I was directed here by an admin so hope you could help me please? I've been trying to get LOMSE to work on my Windows 10 laptop but it just seems to crash before i open it. It comes up with a black screen and after about 4-5 seconds it closes. I've tried doing it in compatibility mode for earlier versions of windows but no luck. I've also tried ticking legacy play too. I've also downloaded a June 2010 Direct X (or something along those lines) but no matter what I do it wont work. Can anyone help please?
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Ok, here we are.
On my preliminary tests, I've got LoMSE GOG release up & running on Win10 64bit and LoMSE standard version + patch working on Win7 64bit, so the game seems to run fairly well in all conditions. I said "+ patch" because on my HD I found two exe files, one renamed as "lomse.orig.exe" and that means I had to do something to make the game working, though I can't remember where I took that working exe.
So, first thing to do is to clarify what game distribution you have (CD, GOG, internet RIP?)
In case you don't have the GOG release, here is in attach a copy of my working file, I'll try to browse my own posts to remember how I got it. You can replace your exe, maybe thisiis the problem.
In order to test the game with DxWnd you should do the following:
1) use the latest DxWnd release (though this is not mandatory, but makes it easier for me to read logs)
2) clear all Windows compatibility flags on the game executable, they could interfere with DxWnd
3) import the game configuration "Lord of Magic Special Edition.dxw" that you can find in the DxWnd export folder and update the game path to match your settings
4) Try the game and, if it doesn't work, read the "Taking logs" tutorial to grab some logs and post them here.
Thank you for the swift reply. My emails didn't alert me to the fact you responded otherwise I could've tried a few hours ago! To add a bit of a complication to the mix I've actually dug out an old laptop and restored it to factory settings (due to an unrelated fault) meaning it's on Windows 8.1 but it's still the same issue. In answer to your question (and I hope this doesn't mean your help ends here!) I downloaded it through a torrent but I do believe it's the GOG version.
I've followed the instructions as far as update the game path to match my settings.. I did it to the original version which I had and it didn't launch. I did it to the version you kindly attached and it says I'm missing smackw32.DLL.
Where can I find the taking logs tutorial please?
Last edit: Dave Assinder 2019-06-12
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First locate the game executable lomse.exe and copy on the clipboard its full path (it could be something like "C:\Program files\Games\Lord of Magic SE\lomse.exe" or whatever).
Then right click on the game icon on the DxWnd panel and pick the "Modify" command.
You'll see a tabbed form. In the main tab replace the saved game path in the "Path" field with yours. You can paste the value, or drag & drop the lomse.exe file over the Path field. Click the "OK" button and that's it.
Now double-click on the DxWnd game icon and it should start.
Please, read the Help->View help tutorials, they explain things a little better and you may need more help soon ...
You can be notified of new posts by subscribing to the thread (icon up right on this web page with the envelope)
I did it to the original version which I had and it didn't launch. I did it to the version you kindly attached and it says I'm missing smackw32.DLL. I'll have a look at the help part shortly.
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Thank you again for that. So I think that may have helped as now it shows as an icon down the bottom on my start bar but it only comes up with a black screen. I left it for a couple of minutes and then clicked on the black screen but it just closes.
Making progress I guess haha!
Edit - I should probably mention it comes up with an error message saying it can't find DPstub.exe. Do you know what that means?
Last edit: Dave Assinder 2019-06-12
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uhm... I first must explain that during the day I move from one pc to another, so I sort of have a dual view about things. Now I'm sitting in front of my Win10 and DPStub.exe is a file within the GOG install, so probably we build an hybrid game with pieces of the original version and the GOG patched one. Anyway, DPStub is a small exe linked notably to DPLAY.dll, so I suppose it's some GOG extension to allow network play through dplay library.
I'm putting here a copy of that file, but it's not at all sure that we won't get another problem and, honestly, one piece at a time it seems that we're transforming a legit original game into a hacked GOG release, which is not very good.
I would concentrate on two different points:
1) what game release do you own? If you don't know exactly you could post here the game executable (there's a version number inside). If you want to keep the info confidential, you can pm me.
