Tired of another failure with Castrol and Final Racing, I started browsing games on Old-games.ru, especially those incompatible with Win XP and above. I caught sight of the game Metro-Police, which is more incompatible with systems newer than Win XP. A very rare German game, but it struck me that someone developed the settings for this game for DxWnd. I decided to check this gem at home and oh well. But I guess I'm unlucky in the subject of old games or I have a too new computer because I can't run this game under DxWnd and I'm starting to worry that it's a problem only for me. The symptoms are similar to the 2 games I mentioned at the beginning of this post, i.e. crash when starting a new game. Of course, I used the settings that were recommended for DxWnd, but it did not help (additionally I had to turn on some options in the "Input" tab for the mouse to work properly in the menu), but the game still crashes when starting a new game. And no, the "Handle Exceptions" option doesn't help. @Gho will you take a look at this game? Thanks in advance. Link to her - https://www.old-games.ru/game/download/6167.html
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Interesting case. From what I read from the Russian game comment o old-games.ru we can forget to try the original version from the CD image:
The distribution of the game outside of Germany was impossible (although there are rumors of a French version) - it is initially installed only on German (!) Windows. If we add to this the presence of Laserlock protection (also very buggy in this game) and impassability without an official patch (there will be a critical bug already in the second mission), it turns out that it was impossible to launch this game until December 2015 in any way and nowhere ( even on the same German OS - the game was installed, but did not work due to protection). Since Old-Games.ru works with anything, even this one, the game was fixed - Tigoro took over the job.
What was done:
- installation of the game on a German OS;
- destruction of LaserLock protection;
- patching to the latest version and weaning from the disc.
The resulting full-rip is posted on the site. Normal performance, however, is guaranteed only in principle, but not in specific conditions: the game, in addition to national limitations, is full of compatibility problems with modern (and not even very modern) configurations and OS. Through tests, we managed to find the DXWnd settings for Windows 7 x64 that are acceptable for most modern computers:
1. First, set the "Properties" of the game executable file (mp.exe) to be compatible with Windows 2000.
2. Then start DXWnd, select the "add" item, add the path to the executable file of the game on your computer and specify the following in the settings for launching it through the program:
Compatibility tab: compatibility with Windows 2000 is required;
On the Main tab: Hook enabled; Run in Window; Hook all DLLs (some of these items are already there);
On the Video tab: Fix Windows Frame in D3D (should be installed initially); Win7 Color Fix (the rest remains intact);
On the DirectX tab: DirectX 7 (the rest remains untouched);
On the Direct3D tab: Clean ZBuffer 1.0fix, Fix ddraw refcount (it costs right away) (the rest of the set remains untouched).
To run the game, you must use the latest version of the program - 2.0.48 (you can get it in the "Files" section of the site).
If the game still won't launch, try the following changes to the DXWnd settings:
1. Replace compatibility with Windows 2000 for compatibility with Windows XP SP3;
2. On the Compatibility tab of the program, also replace compatibility with Windows XP SP3;
3. On the DirectX tab, replace the 7th with automatic detection (the latter can be very important for running a game on Windows 10).
Even with these settings, although the game works fine in general, some graphical glitches are possible: for example, a partially damaged water palette or the invisibility of individual textures of the character model. If you can't start the game with any combination of DXWnd settings, try the PCem emulator.
I wonder if you could find a more troublesome one .... let's try ...
p.s. it's worth to remember that when old-games.ru talks about DxWnd they usually mean their own build that is unfortunately a closed-source program.
Last edit: gho 2020-12-28
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Hum.... first try was promising enough, I got the game main menu, but when I tried to run a mission the game crashed. The game writes its own log, and here is the tail before crashing:
Now on the file system the folder Gebäude did not exist, there was a GEBAUDE.
Same for politess-schießt.v3d
I renamed the folder and files and the game ... crashed a little later.
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I don't know if I did well, but I renamed all the files and folders they had in the name GEBAUDE to GEBÄUDE and SCHIEBT to SCHIEßT.
The game works for me with DxWnd, but it jerks terribly and the mouse also doesn't work optimally. I'll try again.
Update:
It's better, but I still don't see the intro video. The game also often crashes right after the start.
I fixed my problems with the mouse (mouse skidding away very quickly) with "Hook dinput" + "emulate mouse relative movement", but maybe the problem was different. On my computer I never got as far as seeing mouse stutters because the game is very unstable, it hangs very often before entering the battle arena and when it enters there I can only see a black screen.
Here is my configuration, could you share your best one?
Here is my configuration if anyone is interested.
Intro already works for me.
Gho, it seems that Path ?\mp.exe s no longer working, the program will not ask me for the path after import a click to icon.
