The FA Premier League Manager 99

[Richard Driscoll]

Can anyone help me please? I have spent literally 18 hours trying everything to get this game to work. Having applied some fixes I have seen on other threads here I have managed to patch it all together and there is just one problem left.

Whenever I try to open the 'In Game Menu' during a match to make a sub, the game will crash. Initially it will load a black screen, but you can tell there is something there it wants to load, sometimes it is just two strips of the background, other times when you move the mouse it reveals more (already fixed this problem on the main menu, but has not carried over to here for some reason), and then as I say, other times it just shows a black screen, but every single time it freezes and says it is not responding, prompting a forced shutdown.

As I said, I have managed to Frankenstein it to this point using other threads, and I have spent the best part of 10 hours reading the 'Help' articles and trying each setting 1-by-1, but it could be any combination of settings and that is beyond my skillset.

[gho]

The game is protected by SecuROM r4y, so it can't run as it is on a recent Windows version. There are cracks available (see MyAbandonware) but they don't seem to work, I couldn't in any way to start it even in a debugging session. If you got these screenshots on a Win10+ system you are far ahead of me. Maybe you could share some tips or files to align my testbed and make it easier for me to follow on.

[Richard Driscoll]

Sorry, forgot to reply directly to you.

[Richard Driscoll]

Yeah, I got this from MyAbandonware, but you have to play around with that a little bit too. So in order to get it working in the first instance you have to download 3 of the files and kind of combine them all together.

• So you need to download the following files from there - https://www.myabandonware.com/download/15oz-fa-premier-league-99

https://www.myabandonware.com/download/rei-fa-premier-league-99

https://www.myabandonware.com/download/14rm-fa-premier-league-99

• Then you need to burn the 'Disk Image' files to a CDR
• Take the 'No CD' files and move them into the 'Ripped' version folder
• Run the 'Setup.exe' file
• And unfortunately you will need to use the Disk you burnt every time, I couldn't find a true 'disk free' version. This is the only way I could get it to run.
• Add the programme to DxWnd using the 'FAPLFM99.nocd.exe' file and use the attached setup

That gets the game running and working, aside from the aforementioned problem that I ran into, which is not the worst thing in the world, but a football management game without subs is a bit of a pain in the arse.

But yeah, that is as far as I have managed to get and we are now well beyond my skillset to fix any more issues. I have managed to play up to 6 games in the season now without issue, so I am not sure if anything will creep up later on, or at the end of the season. I also haven't tried to 'view stadium' either as that was causing issues initially, but this is a nice to have, rather than a necessity I would say.

[gho]

Running the game with a CD inserted is probably due to the audio track used as a check. DxWnd should allow you to make a diskless full RIP, among the other things I'll try ...

[gho]

Here are some steps to run your game without CD. Maybe not all are necessary ...
1) create a Music folder in the game install folder
2) copy in there the attached track02.ogg file
3) set the "CDAudio" tab like in the attached configuration.
4) if you like, I added a registry.reg file to avoid using the setup.exe (ok, it's too late ...), or set the "Registry" tab like in my configuration.

Now that I have a diskless RIP it will be easier to work on the other troubles.

[Richard Driscoll]

Ah awesome, so you managed to get it working too then. Thanks for the files, I appreciate that.

[Boaz F]

Can't believe it, but you guys helped me play this game after +20 years of last playing it.
However, once I'm playing more than 1-2 months into the game, saved game can't be loaded. When I try to load saved games dxwnd just get's stuck and needs to be shut down. Any ideas how to solve this?

[gho]

Can you share the saved game files here? If we can replicate the problem, that would help.

[Boaz F]

Sure, see attached 2 saved games that can't be loaded

[gho]

I'm sorry to be so slow to react these days but I was sort of quite busy .... now finally I recovered my last work on this game but I got a bad surprise: the newer DxWnd release introduced a regression in the CDA handling, so I'll have to fix that before I can go on .... I hope it won't take long.

[Boaz F]

oh I wasn't aware you're part of the team working on DxWnd
Actually I've isolated the problem - once I book friendly games it crashes on loading saved games. No idea why, but it's just the way it is...
Other than that, viewing games in 3d is not working but I'm fine with just simulating a instance results instead of watching games play by play.
Is there a way to make the videos in game work in DxWnd? they're tgq files.

[gho]

Well, if you select the "Help > About ..." menu command you should see a "GHO" in the copyright notes .... ;)

But, seriously, I replicated the error while loading a saved game and I fear it's not so easy, but I'll keep trying to debug to find a fix. There are other bugged features as well, but the 3D match view seems to work for me ...

the tgq files can be viewed with a VLC media player but my CD RIP has a lot of tgq files of size 1k which means they were ripped to save space. I'll try to find a full CD image to get genuine movies.

