Dungeon keeper 2 & windows 7 64 bit, it dosent work help! :(

[Maximilian]

Heh it is a bit much to ask from an 11 year old game but still...

Ok so heres where im at, i can start the game just fine using XP SP2/SP3 compatability mode, it wont run at all with 98/ME mode, but the game will crash randomly, it crashes when i click the "O" button at the bottom to hear the mission brief again and sometimes when loading/saving and most often it just crashes randomly.

Ive tried using VPC 2007 to run an XP virtual machine, installed game and it runs okay but i have to turn off mouse integration or the cursor goes haywire when the game starts. The main problem is it has to be played in a tiny window. Ive tried messing with the resolution settings in VPC and the game but its just not happening, it either plays in a tiny window or it plays as a small box in the middle of the screen surrounded by blackness. So full screen mode isnt really panning out here.

Any solutions? Are the other virtual machine things better than VPC for this kind of stuff? I hear VMware mentioned a lot but VPC is the only one i ever tried.

 

[mmntech]

Probably uses some 16-bit code, or something dumb like that.

Try this...
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/2820/t1394451-dungeon-keeper-2-how-to-run-under-xp-vista-win7/

 

[Mem]

The game should work,you can try the Vista guide to getting it to work , http://www.vistax64.com/vista-games/92144-how-dungeon-keeper-2-vista.html

Saw this post in my link above,

I am also running Win 7 - 64 and was able to get DK2 running using your setting except I have to turn off hardware acceleration in the game or else I will not get any video except the hand pointer, like others mentioned previously. I can leave water translucency and environment mapping on in the game and it works just right.

If you are having problems finding the V1.7 patch, I got mine from this short cut - http://updates.mastertronicdownloads...T38C3.7_SO.exe (worked just now) or do a google search and you will have to pick through the listings to find one that doesn't want to charge you for the privilege of the download.

Good luck and thanks to the posters!

 

[WildW]

I've had it working on a couple of Windows 7 x64 machines. I seem to recall the key to getting it to stop crashing was to go into the options and disable Hardware Acceleration.

 

[Maximilian]

Ive tried all those things, what ive found is that disabling hardware acceleration removes graphical errors but causes the game to crash randomly and every time when i click the "review objectives" tooltip at the bottom of the screen when in game. Leaving hardware acceleration enabled solves the crashes, dosent crash when i click the tooltip either however i cant really see anything because of the black squares and graphical errors.

Ive tried adding -32biteverything and -softwarefilter, ive tried the 1.73f patch and the 1.8 patch which i dont think actually does anything different from 1.73f it just has added junk. Ive tried 1.3 as apparently its more stable but 1.3 wont even start. Ive done a combination of the patches/compatability modes to no avail.

I have to either find a way to solve the graphical errors with hardware acceleration or solve the crashes using the software mode. I could be out of luck as i have an ATI card, i read somewhere this game dosent like modern ATI cards, although i also read people with 8800's etc having the exact same problems im having.

The only thing thats worked so far was to turn down all the graphics options and set the resolution to 640x480, this was using software mode and every single compatability box in windows (except 256 colors) ticked. It looks like ass though, even for a 1999 game 640x480 might as well be full of graphical errors for how bad it looks

 

[Ross Ridge]

I've had it working on a couple of Windows 7 x64 machines. I seem to recall the key to getting it to stop crashing was to go into the options and disable Hardware Acceleration.

I remember having to do this even under Windows XP (32-bit).

 

[Maximilian]

Ok ive licked it, the only way i can get this game to run acceptably without crashes or graphical glitches is VPC, i solved the resolution problem by setting the VM to use the same resolution as the host OS. Ah thank god for that... only took about two and a half hours to get this fricking game working properly lol.

Thank you microsoft for making VPC so easy to use :thumbsup:

 

[Kalmah]

I just recently installed on my windows 7 -64 machine.

The only thing I had to do was set compatibility to xp sp3 and click the 'disable visual themes'. I've played for hours and hours on different occasions and havn't had a single crash.

I also forced AA and 16 AF in my drivers.

 

[Maximilian]

I just recently installed on my windows 7 -64 machine.

The only thing I had to do was set compatibility to xp sp3 and click the 'disable visual themes'. I've played for hours and hours on different occasions and havn't had a single crash.

I also forced AA and 16 AF in my drivers.

Whats your rig?

 

[Kalmah]

Whats your rig?

e8400 core 2 duo
2gb ram
gigabit p31-es36 mobo
geforce 8600gt
soundblaster xi-fi titanium audio

I must have gotten lucky. I remember my xp machine running dk2 like shit. I was surprised to see the game run so flawlessly.

Good luck with it. I wish I could help.