Oh, my! I got it .... forget the bugged previous configuration, I got wonderful results using dsound and ddraw replacements with WineD3D dlls (remember: the file wined3d.dll must be copied in DxWnd folder, all the others can stay n alt.dll). The game is now much more stable (never crashed so far) and fluid. Very good. Here the updated configuration.
I confirm that the game works perfectly on this configuration.
BTW: During the game the sound should be or is the game deaf? I am asking because the sound is only in the intro and I do not know if it should be like that or if it is something for me again
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Update:
The game still occasionally freezes while loading the mission (in fake fullscreen) for me.
Who doesn't have an intro video, set maximum and initial resolution to 640x480.
Update2:
Unfortunately, the game always crashes when loading the next level, I think FAHRSTUHLE will have to be rewritten to FAHRSTÜHLE.
Last edit: huh 2020-12-28
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Hmm okay, time for my conclusions. I don't hear any sounds during the game, I don't know, maybe it's a matter of some configuration in the system (I use a virtual sound card with Voicemeeter). The lack of sounds is one thing, but there is also something you can even read about in the game description on old-games.ru. So water that looks wrong. At first I didn't understand what it was about, but I just noticed it. I do not know how with sound (I will try to do something else at home if it only occurs in my case), but can anything be done to make the water display correctly? I attach photos showing what it looks like
Edit: If anyone is interested in my problem with sound, let me know that I have solved it. As I thought, the game clashed with Voicemeeter, now I'm sitting on the Realtek HD Audio driver and the sound is OK. So only this water remains
I'm not sure the water is really bugged. After all, it's a futuristic game, I may think that is radioactive water or maybe oil? In any case, it is strange that a little further we have clean, azure water.
It is amazing to see that after some cure the game, a possibly hopeless case, became a really stable one! The gameplay doesn't make you cry at the miracle, but it has some clever ideas and resembles a little to a male Lara Croft version.
I got easily a few keyboard commands:
Ctrl: fire
Alt: jump
Shift: run
Esc: map toggle
Enter: start / stop driving the car
But I desperately miss a few ones. Did anyone find them?
???: Save game
???: Exit game
The next lever probably requires a folder rename to FAHRSTÜHLE, but I'm not going to test it without save / load game commands!
Colored water: to investigated. MrPepka, do you have a screenshot showing both types of water on PCEmu?
Gameplay: after finishing the first level the game can be very frustrating because there are lots of files that were renamed, probably by the patch. After six or more attempts to start level 2 looking in the logs the bad pathname to be renamed I found a more practical way to do that: mount the CD image and copy all folders on top of the ones already on HD. This way a few files will be on HD twice (with the German and English characters) but that's not too bad.
A more serious problem, instead, is that after 2 successful saves I got other 2 corrupted savegames that load a blocked scene (the location is correct, but the scene is dark and you can see no objects nor move!) and I could save no more (actually, the game pretends it saved my origress, but the file is not there!). Too bad, the game is not playable without fixing this.
I had no problem with damaged savefiles. The game either loaded the savefile or hangs while loaded, but it has nothing to do with this file. Here on Win7, Wined3d didn't improve stability at all, so I eventually canceled it. The hanging of the game seems random, the most common case is just while starting the game. It doesn't matter if I load savefile right away or start a new game. If the game starts, then it is quite stable. Aiming when shooting doesn't work well for me and it also happens that sometimes the mouse gets stuck in the clouds and the only way is to save and load the game.
This game seems quite lifeless to me, the only interesting thing were the two prostitutes I met here, but it's not enough.
😄
1
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:-)
I don't know if you noticed, but the game also saves logs (except log.txt) to C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp. (vxlib.log vxib.log)
There was useful information for me about errors and other unnamed files.
However, there are also links to missing files that do not even exist on CD entry_k.map, entry2_k.map (bug?).
Mysterious is also the bootup.vxb file, which the game searches in game folder and in root in actual drive and does not find.
As for my problems with frequent hanging game during startup, I've found that it does the same thing without DxWnd, so the toy is broken, at least in my case.
Update:
Hmm, until now I ignored the mp.exe compatibility settings for Win2000 described in the instructions. Now I've done it and it seems better, no hanging yet.
Update2:
Sometimes it crashes but it's better. If someone doesn't figure it out, you can (you have to) talk to people through Esc (even with prostitutes :-).
Last edit: huh 2020-12-29
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OK, after great pain I set up a Win 98 virtual on PCem and unfortunately what they wrote on old-games.ru about water is true. On a PCem with Win 98 the water actually looks better than under DxWnd and is displayed in blue there, so the water needs to be improved. You can also improve the animation of moving the car (now this animation tugs terribly, but maybe it's a matter of too many frames per second?)