2) what's going on on your pc? Only DxWnd logs can tell for sure, so please learn how to take logs and post here the dxwnd.log trace.
So I click run from the dwxnd window. It comes up with the logo on a video and then it goes black and stays that way until I click the black window and it closes.
The log shows no error, so I doubt it's a DxWnd problem.
From the game path in the log ("c:\users\dave\downloads\lomse.patched\lomse.exe") it seems that you copied the whole game folder in a different directory (namely "lomse.patched") but if you did that the game may have registry entries still pointing to the original folder and that may trigger some problem.
The game should be left where if was installed by the Setup.exe procedure, and the files should be replaced there. I know this seems risky, but when I say "replace" I always mean to take care of the original copy. So, for instance, replacing the game exe mean the following steps:
rename lomse.exe to lomse.exe.orig.exe
copy the new lomse.exe in the game folder
Whenever you need to recover, you do the operations in reversed order:
rename lomse.exe to lomse.patched.exe
rename (or copy) lomse.orig.exe to lomse.exe
This is king of a generic suggestion. I'm going to look more in detail what the game expects from registry entries and so forth ....
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Ok so since I last replied I bought and installed the legitimate version and I'm still encountering the same problem.
I've changed the path to that of the one that game directly from the GOG installation and it no longer shows a thumbnail for it in DxWnd. I've attached the new exe file to it.
Just so I'm clear (sorry you have to dumb this down so much).. I'm renaming the one from GOG ".orig" and the one you attached to an earlier post I'm putting into the game folder itself?
Ok, so let me summarize: you now bought the GOG game version, installed it and it still shows a black screen.
You said " it no longer shows a thumbnail for it in DxWnd". What does that mean? The DxWnd panel should look like the one in the screenshot.
You didn't say if the black screen is only when running the game in window mode through dxWnd or also when you run the game alone, but in both cases the game should work fine, so there's something strange about it.
In any case, you don't have to replace the GOG's game executable (you'd better not, the game might have additional troubles), the file I sent you was meant to fix some bad or old game version, GOG always uses a pre-patched up-to-date exe in their distributions.
I compared the lomse.exe file attached in your post with mine, they are identical, so our environments are aligned, I don't know why your game doesn't work but we will find out.
It could be important to know whether the black screen problem is only with DxWnd or not: in the first case we should search for a DxWnd problem, in the second it should be a problem in your platform.
In meanwhile, I remember about a weird problem with games showing black screen with DxWnd while working in the background (reacting to the keyboard, playing sounds etc.) : sometimes it is necessary to set the video clipper option to fix the problem. In the DirectX(2) tab you set the clipper option as in the attached screenshot.
Then, please run a short game session again with the log files shown in the other screenshot and send me the dxwnd.log file again.
Well after my last post I copied the file you gave me into the directory where the game installed through GOG. This then launched through DxWnd! But the game itself won't load outside of DxWnd which I'm not sure if you can help with? Either way thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it. As for the game itself... I definitely remembered this through Rose tinted glasses haha. Not as good as I remember it being 20+ years ago!!
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Yeah, I know the feeling, each time I recall some of the old glories (Doom 2, Dune, ...) that once made me cry at the miracle. But many of these have outdated graphic and brilliant gameplay, so they can still be a surprise!
The fact that the game doesn't load outside DxWnd is weird, it works for me here. It could depend on some folder permission or whatever, really hard to detect from here but it doesn't matter too much, you know how to make it work.
If you want to add some pink color to your glasses you may try some enhancement feature. There's plenty of for all tastes, I'm uploading here just a sample: first you can stretch the window to full screen or client area (the desktop "client area" let visible the taskbar) asking to preserve the aspect ratio on a possibly stratched 16:9 monitor and hiding the free background, then improve the image quality with filering. If you have good OpenGL drivers for your video card the opengl rendering is perfect, it also eliminates some mouse trail. Otherwise there's the DxWnd custom-made bilinear filtering option that works. You can add these exported configurations, fix the game path and try which is better. There's no problem leaving multiple entries for the same game.
Enjoy!
