Lands of Lore II on Windows 7 / 64-bit, broken

Originally Posted by Dark Savant
I also found a topic about glide wrapper for DOSBox that allows playing the game with 3dfx graphics as there are two 3D modes for this game. Direct 3D for windows and 3dfx glide for DOS.
Here is the topic:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopi…er=asc&start=0
But it is too much for me to set this up as the instructions are complicated. Perhaps someone can try to set this up or try the game on ATI graphic card.

Tested.

Black boxes even in glide…

My guess is that they used a much more primitive D3D/Glide API/architecture back in the day, and modern cards simply can't stoop that low

Maybe if there's some kind of emulation for the older graphics cards themselves - otherwise I guess this is a no-go in 3D mode.

Originally Posted by JemyM
+ Run desktop in 16bit
+ Run game in 256 colors
+ Rename files in .mix archives into .mix and see if they can be opened.

Tested. All three failed.

I wonder how backwards compatible DirectX is. It could be that the latest versions can't do what the older versions of D3D did. I'm guessing LoL2 is expecting something like D3D 3.0… The Glide wrapper (without really knowing) might be using newer functions to emulate older stuff, and in the process creates the same black boxes issue.

Current hardware would probably destroy Win95/98 - but otherwise a dual boot test could be interesting. But I really doubt it's possible with modern hardware.

In Vista direct3d mod has this issue I'm afraid. I tried it on two machines. But my netbook with XP runs it fine. XP's do not have this issue. This problem stems from D10/D11's incompatibility with the Directx 6 and older games.

I hope one day Virtual PC will have Direct3d support.

I doubt. I still think it is a graphic driver issue. Perhaps only on Nvidia cards. Guess it works on your netbook because you have integrated intel graphics chip.

My last system has both XP and Vista on it. Vista has this issue but XP not.

Probably a driver issue… I run windows xp 32 bit and am playing it now with minimal problems using older nvidia drivers. 163.75 to be exact. These work well with games like final fantasy 7 and 8 and a game like Darkstone which is messed up on newer drivers. The in game is as smooth as butter, but sometimes the movies get choppy… I read the fix is running in windows NT(SP5) mode and this seems to work, but it can apparently cause problems at a few points in the game(forcing you to switch out of any compatability mode at all).

I guess it could be the newer direct x version on Vista/7 . Can you use the microsoft application compatability pack to set some direct x fixes in those newer OS's? Works wonders on xp.

Have you tried shutting down the explorer.exe process before running the game? I just tried it, on windows 7 64-bit, and it worked perfectly.

Originally Posted by Thalakos
Have you tried shutting down the explorer.exe process before running the game? I just tried it, on windows 7 64-bit, and it worked perfectly.

The same "fix" also applies for Dark Reign as well.

i have windows 7 64 bit and did everything you said to do, but it still says i am missing the lolsetup.ini file, and i created it by right clicking and "create text document" and i entered the swap information and everything but it is acting like it isn't there!

please?!?!?! i need help

Originally Posted by sappet102
please?!?!?! i need help

This is my lolsetup.ini as it is. I do not know how to tweak this information for you but perhaps if you are skilled enough you can use it;

Is it possible that if you make up that .INI file with any text editor, the system silenty adds an .TXT to anything you create ?

Which would result in a lolsetup.ini.txt

Which would make the system not recognizing the .INI file at all.

Which is - by the way - a thing hackers often do. They smuggle a novel.pdf.exe into your system, and thus make you run the .exe file with it, because of windows stupid thing called "hide all known file extensions" or how this "feature" is named in English.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Which is - by the way - a thing hackers often do. They smuggle a novel.pdf.exe into your system, and thus make you run the .exe file with it, because of windows stupid thing called "hide all known file extensions" or how this "feature" is named in English.

Which made the "hide known file extensions by default" the most retarded dumbing down of Windows ever. Kinda like removing the wheel in a car to make driving less complex. It's always the first thing I disable from explorer.

Yes. I never understod they made it, either.

It's imho still a very retarded try to keep the system protected, sort of.

And a testament that actually no-one then had any idea of security measures. No-one had had the idea this could be exploited.

Well, I finally broke down and just decided to plug my old 7800 GTX in and see if it was the newer chipsets. It works, no problem…so black boxes in everything with my 8800GTX and 285 GTX in Windows 7 and windows xp and even dosbox with a running glide emulator…but no problems (except the usual stuttering with the movies in a windows environment) with the 7800 GTX. Just thought I'd mention it.

Is it probably a driver thing ?

It's the same driver set that I was using for the newest card, I have no idea why anything past the geforce 7xxx cards would be a problem. Someone with more knowledge about graphic cards than myself may be able to shed some light. I haven't heard anything about ATI's cards, are they having any of these problems at all? on any generation of their cards?

Nvidia breaks support and compatibility for old games in their drivers without even thinking about it all the time. The Geforce 8 series implemented a new version of D3D and likely the driver does something that breaks old versions in favour of it. Nvidia is really nasty for this and I think they hate retro-gaming. I went ATI this time around because of this. That said, Nvidia just released a beta driver that improves support for plenty of old games, did you try with that beta driver?

Another option might be D3DWindower? That's an app some folks on the Spellhold Studios forum found and started trying the Infinity Engine games with and discovered it not only made lots of stuff run in a window that usually didn't, it fixed the Nvidia bug that existed in them. Now, I'm sure this is a different D3D bug, but it might be worth a shot! I'd give it a go, but I don't have my LOL2 CDs anymore… they're in my parents basement somewhere.

D3DWindower link: http://www.brothersoft.com/d3dwindower-238977.html

The (unrelated but where I got the idea) Spellhold Studios forum post about D3DWindower and IE games: http://www.shsforums.net/topic/43616…ther-ie-games/

Good luck!