As I suspected, there could be two sorts of water: a still water (plain blue, not moving) that is rendered with no problem, and a wavy water (to the left of your picture) that is ok on Win98 and too colored on Win10. I have to find what's different ...
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Late reply, but could you share your PCem configuration? I installed the game via PCem using my original CD, but the intro video won't play ("Cannot find 'vids:cvid' decompressor), and more importantly, the visuals are all messed up (see attachment).
I installed patch 1.6 as well, but after that, I can neither load saves nor start a new game. The game will just kick me back to the start menu every time.
Cheers - Voodoo 3 did the job. I decided to install the game under Windows 2000. Even water mostly works, though parts of it look like disco water for some reason (see attachment).
The main annoyance now is that when walking, the camera occasionally jumps below Jeff for a moment for some reason.
Tired of another failure with Castrol and Final Racing, I started browsing games on Old-games.ru, especially those incompatible with Win XP and above. I caught sight of the game Metro-Police, which is more incompatible with systems newer than Win XP. A very rare German game, but it struck me that someone developed the settings for this game for DxWnd. I decided to check this gem at home and oh well. But I guess I'm unlucky in the subject of old games or I have a too new computer because I can't run this game under DxWnd and I'm starting to worry that it's a problem only for me. The symptoms are similar to the 2 games I mentioned at the beginning of this post, i.e. crash when starting a new game. Of course, I used the settings that were recommended for DxWnd, but it did not help (additionally I had to turn on some options in the "Input" tab for the mouse to work properly in the menu), but the game still crashes when starting a new game. And no, the "Handle Exceptions" option doesn't help. @Gho will you take a look at this game? Thanks in advance. Link to her - https://www.old-games.ru/game/download/6167.html
Interesting case. From what I read from the Russian game comment o old-games.ru we can forget to try the original version from the CD image:
I wonder if you could find a more troublesome one .... let's try ...
p.s. it's worth to remember that when old-games.ru talks about DxWnd they usually mean their own build that is unfortunately a closed-source program.
Last edit: gho 2020-12-28
Hum.... first try was promising enough, I got the game main menu, but when I tried to run a mission the game crashed. The game writes its own log, and here is the tail before crashing:
Now on the file system the folder
Gebäudedid not exist, there was aGEBAUDE.Same for
politess-schießt.v3dI renamed the folder and files and the game ... crashed a little later.
I can shoot in the blackness, I can move the viewfinder and hear the shoot .... would someone turn the lights on?
I don't know if I did well, but I renamed all the files and folders they had in the name GEBAUDE to GEBÄUDE and SCHIEBT to SCHIEßT.
The game works for me with DxWnd, but it jerks terribly and the mouse also doesn't work optimally. I'll try again.
Update:
It's better, but I still don't see the intro video. The game also often crashes right after the start.
Last edit: huh 2020-12-28
After renaming the folder and file, I can start the game. For now, the game is working, it still remains to fix the problem with the mouse (stutters)
I fixed my problems with the mouse (mouse skidding away very quickly) with "Hook dinput" + "emulate mouse relative movement", but maybe the problem was different. On my computer I never got as far as seeing mouse stutters because the game is very unstable, it hangs very often before entering the battle arena and when it enters there I can only see a black screen.
Here is my configuration, could you share your best one?
Eh, the mouse still stutters, but to see it you have to move it quickly (if you move it slowly, then it seems to work OK)
Last edit: MrPepka 2020-12-28
Here is my configuration if anyone is interested.
Intro already works for me.
Gho, it seems that Path ?\mp.exe s no longer working, the program will not ask me for the path after import a click to icon.
Oh, my! I got it .... forget the bugged previous configuration, I got wonderful results using dsound and ddraw replacements with WineD3D dlls (remember: the file wined3d.dll must be copied in DxWnd folder, all the others can stay n alt.dll). The game is now much more stable (never crashed so far) and fluid. Very good. Here the updated configuration.
I confirm that the game works perfectly on this configuration.
BTW: During the game the sound should be or is the game deaf? I am asking because the sound is only in the intro and I do not know if it should be like that or if it is something for me again
@gho
What dsound.dll do you mean?
Update:
The game still occasionally freezes while loading the mission (in fake fullscreen) for me.
Who doesn't have an intro video, set maximum and initial resolution to 640x480.
Update2:
Unfortunately, the game always crashes when loading the next level, I think FAHRSTUHLE will have to be rewritten to FAHRSTÜHLE.