I saw this problem elsewhere. Is DirectPlay installed and turned on? I have it working on my Windows 10 computer with Nvidia card. My problem is with the graphics. It is playable, but I cannot get it to display within the screen borders. Tried various compatibility and scaling options, but can't get it to display properly. I am also using Mantera's upgraded version and that probably helps performance.
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Hello Guys,
I analyzed the problem, and I found that there are 2 main problems with LOMSE on Windows 10:
If the game starts with the black screen, but it crash and close itself after few seconds, then it means that your video installed drivers doesn't support the display resolution 640x480. In this case you can try to install latest driver version for your video card and be sure that you are using it, or you can still play the game in Windowed mode by using DxWnd;
If the game starts and you will see a perpetual black screen, and at the same time you can also hear the game music and sounds, then it means that there are some compatibility problems with some SMKs video that the game uses. To solve this problem you can try to rename following files inside "smk" folder and retry: "IMPTITLE.SMK", "Intro.smk", "Credits.smk".
In both cases, remember to put the following compatibility on "lomse.exe": "Disable fullscreen optimizations" and leave other properties untouched.
Hope it helps.
Regards,
Alucard
Last edit: Alucard8 2019-10-10
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Thanks so much for your efforts!
Lew Tippett
On Thursday, October 10, 2019, 09:31:31 AM EDT, Alucard8 alucard8@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
Hello Guys,
I analyzed the problem, and I found that there are 2 main problems with LOM on Windows 10:
1. If the game starts with the black screen, but it crash and close itself after few seconds, then it means that your video installed drivers doesn't support the display resolution 640x480. In this case you can try to install latest driver version for your video card and be sure that you are using it, or you can still play the game in Windowed mode by using DxWnd;
2. If the game starts and you will see a perpetual black screen, and at the same time you can also hear the game music and sounds, then it means that there are some compatibility problems with some SMKs video that the game uses. To solve this problem you can try to rename following files inside "smk" folder and retry:
"IMPTITLE.SMK"
"Intro.smk"
"Credits.smk"
In both cases, remember to put the following compatibility on "lomse.exe": "Disable fullscreen optimizations" and leave other properties untouched.
Correct solution. Especially since Win7 is the last Windows anyway. It's symbolic how the first thing that came afterwards didn't even have Solitaire and... what was it again... ah yes, NOTEPAD.
👍
1
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Depends on what the issue really is. Wine itself tries to emulate the latest Windows version as closely as possible. In this thread it was mentioned that if the graphics hardware or driver no longer supports 640x480 resolution you get a black screen. Depending on the Linux distribution Wine can run in a fake fullscreen mode using the desktop resolution. It is also possible that a generic Linux driver can support a 640x480 resolution.
Another possible issue could be codecs. In this case the game uses the Smacker (.SMK) video format. The smk videos are usually decoded by a smackw32.dll file in the game folder and should be fairly reliable. However it's possible that they use some unsupported video mode.
Also when you talk about Linux and Wine it's worth remembering that a basic Linux distro with Wine often requires some manual tweaking to get working right. Then there are all sorts of frontends available that can support Windows games with a seemingly simple "click & play" method but rely on a lot of custom tweaks and hacks in the background.
As for the last good Windows version I personally prefer Windows 8.1. It has all the improvements of Windows 10 without the adds and constant updates that break things and remove legacy features. And Win8.1 still continues to receive security updates until 2023.
Funnily Win8 got such a bad reputation due to the removal of the Start menu. But then after a couple of years Windows 10 was a marketing success with it's free update campaign and a crappy start menu. :-) It's a similar story with Windows Millenium Edition back in the days. When WinME was released it got a bad reputation due to it's poor support for DOS applications. But if you want to emulate a good win9x system for old Windows games then WinME is the best option with it's easy to configure drivers and modern features.
Last edit: dippy dipper 2020-11-15
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Hi all,
I was directed here by an admin so hope you could help me please? I've been trying to get LOMSE to work on my Windows 10 laptop but it just seems to crash before i open it. It comes up with a black screen and after about 4-5 seconds it closes. I've tried doing it in compatibility mode for earlier versions of windows but no luck. I've also tried ticking legacy play too. I've also downloaded a June 2010 Direct X (or something along those lines) but no matter what I do it wont work. Can anyone help please?
