Bomberman World (Bomberman Collection)

[daninthemix]

I've got a good one for you - Bomberman Collection was released on PC, and includes Bomberman World, which was the PS1 exclusive game. The collection installs, and the launcher runs just fine, but if you try and select and of the 3 games...nothing happens. No crashes, no errors. Nothing.

Any ideas?

[gho]

have you tried "inject suspended proc" + "extrnd inject" + "shared hook" to start with?
Later I'll turn my pc on and will try to look better.

[daninthemix]

Those settings don't help. I did forget to mount the ISO and the game complained 'no DVD found' or something - so there is some sort of life going on here. But no sign of a game actually launching.

[gho]

My guess is that the three executables are copy protected with some strong method and you need to replace them with the proper cracked files. You can find what you need in the crack folder of the game dump in archive.org searching for BombermanCollectionPC.
So far, I tested the cracked files with individual DxWnd entries, the hook for the single frontend game.exe with shared hook has not functioned for me, I need to investigate better.

[gho]

Wow! The shared hook can't work because the frontend game.exe doesn't use CreateProcessExA to run the actual games, it uses ShellExecuteA instead! Here the log:

ShellExecuteA:
> hwnd=0
> operation=open
> file=C:\Games\BomberMan Collection\bombps.exe
> params=(null)
> directory=C:\Games\BomberMan Collection
> show=1

To make this case working I'll have to rewrite the ShellExecuteA wrapper. Interesting!!

[daninthemix]

Thanks - that crack folder helped. Now I can launch the game. But then I get a weird zoomed in video that I can't skip and that I can't see anything in, then it get an InitDirectDraw failed error message and the game quits :(

[daninthemix]

And if I try and run the game without DxWnd I just get the following 2 errors in succession:

With DxWnd as I said, it runs an intro video (that is a garbled mess and you can't skip), followed by the InitDirectDraw failed error.

[daninthemix]

Now that I think about it someone told me DirectDraw simply can't run at 2160p (my desktop resolution). Perhaps it's trying to launch fullscreen at my desktop res and failing. But can't DxWnd force the game to run lower than that, and then scale to fullscreen windowed?

[daninthemix]

Okay, I've got it working in DgVoodoo. Sort of. It does run in slow motion for some reason.

Help me @ghotik ! Does it run in slow motion for you as well? The menus are fine, it's when the actual level loads.

[gho]

I don't have a 2160p monitor, so I can't make tests about your configuration.
There are a few things you may try:

• use the OpenGL or SDL renderers
• try the "d3d:LegacyD3DResolutionHack (that is supposed to eliminate some checks about D3D max resolution, I don't know if it may work also for ddraw).

[daninthemix]

Even without 2160p, can you just launch Bomberman World and see if the first level is running in slow motion?

How do you change to OpenGL or SDL? I can't see any config options in this collection.

[gho]

in DirectX tab there is a listbox titled "renderer" with default choice "primary surface". Clickin on it you can see and chose all alternative values, incuding SDL, SDL2 and OpenGL.

[daninthemix]

Ah okay, game works perfectly with DxWnd using OpenGL.

Thankyou

[gho]

It it bothered me that the Bomberman Collection didn't work with shared hook because of the unsupported ShellExec call. Now I tried to fill the gap and remap the ShellExec function to a CreateProcessA call (of course, under the proper circumstances, when you "open" and executable file) and this new version of dxwnd.dll does the trick: when shared hook + injection is enabled, you can configure a single game entry for the frontend task and let it hook each of the three Bomberman games.

[daninthemix]

Very nice - well done on another successful game preservation!

[jds45782]

hope this new dxwnd.dll, gets added to the next release, very interesting here...

[gho]

Sure it will, and you can keep it as a preview of next release.
Now I need to find other games that use ShellExec, the call is very powerful and maybe the logic to transform it to a CreateProcess call will need some more tuning.

[daninthemix]

Am just revisiting this and the game on my current system (Win 11) just doesn't run at all. The launcher (Game.exe) runs, but then I can't launch any of the games. And through DxWnd, even the launcher doesn't run properly (it runs, but without any graphics).

[gho]

Tested and verified, you are right, something went wrong in the meantime.
The frontend works but runs nothing, among the three games hooked separately only one works (bomb.exe) but with the proper crack and OpenGL renderer. The situation is quite puzzling, I'll have do go in deeper detail ...

[BEEN_Nath_58]

The game, on my Windows 11, works natively but not with DxWnd hooking the main Launcher executable that uses ShellExecuteA

[daninthemix]

The strange thing is it ran natively (automatically) once right after I installed it from the ISO, but after that I can't run it (either the installed version or from the ISO). Nothing happens.

[BEEN_Nath_58]

You could set the 16-bit color compatibility mode + Run as admin on the 3 main executables.

The main Launcher program needs a 16-bit colour change which is or is not satisfied by DWM8AND16BITMITIGATION automatically (looks like this was your first case), or you set the 16-bit colour yourself like I did.

[daninthemix]

Thankyou - setting virtual color to 16BPP in DxWnd is enough to make this run.

[gho]

The game has a copy protection that checks the CD. You should either try with the CD inserted or download the proper cracks. I saw some files at Internet Archive with topic BombermanCollectionPC !

[BEEN_Nath_58]

The game can't run from the ISO, the crack was always needed