[gho]

I just made an unpleasant discovery: I created my own saved game "GHO 1" and tried to load it after closing the game. It worked, while the loading of your two saved games fails. So, it is likely that the problem could be in some corrupted saved game file that it is too late to recover ....

[Boaz F]

First of all, thank you for all your amazing work and help.

Yeah, like I said, I isolated the problem and it seems that loading games where a friendly match was booked will fail and crash. I have no idea why, maybe it was a bug in the original game, who knows...

Other than that, I've been playing it for more than 1 season, and saving and loading is working fine so far.

For making 3d games work did you edit or tweaked with the settings?

Also, do you know if the 2000 edition of this game can be played using DxWnd?
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-f-a-premier-league-football-manager-2000-bis

[Boaz F]

Update: been playing for 10 seasons so far and the game is saved and loaded perfectly (if you don't book friendly matches, no biggie I think).

I will ask again in case you missed my question:
is it possible to run the 2000 version of this game in dxwnd?
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-f-a-premier-league-football-manager-2000-bis

[gho]

Uhmm... this is going to be a little harder than expected.
The game is protected with SafeDisc that is no longer supported on current Window versions, so (if you own a legitimate CD of the game) you should use a crack.
MyAbandonware hosts both a game RIP and a separate crack, but probably the crack was not made properly and the attempt to run the game gives an error 193 = ERROR_BAD_EXE_FORMAT (this program is not a valid Win32 application).
Before trying to handle the game with DxWnd it will be necessary to fix the PE header so that it will look as a valid Win32 program. Have patience.

[crazyc]

From the MyAbandonware hosts both a game RIP , there are two executables. FA_2000.EXE is a dos program which creates a registry file so it can fix the install dir I guess.

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\EA SPORTS]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\EA SPORTS\FA Premier League Football Manager 2000]
"DisplayName"="FA Premier League Football Manager 2000"
"Language"="english"
"CD Drive"="c:\fa2000"
"Install Dir"="c:\fa2000"
"art"=dword:00000001
"stadia"=dword:00000001
"fmv"=dword:00000000
"matchengine"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\EA SPORTS\FA Premier League Football Manager 2000\1.0]
"DisplayName"="FA Premier League Football Manager 2000"
"Language"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\EA SPORTS\Football Manager]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\EA SPORTS\Football Manager\Settings]
"SFXVOLUME"=hex:50
"SPEECHVOLUME"=hex:00
"FMVVOLUME"=hex:50
"MATCHVIEW"=hex:03
"MATCHDETAIL"=hex:02
"SW_RENDER"=hex:00
"FLAGS"=hex:00,00,04,00
"DISPLAYGUID"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"DEVICEGUID"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"DETAILLEVEL"=hex:01
"3DDEVICE"=hex:01
"ANIMATIONS"=hex:01
"FRONTENDMUSIC"=hex:01
"CDPLAYER"=hex:00

FOOTBALLMANAGER2000.EXE imports TlsAllocInternal from kernel32.dll which doesn't exist on Windows 11 and may be windows 95 only. Wine just forwards it to TlsAlloc.

[crazyc]

Somehow the crt startup was crashing so I had to patch it up along with fixing the invalid import and the slightly broken PE header. Now it starts with the dxwnd profile but the announcer keeps repeating the same thing over and over and it bombs out when showing a match.

[gho]

I tried it and at the first run after a few panels I got a debug message from dxwnd.dll compiled in debug mode for unassigned variable.
I immediately searched for the dxwnd bug, but surprisingly this was an "impossible case": a global variable that, if unassigned, could not reach the point where the error happened. I am almost sure that the game has some memory violation that alters the dxwnd data.
Of course, at the second run nothing happened and the game run regularly, but I wonder how long it could do it.

[crazyc]

Serious memory corruption.
Edit: Problem appears to be with logging on line 761 of ddraw.cpp is overrunning sInfo.