Ok, here we are.
On my preliminary tests, I've got LoMSE GOG release up & running on Win10 64bit and LoMSE standard version + patch working on Win7 64bit, so the game seems to run fairly well in all conditions. I said "+ patch" because on my HD I found two exe files, one renamed as "lomse.orig.exe" and that means I had to do something to make the game working, though I can't remember where I took that working exe.
So, first thing to do is to clarify what game distribution you have (CD, GOG, internet RIP?)
In case you don't have the GOG release, here is in attach a copy of my working file, I'll try to browse my own posts to remember how I got it. You can replace your exe, maybe thisiis the problem.
In order to test the game with DxWnd you should do the following:
1) use the latest DxWnd release (though this is not mandatory, but makes it easier for me to read logs)
2) clear all Windows compatibility flags on the game executable, they could interfere with DxWnd
3) import the game configuration "Lord of Magic Special Edition.dxw" that you can find in the DxWnd export folder and update the game path to match your settings
4) Try the game and, if it doesn't work, read the "Taking logs" tutorial to grab some logs and post them here.
Thank you for the swift reply. My emails didn't alert me to the fact you responded otherwise I could've tried a few hours ago! To add a bit of a complication to the mix I've actually dug out an old laptop and restored it to factory settings (due to an unrelated fault) meaning it's on Windows 8.1 but it's still the same issue. In answer to your question (and I hope this doesn't mean your help ends here!) I downloaded it through a torrent but I do believe it's the GOG version.
I've followed the instructions as far as update the game path to match my settings.. I did it to the original version which I had and it didn't launch. I did it to the version you kindly attached and it says I'm missing smackw32.DLL.
Where can I find the taking logs tutorial please?
Last edit: Dave Assinder 2019-06-12
First locate the game executable lomse.exe and copy on the clipboard its full path (it could be something like "C:\Program files\Games\Lord of Magic SE\lomse.exe" or whatever).
Then right click on the game icon on the DxWnd panel and pick the "Modify" command.
You'll see a tabbed form. In the main tab replace the saved game path in the "Path" field with yours. You can paste the value, or drag & drop the lomse.exe file over the Path field. Click the "OK" button and that's it.
Now double-click on the DxWnd game icon and it should start.
Please, read the Help->View help tutorials, they explain things a little better and you may need more help soon ...
You can be notified of new posts by subscribing to the thread (icon up right on this web page with the envelope)
Last edit: gho 2019-06-12
I did it to the original version which I had and it didn't launch. I did it to the version you kindly attached and it says I'm missing smackw32.DLL. I'll have a look at the help part shortly.
Help yourself! Copy it to the game folder.
Thank you. Now it's saying I'm missing Storm.dll haha. I feel like this is going to be a long day!
Do you happen to know all the .dll file types that are in/should be in the game folder?
This is the last one, whatever will come next will be a different sort of problem! ;)
Thank you again for that. So I think that may have helped as now it shows as an icon down the bottom on my start bar but it only comes up with a black screen. I left it for a couple of minutes and then clicked on the black screen but it just closes.
Making progress I guess haha!
Edit - I should probably mention it comes up with an error message saying it can't find DPstub.exe. Do you know what that means?
Last edit: Dave Assinder 2019-06-12
uhm... I first must explain that during the day I move from one pc to another, so I sort of have a dual view about things. Now I'm sitting in front of my Win10 and DPStub.exe is a file within the GOG install, so probably we build an hybrid game with pieces of the original version and the GOG patched one. Anyway, DPStub is a small exe linked notably to DPLAY.dll, so I suppose it's some GOG extension to allow network play through dplay library.
I'm putting here a copy of that file, but it's not at all sure that we won't get another problem and, honestly, one piece at a time it seems that we're transforming a legit original game into a hacked GOG release, which is not very good.
I would concentrate on two different points:
1) what game release do you own? If you don't know exactly you could post here the game executable (there's a version number inside). If you want to keep the info confidential, you can pm me.
