Mobil 1 Rally Championship

[agathosdaimon]

Hi
i got this one from the myabandonware site (i own the disc, but cant be bothered looking for it) - it installs and i add the 530 patch and the nocd - all of which is on the Myabandonware site. The 3d graphics in the game are messed up for me, but if i utilise Dgvoodoo then that makes it all look nice. However i found the game might have some random exception error crashes.

I thought that maybe DXWND might be a stable option, however when i try to run this in the Dxwnd, it seems the NOCD crack doesnt work or something, as the screen always comes up asking for the game to be installed.

Is there some setting in Dxwnd that will stop this happening?

[gho]

The request to install the game usually depends on missing registry entries or configuration files, the crack should fix instead the lack of a proper CD image.
I'm setting a testbed, I'll try it soon.

[gho]

I'm trying to install the English game version, but on Win11 this seems a very hard task. The installer keeps telling that there's not enough disk space and refuses to proceed, no matter what (I tried also with the HD space limiter). Probably it should be necessary to install it on some older machine (using a VM) and to transfer the files later.
The MyAbandonware "How to install" section seems very instructive, too bad that I fail at the first step!
I'll try harder, be patient.

[agathosdaimon]

How odd. i have windows 11 and just ran the installer off the iso and it installed fine and even stated for me all my available drives and the hundreds of gigs free on them.

However I noticed that when i get the message in Dxwnd asking to install the game again, i did get the not enough space message.

I noticed also that if i kept the iso in my virtual drive after i applied the patch and no-cd that the game wouldnt load, it would again revert ot the installation option only. If i removed the disc, then the NO-Cd takes over and works, but all of this is outside of Dxwnd.

[gho]

I still have big troubles running the game, but I saw that there are troubles coming from the DirectSound interface (maybe because it is trying to use Aureal 3D) and dropping the indirectsound dsound.dll in the game folder improves the behavior a little. You could try ...

Also, there is something you could do to help me: could you use regedit to dump the content of the following key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Magnetic Fields\RC99]

maybe here or under the WOW6432Node. If you need instructions, just ask.

[huh]

I think I have it on my hard drive.
My registry entries are:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Magnetic Fields\RC99]
"status"=hex:01
"source"="X:\\games\\rc\\"

[agathosdaimon]

i got a fix for my crash issues - just use Rivatuner and set frame limit to 30, i read elsewhere that if fps is above 30 the game crashes at certian points. Since then no crashes.

The problem through with the sound going out of sync and becoming quite a nuisance though was not fixed by adding the Dsound.dll, in fact i think that made it worse for me.

[gho]

It is possible that all my problems come from the need for the Aureal 3D software for the DirectSound interface. I probably have a corrupted registry with the Aureal 3D partially installed. But before messing with my system I want to learn more ...

[huh]

Well, I don't know, I have A3D turned off and inaccessible in the game...

[gho]

This game is hiding something less obvious than it seems.
To have a better picture of what is going on I recovered a Win7 computer (a painful Win 7 Professional 32 bit with 2GB or RAM) and I got a real surprise.
Mounting the game iso and running the install process to the c:\rc folder I got a game perfectly working, intro movies and menus and 3D rally driving section. Wonderful.
But when I try to run the game from DxWnd, or even by the executable directly and using late hook, the game doesn't start. With early hook I can reproduce the same problem that I have on Win11: the initial panel proposes to install the game and detects no enough disk space no matter what, even if the game was already installed or if I change the HD drive.
Of course I already tried to relax all the DxWnd options (no windowing, no optional hooks) but the situation doesn't change, there is something in DxWnd that hurts the game and make it to believe that the game is not installed.

[agathosdaimon]

very strange - every game is a another universe of mysteries and trying to reverse engineer the games creation

[gho]

A further test: since on my win11 the game does not start, I used d3dwindower as a tool to run the game in window mode. The result is identical to what I get with DxWnd, that means (at least) that DxWnd has no specific culprit, what happens seems a general problem if you run the game with a hooker program.

[huh]

Wait. Am I understanding this correctly, the game doesn't work for you with DxWnd, even on Windows 7?

[gho]

right. It works run alone, but shows the problem with dxwnd! And I will try aldo win7+ d3dwindower because win11+d3dwindower has the problem

[gho]

OMG! I'm getting crazy. Test conditions: same CD image, same CD emulator (daemon tool), no fake CD, no virtual registry. This is what:

prog/OS|   Native    | D3DWindower |  DxWnd     |
-------+-------------+-------------+------------+
Win 7  |    works    |    works    |  fail      |
-------+-------------+-------------+------------+
Win11  |    no run   |    fail     |  fail      |
-------+-------------+-------------+------------+

where "works" means works perfectly either fullscreen or windowed, "fail" means that it keeps proposing to install despite that it was installed already and "no run" means either a sudden crash or a black screen.
So, on Win7 there seems to be something in DxWnd that makes the situation worse than D3DWindower, but not on Win11.

[huh]

That's strange. The game works fine for me on Windows 7 with this old profile. The game crashes at the same spot on the track even with HE, but that's probably a different story.

[BEEN_Nath_58]

Did you apply the 5.3 patch?

It just works natively on my Windows 11. No DxWnd, no dgVooodoo2, no compat modes or anything

[BEEN_Nath_58]

Same with DxWnd.

Btw iirc, either gho or huh2 had a3d.dll in their syswow64 folder

[huh]

No, a3d.dll isn't here, and that option isn't available for me in the game.

[BEEN_Nath_58]

Gho's a3d could be an issue. Flight Unlimited 2's LGVIDEO codec was an issue for many games, would crash them on launch