 

[Mem]

I never had to use VPC for gaming in Win7, between Dosbox and XP compatibility modes plus using google I normally find a solution.,some of my games go back to 90s and still run ok in Win7.

 

[Maximilian]

I never had to use VPC for gaming in Win7, between Dosbox and XP compatibility modes plus using google I normally find a solution.,some of my games go back to 90s and still run ok in Win7.

Wish this was DKII for me

Well ive failed, the virtual XP machine hard locked on me with a sound repeating error, havent had that since... well since i ran XP heh, also the mouse behaved strangely. VMware worked much better but has the exact same fricking bug that causes the crashes in windows 7 anyway so thats no good. Windows 98 virtual machine has no sound and is dog slow for some reason.

I give up, dungeon keeper II you have beaten me!

 

[Maximilian]

Ok i couldnt give up this game is too fun and ive sunk too much time into this so far but ive finally 100% definately solved this problem, my rubbish solution: use a different computer...

Ive got it running with hardware acceleration (so no crashes) on my netbook with GMA4500. Thank you intel! Everyone knocks your crappy built in graphics but today im thankful because it has succedded where my 5850 has failed me

Im gonna go plug the netbook into this screen, plug the speakers into the netbook and play some DKII. Peace.

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, intel sucks for performance but both ATI and nvidia have gone so far downhill with older games support that Intel has sadly become a viable option in that area.

DKII unfortunately was always a problem child. Bullfrog died shortly after its release and it really needed further patching that it never received.

 

[shortylickens]

For reference, Compatibility Mode means shit. It does not magically fix the broken programming of games. All it does is help bypass flags that prevent a game from working when it checks the OS to see if its compatible, even though they would have worked just fine anyways.
If a game really doesnt work in an OS, either the OS or the game needs to be recoded. Having said that, its entirely possible DK2 works in Vista 64 and Win 7 64, someone just needs to figure it out.

 

[WildW]

It seems to be a case of luck-of-the-draw on this one. I have DK2 running fine on my machine (Phenom II + AMD GPU) and my GF's (Core2Duo + nVidia GPU), both running Windows 7 x64. Other folks have problems.

I note that on mine I'm running in Compatability Mode = Windows NT 4. We did have a bunch of problems and tried various compatability modes until finding that one worked for us.

 

[Maximilian]

That is what completely stumps me, other people with similar rigs having no problems, also i had it running fine on an ATI GPU before, it was a 9800 PRO but still, maybe its the new architecture or the drivers. I have no idea, im 80% sure its something to do with the GPU though as thats really the only difference between my desktop where it dosent work at all and my laptop where it works fine (with hardware acceleration ticked in the game menu, without it ticked it will still be unstable). It also needed -32biteverything in the shortcuts target box or i could only see 1/3rd of the screen on the intel.

Someone got it running on his GTX480 on the keeper klan forums so the nvidia crew would likely have better luck with this. I saw a guide for ATI folks as well but it involved installing ubuntu, wine etc and considering i couldnt even figure out how to move the red X at the top of a window from the left to the right in ubuntu theres no way in hell i would be able to install wine and all that jazz heh.

Hopefully this thread helps someone in the future, to sum it up, it wont work on your ATI GPU unless you are lucky, it might on your nvidia just do this: http://www.keeperklan.com/threads/1...-with-Hardware-Acceleration-turned-on-in-win7 :|

 

[Ross Ridge]

That is what completely stumps me, other people with similar rigs having no problems, also i had it running fine on an ATI GPU before, it was a 9800 PRO but still, maybe its the new architecture or the drivers. I have no idea, im 80% sure its something to do with the GPU though as thats really the only difference between my desktop where it dosent work at all and my laptop where it works fine (with hardware acceleration ticked in the game menu, without it ticked it will still be unstable). It also needed -32biteverything in the shortcuts target box or i could only see 1/3rd of the screen on the intel.

I expect that it really comes down to Dungeon Keep 2 having a badly written 3D engine. It probably did a number of things wrong that just happened to work most of the time on video cards of the time, but break on more modern cards and drivers.

 

[PingSpike]

I'm not 100% sure in DKIIs case....again, that game wasn't super stable on hardware available at the time. Ross is right a lot of old games did weird non-standard stuff and when they were out video card drivers basically wrote around them, which they don't always do now.

That said, nvidia and ati broke a lot of legacy code on early direct 3d games when their DX10 cards came out. Thief/SS2, Crimson Skies, DKII is only a black screen for me on ATI when using hardware acceleration, plenty of others. Most of the examples I've personally encountered were games that offered 16-bit color as their highest quality rendering option. Given that they haven't been fixed in recent drivers, the issue is either that they don't care or the hardware just won't work with old 3D engines.