Abandoned Witch wrote on 2021-06-10, 03:30:

but the only ones I found in this forum are of Windows 10, but not mainly Windows 7. Any solution for these?

I don't understand what you mean by this. Fixes that will get the game running under Windows 10 will probably get the game running under Windows 7. What have you tried so far? I see there has been lots of prior discussion on this forum.

Abandoned Witch wrote on 2021-06-10, 03:30:

So I just installed Heavy Gear on Windows 7 earlier and when I start the game on any mode the main game doesn't appear.
It did work on older pre-7 OSes but the only ones I found in this forum are of Windows 10, but not mainly Windows 7. Any solution for these?

It works on Win 10 but you need to patch and use Wrappers for it like dgvoodoo2

Deffnator wrote on 2021-06-10, 04:21:

It works on Win 10 but you need to patch and use Wrappers for it like dgvoodoo2

So it will also work on 7 as well , by needing to install the patch 1.1 and 1.2 first then the wrappers like dgVoodoo2?
I'll try to reinstall the game again with the wrappers and see what happens.
And also, is there a patch which makes the game working on 7 and 10?

Edit: The 1.2 patch crashes the whole game however, but it works without it. Now I was wondering which file in the game folder plays the CD audio.

Abandoned Witch wrote on 2021-06-10, 05:39:

So it will also work on 7 as well , by needing to install the patch 1.1 and 1.2 first then the wrappers like dgVoodoo2? I'll tr […]
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Deffnator wrote on 2021-06-10, 04:21:

It works on Win 10 but you need to patch and use Wrappers for it like dgvoodoo2

So it will also work on 7 as well , by needing to install the patch 1.1 and 1.2 first then the wrappers like dgVoodoo2?
I'll try to reinstall the game again with the wrappers and see what happens.
And also, is there a patch which makes the game working on 7 and 10?

Edit: The 1.2 patch crashes the whole game however, but it works without it. Now I was wondering which file in the game folder plays the CD audio.

Pretty Much so.
but it still has issues like gear preview screen spinning too much fast

Now, what file in the game folder enables CD audio, since this game has music, however it doesn't play in-game. I tried ogg-winmm but still no luck.

Abandoned Witch wrote on 2021-06-12, 21:50:

what file in the game folder enables CD audio

You are asking the wrong question. Usually there is no such thing as a "file in the game folder that enables CD audio".

Often games like this worked simply by trying to access whichever drive letter appears first that identifies itself as an optical drive. Do you have a physical CD for this game, or are you using an image that you have mounted to a virtual drive?

I tried ogg-winmm but still no luck.

A little Googling suggests that is only useful for Heavy Gear 2.

Apparently Heavy Gear uses CD audio on the 2nd disc, and also, I am using a backup image of the game mounted to a virtual drive.

If you want to use the ogg-winmm wrapper you need to rip the music tracks from the CD into .ogg files and put them in a "music" folder. Have you done this?

Also there are multiple forks of ogg-winmm some of which can not play the music in HeavyGear. My fork should work with the game:
https://github.com/dippy-dipper/ogg-winmm

P.S.
Personally I prefer to use Dxwnd to play HeavyGear1 since it supports the 1.2 patch and runs nicely with FPS limit using Software or Direct3D rendering.

If you want to try Dxwnd you can get it here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/
(click on the green download button)

Then follow these steps:

0. Make sure you have a clean HeavyGear setup with no other wrappers in the game folder. Patch the game to 1.2 if you want to.

1. Extract Dxwnd into some folder of your liking. Do not put it in the game folder.

2. Run Dxwnd and from the menu choose "File" -> "Import...". Navigate to the Dxwnd\exports\ folder and select "Heavy Gear.dxw".

3. Right click on the new "Heavy Gear" entry and edit the "Path" to match where you have HG.EXE
By default the game is configured to run in a 800x600 window but you can select for example "Desktop work area" and "Keep aspect ratio" to get a larger picture.

4. You should now be able to run the game through Dxwnd by double clicking on the Heavy Gear entry.

Note that Dxwnd also includes a build-in cdaudio emulator which you can enable using the expert mode. Dxwnd is a quite complex piece of software but there are comprehensive help documentation which I recommend to study. There is also a discussion board at SourceForge where you can ask for more help.

Since you mentioned you are using a "backup" image file instead of a real CD I should point out that most virtual drives do not support cdaudio. In this case you will need to extract the audio tracks from the image file using for example bchunk.
https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/ge … hunk.vs2008.rar

bchunk is run from the command prompt and the syntax should be something like this:
bchunk -w -o ImageName.cue
or you can simply type "bchunk" to get the help messages. Note that this version of bchunk should also support .ccd and .nrg images.

Dee-Dee wrote on 2021-06-14, 11:57:

Also there are multiple forks of ogg-winmm some of which can not play the music in HeavyGear. My fork should work with the game:
https://github.com/dippy-dipper/ogg-winmm

Are you sure that works with Heavy Gear 1? Like I said, my Googling did not suggest as much.

Dee-Dee wrote on 2021-06-14, 12:29:

Since you mentioned you are using a "backup" image file instead of a real CD I should point out that most virtual drives do not support cdaudio.

What leads you to that conclusion?

As per my previous post, frequently the driver order matters as older programs were not written with the expectation that multiple optical drives may be present. If you have a real optical drive with a letter D and a virtual drive with a letter E, then some games will insist on trying to play the CD audio in drive D. In such cases the solution is to burn a disc for use in the real optical drive, or rearrange the drive letters, or temporarily disable the real optical drive.

Dee-Dee wrote on 2021-06-14, 12:29:

In this case you will need to extract the audio tracks from the image file using for example bchunk.

What good will that do if the game is not programmed to look for the audio tracks in other files?

Jorpho wrote on 2021-06-14, 14:15:

Are you sure that works with Heavy Gear 1? Like I said, my Googling did not suggest as much.

Yes, I am sure that it should work with Heavy Gear 1 since I have successfully tested the game with it.

Jorpho wrote on 2021-06-14, 14:15:

What leads you to that conclusion?

As per my previous post, frequently the driver order matters as older programs were not written with the expectation that multiple optical drives may be present. If you have a real optical drive with a letter D and a virtual drive with a letter E, then some games will insist on trying to play the CD audio in drive D. In such cases the solution is to burn a disc for use in the real optical drive, or rearrange the drive letters, or temporarily disable the real optical drive.

Yes that is a good point. I apologize for jumping to the conclusion that most virtual cd drives do not support cdaudio that was based on what I have read not first hand experience. My personal experience with virtual cd drives is limited to the ones build in with Win8 and 10 and those support only iso images.

Jorpho wrote on 2021-06-14, 14:15:

What good will that do if the game is not programmed to look for the audio tracks in other files?

It will be useful only in the context of winmm wrappers that redirect the music to be played from files instead of tracks on the CD. Generally you might want to do that if the game does not repeat music tracks due to the "bug" introduced in Windows Vista. Or if your virtual cd drive does not support cdaudio.

DgVoodoo2 seems to have an FPS limiter now which fixes the speed issues in HeavyGear. 30 fps is a good value for the game in my experience.
In "dgVoodoo.conf" look for:
FPSLimit = 0
and change it to:
FPSLimit = 30

Also I looked into the drive lettering issue and indeed HeavyGear does not like to be run from the second drive letter. It gives an error message and exits to desktop if the system has for example optical drives "D:" and "E:" and the game disc is in drive "E:". If running the game with Dxwnd the I/O tab option "hide empty CD-Rom drivers" could also be helpful.