Solving Color Problem In DirectDraw Games Updated Again

Just a quick note to mention that I've cleaned up my blog post from 2009 once again. The PalettestealerSuspender program has been significantly updated. Usage instructions and downloads (including the older version if you so prefer and full source code) have been moved to a separate blog page, which helps to keep things clean in the original post.

Sacrifice Revisited

A while ago I posted on this blog how you could resolve the "Insufficient page file space" problem in Sacrifice. Since then a few people have emailed me, saying that the fix described in that post does not longer work. After trying various things with various people (thanks for all the help and input by the way), a solution was found.

Problem
The problem is that XP does not longer present GlobalMemoryStatusTrim when running QFixApp.

First the good news. If you have Vista, the game works out of the box. Not because Vista has better memory management or something like that, but because Vista comes with lots of Compatibility Profiles built-in. I've looked into these profiles to see which ones were used with Sacrifice, being:

1) GlobalMemoryStatusLie
2) GlobalMemoryStatus2GB (this replaces GlobalMemoryStatusTrim and is also available in QFixApp when running XP)

So the solution seems simple, enable GlobalMemoryStatusLie and GlobalMemoryStatus2GB, and try again. However, when trying this under XP SP3, almost everyone gets the following (new) error: "error while trying to initiate the application (0x000005)".

If you get this error, you now have the following options:
1) Upgrade to Vista (yuck);
2) You could disable virtual memory and/or use the /BURNMEMORY=N boot.ini-switch (adventurous and bad/ugly);
3) Use the solution below (clean and works).

Solution
It turns out there is a patch available over here which removes the memory-check from the game. This patch was created a while ago by Luigi Auriemma, but is still quite difficult to find. Follow the following steps to get your game working:

1) Download and extract Lame Patcher from here.
2) Download and save the Sacrifice .lpatch file from here (search for: "sacrifice" or direct link no hotlinking :( direct link is back thanks to a friendly e-mail from Luigi, the author - thanks!).
3) Open lpatch.exe.
4) The program will display a message asking you if you want to select a .dat or .lpatch file, choose "Yes".
5) Pick the sacrifice_pagefile.lpatch you have saved in step 2.
6) The program will display some information, press "OK".
7) Another file chooser dialog opens, locate your Sacrifice.exe and select it.

All done! You should be able to enjoy the game now.

One last thing. If you're too lazy to follow the steps above, or you don't have Sacrifice but would like to play this (and other old) games, then check out Good Old Games. They've just went into public beta and are offering MDK2, Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Sacrifice (for $5.99). They also offer support, so your game'll probably work without complaining out of the box it seems they provide the Virtual Memory tip as well.

Game: Portal

Man, what a surprise this game was!

This is a great puzzle game, which you should also play multiple times (once with the commentaries).

You're a woman who wakes up in a cell inside a lab and presented with a portal that lets you walk out of the room and into another. With this gun you must solve lots of puzzles which get gradually harder.

Along the way, GlaDOS, an AI with a computerized female voice, guides you. GlaDOS is incredibly funny, and gets even funnier at the end. The whole game is actually hilarious, in a good way! The scripts and characters are wonderfully designed. The game is minimalistic in nature and all these little extras are just the topping of the... cake.

GlaDOS will lie to you, cute turrets who'll say "Where are you?" everytime you go into hiding, an amazing weighted companion cube, and cake. This game is full of little surprises. You just have to play it and experience its awesomeness!

"Cake, and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test.
Thank you for helping us help you help us all."

Pros:

• FPS puzzle game, with portals!
• Great ending song.
• Hilarious humor.
• Unforgettable characters.
• Minimalistic and focused nature, without ever becoming boring.
• Where's my sequel?

Cons:

• A tad short.

Now only Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and Quake Wars remain on my list of games-to-play. But that's for later.

Game: The Settlers: Rise Of An Empire

Another quick review for this one. Not much to say about this game, I mean: it's Settlers. It's back, and it's 3d and cuter than ever :).

Pros:

• Settler's back!
• Game looks very nice.
• Long and entertaining missions.
• Happy atmosphere.

Cons:

• Few bugs still around.
• Needs quite a bit of system resources.

Game: Medal Of Honor: Airborne

I've been playing some games last weekend, Medal Of Honor: Airborne being one of them.

Basically it's just another WW2 FPS with nothing special. The drops at the beginning of each mission are pretty nice, and the levels aren't badly designed either.

The graphics look nice but were somewhat sluggish, how come this game needs so much resources when Half Life runs so nice in all its glory without a peep?

So quickly: pros:

• The WW2 hype is almost over, so this game is nice if you just can't get enough WW-action.
• Graphics look fine.
• Level design.
• Airborne-theme.
• Non-linear misions.

Cons:

• High system requirements.
• Your weapons are difficult to handle, while the AI has no problems hitting you.
• Gets boring quickly.
• Not a real story.

Game: Bioshock

I finished Bioshock a few moments ago. There's not much I will say about this game because it has been reviewed and analyzed to dead at other sites and by other people.

I can say though that this game is fantastic, both story- and graphic-wise. Also: it often scared the hell out of me.

There is one big downside with this game: the constant crashing. Maybe my configuration is getting old, but this game is actually running quite fine when it's not crashing.

It also could have something to do with Windows Vista. Here's how a typical game session goes for me.