2) what's going on on your pc? Only DxWnd logs can tell for sure, so please learn how to take logs and post here the dxwnd.log trace.
It just goes to a black screen with that file included in the folder. I have enabled logs, I will attach one to the next post.
So I click run from the dwxnd window. It comes up with the logo on a video and then it goes black and stays that way until I click the black window and it closes.
The log shows no error, so I doubt it's a DxWnd problem.
From the game path in the log ("c:\users\dave\downloads\lomse.patched\lomse.exe") it seems that you copied the whole game folder in a different directory (namely "lomse.patched") but if you did that the game may have registry entries still pointing to the original folder and that may trigger some problem.
The game should be left where if was installed by the Setup.exe procedure, and the files should be replaced there. I know this seems risky, but when I say "replace" I always mean to take care of the original copy. So, for instance, replacing the game exe mean the following steps:
Whenever you need to recover, you do the operations in reversed order:
This is king of a generic suggestion. I'm going to look more in detail what the game expects from registry entries and so forth ....
Ok so since I last replied I bought and installed the legitimate version and I'm still encountering the same problem.
I've changed the path to that of the one that game directly from the GOG installation and it no longer shows a thumbnail for it in DxWnd. I've attached the new exe file to it.
Just so I'm clear (sorry you have to dumb this down so much).. I'm renaming the one from GOG ".orig" and the one you attached to an earlier post I'm putting into the game folder itself?
Ok, so let me summarize: you now bought the GOG game version, installed it and it still shows a black screen.
You said " it no longer shows a thumbnail for it in DxWnd". What does that mean? The DxWnd panel should look like the one in the screenshot.
You didn't say if the black screen is only when running the game in window mode through dxWnd or also when you run the game alone, but in both cases the game should work fine, so there's something strange about it.
In any case, you don't have to replace the GOG's game executable (you'd better not, the game might have additional troubles), the file I sent you was meant to fix some bad or old game version, GOG always uses a pre-patched up-to-date exe in their distributions.
I compared the lomse.exe file attached in your post with mine, they are identical, so our environments are aligned, I don't know why your game doesn't work but we will find out.
It could be important to know whether the black screen problem is only with DxWnd or not: in the first case we should search for a DxWnd problem, in the second it should be a problem in your platform.
In meanwhile, I remember about a weird problem with games showing black screen with DxWnd while working in the background (reacting to the keyboard, playing sounds etc.) : sometimes it is necessary to set the video clipper option to fix the problem. In the DirectX(2) tab you set the clipper option as in the attached screenshot.
Then, please run a short game session again with the log files shown in the other screenshot and send me the dxwnd.log file again.
Well after my last post I copied the file you gave me into the directory where the game installed through GOG. This then launched through DxWnd! But the game itself won't load outside of DxWnd which I'm not sure if you can help with? Either way thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it. As for the game itself... I definitely remembered this through Rose tinted glasses haha. Not as good as I remember it being 20+ years ago!!
Yeah, I know the feeling, each time I recall some of the old glories (Doom 2, Dune, ...) that once made me cry at the miracle. But many of these have outdated graphic and brilliant gameplay, so they can still be a surprise!
The fact that the game doesn't load outside DxWnd is weird, it works for me here. It could depend on some folder permission or whatever, really hard to detect from here but it doesn't matter too much, you know how to make it work.
If you want to add some pink color to your glasses you may try some enhancement feature. There's plenty of for all tastes, I'm uploading here just a sample: first you can stretch the window to full screen or client area (the desktop "client area" let visible the taskbar) asking to preserve the aspect ratio on a possibly stratched 16:9 monitor and hiding the free background, then improve the image quality with filering. If you have good OpenGL drivers for your video card the opengl rendering is perfect, it also eliminates some mouse trail. Otherwise there's the DxWnd custom-made bilinear filtering option that works. You can add these exported configurations, fix the game path and try which is better. There's no problem leaving multiple entries for the same game.
Enjoy!