Last edit: huh 2020-12-28
Hmm okay, time for my conclusions. I don't hear any sounds during the game, I don't know, maybe it's a matter of some configuration in the system (I use a virtual sound card with Voicemeeter). The lack of sounds is one thing, but there is also something you can even read about in the game description on old-games.ru. So water that looks wrong. At first I didn't understand what it was about, but I just noticed it. I do not know how with sound (I will try to do something else at home if it only occurs in my case), but can anything be done to make the water display correctly? I attach photos showing what it looks like
Edit: If anyone is interested in my problem with sound, let me know that I have solved it. As I thought, the game clashed with Voicemeeter, now I'm sitting on the Realtek HD Audio driver and the sound is OK. So only this water remains
Last edit: MrPepka 2020-12-28
I'm not sure the water is really bugged. After all, it's a futuristic game, I may think that is radioactive water or maybe oil? In any case, it is strange that a little further we have clean, azure water.
It is amazing to see that after some cure the game, a possibly hopeless case, became a really stable one! The gameplay doesn't make you cry at the miracle, but it has some clever ideas and resembles a little to a male Lara Croft version.
I got easily a few keyboard commands:
Ctrl: fire
Alt: jump
Shift: run
Esc: map toggle
Enter: start / stop driving the car
But I desperately miss a few ones. Did anyone find them?
???: Save game
???: Exit game
The next lever probably requires a folder rename to FAHRSTÜHLE, but I'm not going to test it without save / load game commands!
The save game is F1.
Speichern - Save
Laden - Load
Unfortunately, the game still hangs with your profile for me.
Apparently, the water looks normal on the PCem emulator with Win 98, only on new systems it is colored
Colored water: to investigated. MrPepka, do you have a screenshot showing both types of water on PCEmu?
Gameplay: after finishing the first level the game can be very frustrating because there are lots of files that were renamed, probably by the patch. After six or more attempts to start level 2 looking in the logs the bad pathname to be renamed I found a more practical way to do that: mount the CD image and copy all folders on top of the ones already on HD. This way a few files will be on HD twice (with the German and English characters) but that's not too bad.
A more serious problem, instead, is that after 2 successful saves I got other 2 corrupted savegames that load a blocked scene (the location is correct, but the scene is dark and you can see no objects nor move!) and I could save no more (actually, the game pretends it saved my origress, but the file is not there!). Too bad, the game is not playable without fixing this.
I had no problem with damaged savefiles. The game either loaded the savefile or hangs while loaded, but it has nothing to do with this file. Here on Win7, Wined3d didn't improve stability at all, so I eventually canceled it. The hanging of the game seems random, the most common case is just while starting the game. It doesn't matter if I load savefile right away or start a new game. If the game starts, then it is quite stable. Aiming when shooting doesn't work well for me and it also happens that sometimes the mouse gets stuck in the clouds and the only way is to save and load the game.
This game seems quite lifeless to me, the only interesting thing were the two prostitutes I met here, but it's not enough.
How many would you consider as an adequate number for you? ;)
ok, just kidding!
:-)
I don't know if you noticed, but the game also saves logs (except log.txt) to C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp. (vxlib.log vxib.log)
There was useful information for me about errors and other unnamed files.
However, there are also links to missing files that do not even exist on CD entry_k.map, entry2_k.map (bug?).
Mysterious is also the bootup.vxb file, which the game searches in game folder and in root in actual drive and does not find.
As for my problems with frequent hanging game during startup, I've found that it does the same thing without DxWnd, so the toy is broken, at least in my case.
Update:
Hmm, until now I ignored the mp.exe compatibility settings for Win2000 described in the instructions. Now I've done it and it seems better, no hanging yet.
Update2:
Sometimes it crashes but it's better. If someone doesn't figure it out, you can (you have to) talk to people through Esc (even with prostitutes :-).
Last edit: huh 2020-12-29
OK, after great pain I set up a Win 98 virtual on PCem and unfortunately what they wrote on old-games.ru about water is true. On a PCem with Win 98 the water actually looks better than under DxWnd and is displayed in blue there, so the water needs to be improved. You can also improve the animation of moving the car (now this animation tugs terribly, but maybe it's a matter of too many frames per second?)
As I suspected, there could be two sorts of water: a still water (plain blue, not moving) that is rendered with no problem, and a wavy water (to the left of your picture) that is ok on Win98 and too colored on Win10. I have to find what's different ...
Late reply, but could you share your PCem configuration? I installed the game via PCem using my original CD, but the intro video won't play ("Cannot find 'vids:cvid' decompressor), and more importantly, the visuals are all messed up (see attachment).
I installed patch 1.6 as well, but after that, I can neither load saves nor start a new game. The game will just kick me back to the start menu every time.
Thank you in advance!
It should be related to the codecs. It should be there on the CD.
For the visuals, maybe a Voodoo3 will do better.
Cheers - Voodoo 3 did the job. I decided to install the game under Windows 2000. Even water mostly works, though parts of it look like disco water for some reason (see attachment).
The main annoyance now is that when walking, the camera occasionally jumps below Jeff for a moment for some reason.