stoopid XP

Want to talk about your hardware setup? Brag about your super-machine's layout? Pretend you know a lot about computers? You can do all that and more in this forum.
Post Reply
User avatar
Swiftman
Way too much free time
Way too much free time
Posts: 463
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:40 pm
Location: Western Canada

stoopid XP

Post by Swiftman »

So, back from the depths of oblivion for a short time, I have attempted to get good ol' Blood working on my Win XP lappy.


Of course, true to XP form, I've hit some snags.

First thing I tried, was running the .exe straight from Windows Explorer. I went through Setup first, and used what config worked, and loaded it up.
The game loaded and played fine, right up until some sound played. When Caleb went 'I live.... again!', it sounded....... wretched, horrible, and slowed the game down massively. I turn sound off, bam, game works perfectly, if a bit on the quiet side. [the music playing via General Midi works and sounds perfect]

So, getting a little deeper, I tried running it in DOSbox. The only way anything tolerable in terms of speed occurred was setting it to 20,000 CPU cycles, a bit much for my 1.8 ghz lappy, but it went fine.... But the image skipped all over the place, the frame rate was crappy [increasing frame skip via DOSbox just made it worse] and was just plain..... Unplayable. The sound was, notably excellent, though. Full adlib and Sound Blaster support and everything. However, the video was just not great, possibly due to a lacking in power laptop.


So, I start to dig a bit further in using alternate means to get Blood working. In my luck, I happen to stumble upon This forum post, giving clear and precise instructions to getting Blood going with VDMSound, and with a higher resolution, to boot. However, I care little of the resolution, 320x200 is fine, but regardless, I follow to their instructions. One difference I notice is that in the last line of dialog after typing DOSDRV in my Blood folder is mine says <hVDD> while their's says <hVDD>. I followed their instructions exactly, can't imagine why the difference, if it even makes a difference...

Either way, I tried loading the game, sound in the setup is no different, and the game doesn't even load.... Not to be disheartened, I continue looking for other methods.

It hen come across This close-to-home goody that seems promising, since the only troubles I have are with the sound, so I download and unzip..... With no idea of what to do. The Abandonia explanation says that the manual that explains how to work it is included, but I haven't found it... So needless to say, I don't know what the hell to do with that.

Down, but not out, I say 'screw it.' and I get Virtual PC 2007 and get Windows 98 going. I had an old Win 98 SE computer that I played Blood religiously on, it worked perfectly on it, but of course, the wiles of Win XP confound me continuously..... Henyhoo, I got Win 98 Se going in VPC after MUCH trial and error with an install ISO for it [if there's an easier way to get OS's going in VPC, please tell me.] And now that I finally got Win 98 going [with first 128 mb RAM, to smoothen the installation, then 64 after], I had two problems..... My mouse lagged like hell while going around in it, and I couldn't figure out how to put files from my main hard drive to the Virtual one. Thus, this was essentially useless...

If there's some easier way to get Blood going [windows version, like Duke Nukem 3D?] or...... SOMEthing, I'd really appreciate it. I'm probably going to be internet-less for a while here, and getting Blood to work would be golden.

Thanks in advance.
Image
User avatar
dosraider
Admin
Admin
Posts: 9243
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:06 pm
Location: ROTFLMAO in Belgium.

Post by dosraider »

Let's see, how hard it is to install W98 in VPC ...

Install VPC2007.
Run VPC.
Choose NEW.
Blablabla
Install W98.
OK so far ? Now it comes:

You must install the additions when W98 is installed, for that mount the ADDITION ISO (rightclick on the CD icon and mount blabla) Run that addition ISO in W98, it will install other (much better) viddrivers,sound drivers and some more stuffies.
Also it will install 'shared folders' and a LAN bridge with the host PC, and the possibility to have internet acces in VPC-W98.
Close W98, not VPC.

You best create a special folder in Xp, "X:\VPC_shared" or so, point to it in 'properties' (rightclick on your W98 start up item in VPC startbox).
Start W98 again, done , you have a shared folder with your host PC.
You can simply drag anything to that shared folder, (even when VPC is running) use it in W98 and vice versa.

How that all works ? Flawless, of course if your PC only has a crappy 256 MB forget it, minimal is 512Mb, best is 1 G.
And if your PC usually is crawling and dragging you also can forget a fluid running VPC.

Problems running games : only with full 3-D games, if they don't have a software mode they will run bad in VPC. Blood runs flawless on mine. Even QuakeII in software setting.
But for plain dosgames you're better off with DOS in VPC, they all run fine(dosgames).
There also is an addition floppy image for dos.

*Edit
You will find the addition files in your Microsoft Virtual PC folder under Virtual Machine Additions, for W98 you need "VMAdditions.iso".

For DOS you best use VPC2004 instead of VPC2007, better dos support.

*Edit²
If XP is soo "stoopid", why do you use it?
User avatar
Gamer_V
Gaming God
Gaming God
Posts: 1145
Joined: Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:46 am
Location: The Netherlands

Post by Gamer_V »

Answer to edit^2: Because all non-stoopid software and games he wants to use are on XP and not on other platforms? Doh!

On the rant-o-meter 6,5/10. It start nice, is very detailed but in the conclusion the rant level goes down to asking advice. Not enough negativity overall. :P
<TABLE width="100%" cellpadding="1" border="0"><TR><TD width="50%">
robhofen wrote:no warcraft is a rip off of age of empires and so are a lot of other games
</TD><TD width="50%">
Larry Laffer wrote:Your people are n00bs :laugh:
</TD></TABLE><CENTER>Image</CENTER> .
User avatar
dosraider
Admin
Admin
Posts: 9243
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:06 pm
Location: ROTFLMAO in Belgium.

Post by dosraider »

Darned, forgot to link this site:
http://www.transfusion-game.com/
Post Reply