I saw this problem elsewhere. Is DirectPlay installed and turned on? I have it working on my Windows 10 computer with Nvidia card. My problem is with the graphics. It is playable, but I cannot get it to display within the screen borders. Tried various compatibility and scaling options, but can't get it to display properly. I am also using Mantera's upgraded version and that probably helps performance.
I'll be on a short detox vacation this weekend. See ya next week from twesday, please be patient ...
Hello Guys,
I analyzed the problem, and I found that there are 2 main problems with LOMSE on Windows 10:
If the game starts with the black screen, but it crash and close itself after few seconds, then it means that your video installed drivers doesn't support the display resolution 640x480. In this case you can try to install latest driver version for your video card and be sure that you are using it, or you can still play the game in Windowed mode by using DxWnd;
If the game starts and you will see a perpetual black screen, and at the same time you can also hear the game music and sounds, then it means that there are some compatibility problems with some SMKs video that the game uses. To solve this problem you can try to rename following files inside "smk" folder and retry: "IMPTITLE.SMK", "Intro.smk", "Credits.smk".
In both cases, remember to put the following compatibility on "lomse.exe": "Disable fullscreen optimizations" and leave other properties untouched.
Hope it helps.
Regards,
Alucard
Last edit: Alucard8 2019-10-10
Thanks so much for your efforts!
Lew Tippett
On Thursday, October 10, 2019, 09:31:31 AM EDT, Alucard8 alucard8@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
Hello Guys,
I analyzed the problem, and I found that there are 2 main problems with LOM on Windows 10:
1. If the game starts with the black screen, but it crash and close itself after few seconds, then it means that your video installed drivers doesn't support the display resolution 640x480. In this case you can try to install latest driver version for your video card and be sure that you are using it, or you can still play the game in Windowed mode by using DxWnd;
2. If the game starts and you will see a perpetual black screen, and at the same time you can also hear the game music and sounds, then it means that there are some compatibility problems with some SMKs video that the game uses. To solve this problem you can try to rename following files inside "smk" folder and retry:
"IMPTITLE.SMK"
"Intro.smk"
"Credits.smk"
In both cases, remember to put the following compatibility on "lomse.exe": "Disable fullscreen optimizations" and leave other properties untouched.
Hope it helps.
Regards,
Alucard
Lords of Magic SE Windows 10
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Just don't use this garbage heap Windows 10. The game is running fine on Linux.
Correct solution. Especially since Win7 is the last Windows anyway. It's symbolic how the first thing that came afterwards didn't even have Solitaire and... what was it again... ah yes, NOTEPAD.
It's funny how Windows only games are running great on Linux. Lords of Magic runs literally out-of-the-box - click and play :)
Depends on what the issue really is. Wine itself tries to emulate the latest Windows version as closely as possible. In this thread it was mentioned that if the graphics hardware or driver no longer supports 640x480 resolution you get a black screen. Depending on the Linux distribution Wine can run in a fake fullscreen mode using the desktop resolution. It is also possible that a generic Linux driver can support a 640x480 resolution.
Another possible issue could be codecs. In this case the game uses the Smacker (.SMK) video format. The smk videos are usually decoded by a smackw32.dll file in the game folder and should be fairly reliable. However it's possible that they use some unsupported video mode.
Also when you talk about Linux and Wine it's worth remembering that a basic Linux distro with Wine often requires some manual tweaking to get working right. Then there are all sorts of frontends available that can support Windows games with a seemingly simple "click & play" method but rely on a lot of custom tweaks and hacks in the background.
As for the last good Windows version I personally prefer Windows 8.1. It has all the improvements of Windows 10 without the adds and constant updates that break things and remove legacy features. And Win8.1 still continues to receive security updates until 2023.
Funnily Win8 got such a bad reputation due to the removal of the Start menu. But then after a couple of years Windows 10 was a marketing success with it's free update campaign and a crappy start menu. :-) It's a similar story with Windows Millenium Edition back in the days. When WinME was released it got a bad reputation due to it's poor support for DOS applications. But if you want to emulate a good win9x system for old Windows games then WinME is the best option with it's easy to configure drivers and modern features.
Last edit: dippy dipper 2020-11-15