Okay, all the files have been transferred over, but I'm not having much luck creating a single image from them. There's no option with Alcohol 120%, plus, I'm not able to mount anything to make an image from and I've tried twice using ImgBurn and it's done it wrong. Or I have.

DVD version installed, though the setup had to be run from the HDD. Menu options are looking correct, too. Question though: is the DVD (image) supposed to be in at all times whilst playing? Or can it be set up in such a way as to run it from the HDD? Because the game is asking me for the DVD, but I, as yet, can't create an image file.

The DVD is supposed to be in at all times while playing.

Okay, thanks for confirming. 😀

Currently using my brother's portable DVD drive to make my own DVD. Hopefully from that I'll be able to make an image I can store on my HDD.

Yay. It took well over an hour or more, got all the way to 99%, and it failed. Some I/O error. Those types of errors are the worst - get all the way to the end to then decide it's going to fail. >_>

Having no luck with this at all. 🙁 Re-created the DVD on my main PC and without issues. Installed the game using the DVD with my brother's external DVD drive, which is assigned as I. But the same problem keeps happening. I try to load the game and it keeps asking for the disc. 🙁 I've checked the two likely config files and the drive is assigned to I, but it won't have it. It can't seem to see it there and play. Totally out of ideas.

Is it the first optical drive ?

It probably works better with an internal dvd drive.

xcomcmdr wrote on Yesterday, 07:53:

Is it the first optical drive ?

It probably works better with an internal dvd drive.

No, it’s the third. I have G, which is the virtual drive, H, which is the physical, and then I, which is the external DVD.

Hm, possibly. I guess I’ll have to look out for a period accurate beige drive.

Has been nightmare for me as well... I installed the game, put over the 1.4 patch. Natively it's just a black screen. With DxWnd and dgVoodoo2 I got it to blit the missing MPEG2 decoder error.

Then I installed DVD Express, and now it's just black screen, after I selected DVD Express in the game list

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on Yesterday, 19:28:

Has been nightmare for me as well... I installed the game, put over the 1.4 patch. Natively it's just a black screen. With DxWnd and dgVoodoo2 I got it to blit the missing MPEG2 decoder error.

Then I installed DVD Express, and now it's just black screen, after I selected DVD Express in the game list

Yeah, it's certainly not an easy game to modify. I'm not even sure I remember seeing DVD Express in the game list despite it being installed on mine.

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 19:31:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on Yesterday, 19:28:

Has been nightmare for me as well... I installed the game, put over the 1.4 patch. Natively it's just a black screen. With DxWnd and dgVoodoo2 I got it to blit the missing MPEG2 decoder error.

Then I installed DVD Express, and now it's just black screen, after I selected DVD Express in the game list

Yeah, it's certainly not an easy game to modify. I'm not even sure I remember seeing DVD Express in the game list despite it being installed on mine.

DVD Express gets added in version 1.04 I think. At least I got in that version.

On a Win98, I got the video sound to work with DVDExpress but not the video. Let me go further...

Update: 1.04 with DVD Express works on Windows 98...

Also btw where is the MIDI in the game?

I installed the GOG version now. As always, it didn't play any video and crashed sooner or later.

Now I tried the DVD game and a audio plays, but no video. Now returning to the GOG game again but with DxWnd, both the video and the audio play. However game crashes on the gameplay, so work for tomorrow. DVD version doesn't crash there.

At least you've gotten further than I have. I can't even get the game to load as it keeps asking for the disc. I suppose I could always try my black DVD drive. I won't put it in the machine though as it doesn't match the beige aesthetic. But it'll help to determine if getting an internal drive will solve my issue.

But yeah, I believe 1.04 is installed as part of the DVD version, but I don't recall DVD Express in the drop-down list. Will have to check.

Ah. Totally forgot. The black DVD drive is from 2013, so it uses SATA connectors. I did buy an IDE to SATA adapter, and I have plenty of red and black SATA cables, but I don't appear to have any power SATA connectors. Something else to invest in...

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 22:19:

At least you've gotten further than I have. I can't even get the game to load as it keeps asking for the disc. I suppose I could always try my black DVD drive. I won't put it in the machine though as it doesn't match the beige aesthetic. But it'll help to determine if getting an internal drive will solve my issue.

But yeah, I believe 1.04 is installed as part of the DVD version, but I don't recall DVD Express in the drop-down list. Will have to check.

The DVD I used doesn't have it in the list, and the version in the DVD was certainly not 1.04.

I proceeded further now, I found the GOG game uses a modified OVERSEER.EXE and an additional TexDll.dll which who knows what it does. I overwrote the GOG one with the DVD one and the game proceeded, but the videos started flickering (which is a classical DxWnd issue).

However I got no crash in the gameplay.

Okay I think I got it cleared. There might be some misinformation around that I could recall and applied while testing these.

Installing the DVD, I got no video as usual and was stuck in the pink screen, the classic colour mode mismatch, I then applied the 1.04 patch. Installing the Elecard, DVD Express decoders, it didn't take me anywhere.

I then went to the GOG version because users said the DVD Express decoder was replaced with Xing (and the version of Xing I had was problematic for the Windows core) so for an attempt to secure this Xing, I installed the GOG game. There was no Xing decoder. It was just ffdshow installed over the game.

The game was configured with Xing Decoder. It is possible Xing was based on ffdshow, and thus ffdshow worked when Xing was configured. Installing just ffdshow and setting Xing as decoder made sure the videos player, however they wouldn't display unless I put VideoMode=8 in Tex.ini

There is a NoDVD for the game around, but I didn't need it. Now the game crash...

Instead of using ffdshow installer or my one-time package, you can also use LAV, that also works. There are some issues here and there and the game is certainly not perfect...

Yeah, I couldn't use the GOG version the last time I tried. The audio quality was terrible. I recall having moments where the audio sounded too quiet and then suddenly it got louder. Definitely a problematic game. Though the CD version has been painless from what little I've sampled of it.

The game crash seems gone with Single core affinity. Later there is a VR room error that it couldn't load the room. According to PCGW, I need to switch to SW mode, but that mode is incompatible with DxWnd. I could make it work by Alt+Tab and then correctly placing the mouse so that the game resigters only 1 message and that loads the room, but that's not making the game playable

So I am at a dead end. I have to make the GPU caps compatible in any way to proceed. dgVoodoo2 gives a black screen and DDrawCompat doesn't even start just like natively. I should consider reporting it to Narzoul

The flickering issue is gone, by disabling FourCC codec presence inside DxWnd.

Reportedly there is another crash with MIDI, but I haven't gone that far. Else everything seems okay with the game.

Update: I tried on my Nvidia machine and dgVoodoo2 works well there, and I don't get the VR room error either. However playing videos is a pain; the game loses focus completely. GOG version behaved the same in both cases: crashing in menu