacy 3D Realms site is down or what, but the Wayback Machine link worked for me).

It worked perfectly! Thanks again. All I need to do now is fine tune the controls; see if there's a similar no vertical movement patch like with Doom.

The standard novert.com utility causes the menu to constantly scroll up. However, there is a hex edit you can do to fix this. I followed this guide on the steam forums (skip to the "Messing with hexes" part). You basically need to change offset 31-32 from "33 D2" to "B2 64". After loading the patched novert.com the menu does not scroll up and there is no vertical mouse movement in game. However, I could only get this utility to work for ROTT under DOS and not Windows 98. For some reason ROTT under Windows 98 dosbox does not care about novert.com, patched or unpatched. I also used this patched utility for other games that had vertical mouse movement as well as the menu scrolling bug, like Wolf3D. The hex edit is simple to do with the HxD app, but I also attached my patched version to this post. And note that if you have previously loaded the unpatched novert.com to play Doom or something, you need to reboot or unload it with the /u flag before loading the patched version to play ROTT.

Brilliant. Thank you! 😁 It's fine if it only works under DOS as that's where I would be playing it. I think I did manage to get something working for Doom 95 under Windows, so I'm sure there must be a way. Also good that it works with other games that have vertical mouse movement. At first, I thought the original novert was only designed for Doom/id Tech 1 or something.

Yeah with Doom under Windows you can make a batch file that runs novert.com and then doom.exe. But this does not work for ROTT under Windows for me 🙁.

wiibur wrote on 2025-09-26, 09:40:

Yeah with Doom under Windows you can make a batch file that runs novert.com and then doom.exe. But this does not work for ROTT under Windows for me 🙁.

Oh. That's too bad. I've yet to check, but I take it (the CD-ROM) it doesn't have a Windows installer, right? It's just DOS? Did you try the custom DOS modes from Phil? I think these are the ones I used... Phil's MS-DOS Mode Tutorial: Working Memory, Mouse, CD-ROM and Sound Blaster 16/32/64 in Windows 9x MS-DOS Mode

I know I have had issues with getting certain things working fine in DOS under Windows that are no problem in native DOS, but always managed to find a fix. For Doom I didn't actually use a batch file, but a tool for running Doom95 under Windows 10 - https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/118117- … -on-windows-10/ - and it includes a novert toggle. Maybe someone made something similar for ROTT...?

Just my two cents, but I've never really used novert with any 90s FPS game, and I found that in Doom for example, having the vertical mouse axis enabled does not get much in the way of playing with a WASD+mouse control scheme for me.

I just tried switching to WASD in the browser version of ROTT shareware, the default sensitivity appears a bit too low, but otherwise it seems fine.

BTW, recently I found what seems like a pretty accurate source port called ROTTEN, but it appears that the author decided to remove the repository for whichever reason. It looks like the port was renamed, but the new version has no binary releases (yet).

Oh wow! This EXACT same thing happens on my CD!! I think something is corrupted on the disc itself. I've tried my disc in dozens of different systems across hundreds of drives and get the same result.

BUT, the system does NOT crash! I can ghost my way into something else and go back to a refreshed prompt. The process is repeatable infinitely.

The crashed installer will still make the folder (ROTT2 in my case, this PC also has the shareware version on it) Or you can make the directory, then copy it all.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-09-26, 21:37:

Oh wow! This EXACT same thing happens on my CD!! I think something is corrupted on the disc itself. I've tried my disc in dozens […]
Show full quote

Oh wow! This EXACT same thing happens on my CD!! I think something is corrupted on the disc itself. I've tried my disc in dozens of different systems across hundreds of drives and get the same result.

The attachment 20250926_162124.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250926_162127.jpg is no longer available

BUT, the system does NOT crash! I can ghost my way into something else and go back to a refreshed prompt. The process is repeatable infinitely.

The attachment 20250926_162145.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250926_162424.jpg is no longer available

The crashed installer will still make the folder (ROTT2 in my case, this PC also has the shareware version on it) Or you can make the directory, then copy it all.

Haha. It's good that you can get through it. I was always convinced it just locks up. I don't think I could be bothered trying to ghost my way through it though. ^^;

To save starting an entirely new thread, has anyone been able to install the latest patch for the game? Specifically the CD-ROM version to 1.3? It seems no matter what I try, the patches won't work/install. For the one that's supposedly for my version, it just says 'error in the EXE'. I've tried copying the files to the game's root directory, too.