It's visible in the log too:

IDirectDrawSurface2::Unlock: dest=0xe25d578(BACK) src=0xe25d578(BACK) dwFlags=0() destrect=(NULL) srcrect=(NULL)
> [NOPRIM] src=(NULL) dest=(NULL) @235
> Surface [DST]: ddsd=0xe25d378 dxversion=2 SurfaceDesc: size=108 [DST] Flags=0x100f(DDSD_CAPS+HEIGHT+WIDTH+PITCH+PIXELFORMAT) Width=32 Height=32 Pitch=64 Caps=0x840(DDSCAPS_OFFSCREENPLAIN+SYSTEMMEMORY)  PixelFormat flags=0x40(DDPF_RGB) BPP=16 RGB=(0xf800,0x7e0,0x1f)
> Surface [DST]: ddsd=0xe25d578 dxversion=2 SurfaceDesc: size=108 [SRC] Flags=0x100f(DDSD_CAPS+HEIGHT+WIDTH+PITCH+PIXELFORMAT) Width=800 Height=600 Pitch=2048 Caps=0x10006040(DDSCAPS_OFFSCREENPLAIN+3DDEVICE+VIDEOMEMORY+LOCALVIDMEM) Caps=0x2840(DDSCAPS_OFFSCREENPLAIN+SYSTEMMEMOR  PixelFormat flags=0x40(DDPF_RGB) BPP=16 RGB=(0xf800,0x?????????
IDirectDrawSurface2::Blt: dest=0xe25d3d8(PRIM) src=0x1d9fb08 dwFlags=0x1008000(DDBLT_KEYSRC+WAIT) destrect=(763,60)-(795,92) srcrect=(0,0)-(32,32)
IDirectDrawSurface2::Blt: dest=0xe25d3d8(PRIM) src=0xe25d578(BACK) dwFlags=0x1000000(DDBLT_WAIT) destrect=(0,472)-(800,527) srcrect=(0,472)-(800,527)

[gho]

is the culprit a write on memory for this huge length? If so, maybe it is for a negative value that was not controlled ..

painfully typing from my phone

sorry I understand. Size has bad value because the switch variable is not in range 1-7, but that shoild not be possibile

[crazyc]

I suspect it's a threading issue. sInfo is static in LogSurfaceAttributes but the game does blts from multiple threads so they are stomping on each other. See there are two blts where the logs are mixed up.

IDirectDrawSurface2::Blt: dest=0xe25d378 src=0xe25d3d8(PRIM) dwFlags=0x1000000(DDBLT_WAIT) destrect=(0,0)-(32,32) srcrect=(748,77)-(780,109)
IDirectDrawSurface2::Blt: dest=0xe25d378 src=0xe25d3d8(PRIM) dwFlags=0x1000000(DDBLT_WAIT) destrect=(0,0)-(32,32) srcrect=(748,77)-(780,109)
> [NOPRIM] src=(748,77)-(780,109) dest=(0,0)-(32,32) @235
> Surface [DST]: ddsd=0xe25d578 dxversion=2 SurfaceDesc: size=108 [DST] Flags=0x100f(DDSD_CAPS+HEIGHT+WIDTH+PITCH+PIXELFORMAT) Width=32 Height=32
> Surface [SRC]: ddsd=0x19394660 dxversion=2 SurfaceDesc: size=108 [SRC] Flags=0x100f(DDSD_CAPS+HEIGHT+WIDTH+PITCH+PIXELFORMAT) Height=48 Pitch=48 Caps=0x840(DDSCAPS_OFFSCREENPLAIN+SYSTEMMEMORY) Caps=0x2840(DDSCAPS_OFFSCREENPLAIN+SYSTEMMEMORY+3DDEVICE)  PixelFormat fl  PixelFormat flags=0x40(DDPF_RGB) BPP=16 RGB=(0xf800,0x7e0,0x1f)
IDirectDrawSurface2::Blt: dest=0xe25d3d8(PRIM) src=0x1d9fb08 dwFlags=0x1008000(DDBLT_KEYSRC+WAIT) destrect=(748,77)-(780,109) srcrect=(0,0)-(32,32)
IDirectDrawSurface2::Blt: dest=0xe25d3d8(PRIM) src=0x1d9fb08 dwFlags=0x1008000(DDBLT_KEYSRC+WAIT) destrect=(748,77)-(780,109) srcrect=(0,0)-(32,32)

[gho]

This is a possibility. If the problem is easily replicable, it could be easily verified: turning the ddraw logging off the problem should disappear!
Anyway I agree this could bring problems, so I'm going to remove the static specification for sInfo.

edit: in effect turning the log of LogSurfacceAttributes increases the stability. I made a first attempt to fix the code, but the result is not yet valid. I will try again ...

[crazyc]

For me turning off logging prevents the crash entirely. The game still hangs at the loading when trying to view a match though and it crashes if it loses and regains focus while loading a match. Using setup/3dsetup.exe to switch to software mode exits almost immediately with a DDERR_INVALIDPIXELFORMAT from CreateSurface.