stoopid XP
Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 3:36 pm
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.
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.