1. After a while it became clear that I have to disable high detail shaders. This will cause the game to crash less with certain video cards.
2. Start Bioshock. "Bioshock.exe has stopped working and has to close." Start Bioshock. "Bioshock.exe has stopped working and has to close." (Repeat this one to ten times.) Finally I see the splash screen and the game loads (strange).
3. Play and enjoy.
4. A new area is coming up, save right before going to the next level. Exit.
5. Edit Default.ini (toy with the audiodevice, add a new D3DDrv, comment out FMOD):

;AudioDevice=FMODAudio.FMODAudioSubsystem
AudioDevice=D3DDrv.D3DAudioDevice

6. Start game again (don't forget to repeat step 2 a few times). Load my save. Go to next area.
7. Wait until area finished loading. When I don't use step 5, my whole system locks up slowly and the area never loads. Save. Exit again.
8. Edit Default.ini again, otherwise I have no in-game sound:

AudioDevice=FMODAudio.FMODAudioSubsystem
;AudioDevice=D3DDrv.D3DAudioDevice

9. Start again, load save, loads fine, continue from step 3.

But still, the game is awesome (but release a patch, quick!).

Also I want you to see the cinematic trailer if you haven't. Don't forget to pick up all the audio diaries in the game and listen to them, the story and characters are so great.

One final note: if you were wondering, I saved all the Little Sisters. After being presented with the first choose to either harvest or rescue them I was too moved not to save them (it was just a sad sight). So I got the 'good' ending. I was happy I did, I would've felt very guilty otherwise, especially after seeing the 'bad' ending (look on Youtube or play the Bink vids).

Pros:

• Amazing story.
• Great atmosphere.
• Possibly best graphics seen in a game up to date.
• Can be real creepy at times.
• The music (both the grammophone music and the orchestral score are great).
• Nice set of weapons, plasmids, hacks and more.

Cons:

• You'll need a very high-end PC.
• Game loves to crash.
• The activation system-slash-copyright protection is a royal pain.
• No multiplayer (not a real downside for me, but might be a pity for some).
• The story is just a tad predictable at times.

And now I'm going to rip the music out of the fmod files :).

Game: Jade Empire - Special Edition

So I picked up Jade Empire for the PC a few days ago. I was astonished because I didn't even know it was released for the PC. (I've been jealous of console owners who could play the game and then I even miss the PC release!)

So after I quick install I was ready to go. I was more than happy to experience a new Bioware-experience. As coincidence would have it, I had been playing a few Neverwinter Nights premium modules the days before just because I wanted a Bioware experience. (And no, KotOR 2 and NWN 2 just aren't the same.)

And the game didn't disappoint. I you haven't played it yet: you should. The whole story was fantastic. The characters were well though out, and the combat was fun without being frustrating (I didn't die a single time on the easiest difficulty level).

If you are a hardcore PC RPG gamer you will notice that this game is a tad linear. Of course there are quite a lot of side quests but you can't roam very freely. This seems to be a typical characteristic of more 'modern' RPGs, like Fable, or even Overlord. On the other hand, this also has pros: at least you don't get lost or distracted. Also: Fable could learn a few things from Jade Empire, this is how a console RPG should be done: it's all about the story and the atmosphere. The game is fun, quick to pick up and you don't have to manage your inventory and character every two steps while still keeping enough numbers, statistics and options for you to look at.

I think I'm going to rest for a bit now after this marathon-gaming-session. But I think I'm going to replay the game with another character later.

Let's hope that Mass Effect comes to the PC as well.

Pros:

• Another Bioware classic.
• Amazing atmosphere.
• Great story.
• Cool styles and techniques.
• Original oriental setting of the game.
• A right amount of side quests.
• Well ported: no crashes, no control problems.
• Graphics are still good.
• Music.

Cons:

• Camera misbehaves sometimes .
• Leaves you wanting much more ;).

Game: Call Of Juarez

I started playing Call of Juarez today and... wait, I just finished it too.

All in all a nice game, I only had a small problem playing it on my computer, the game started with an Exception error. Installing the latest patch didn't help either.

I was ready to blame the copy protection (since those have been bugging a lot of games lately in my experience). But the no-dvd crack didn't help either. (It seems that official technical support people are giving those cracks to people who had problems. Makes you wonder...) There were a few other people with my problem too on the forums.

So then I tried the only other thing I could think of. I set the compatibility mode of the game to 'Windows XP'. If you have the same problem and are running Windows XP 64 bit, then give it a try, because after that the game started and worked perfect.

The game itself is actually pretty nice. Two playable characters, a mediocre story, a large environment, nice graphics, very fitting music and voice acting. Only the long stealth missions and platforming with Billy (one of the characters) got on my nerves. But the fact that you can play as an ass-kicking reverend afterwards is worth it.

So: pros:

• Enjoyable action! There is slowmo.
• Great music, good voice acting.
• Two characters. Two gaming styles.
• Great graphics (especially the maps, nature and towns).
• Multiplayer is quite fun.
• Original genre (well, we had Gun before tho).

and cons:

• Doesn't really stand out.
• Long stealth and platforming missions.
• You'll need a potent machine to run it.
• Few glitches (Windows 64 bit problem, see before).
• Few map glitches (I managed to accidentally get to parts where I wasn't supposed to be - yet - and couldn't go back).

Games: Supreme Commander And Command And Conquer 3

I've just finished all the campaigns of Command And Conquer 3. I must say I am pretty impressed.

I also played a bit of Supreme Commander but I didn't really like that game and I've already uninstalled it.

Supreme Commander is good because:

• Huge maps.
• Cool units.
• Strategic zoom is really helpful.
• Multiplayer.

But bad because:

• Boring maps.
• Though you can build hundreds of units, they are all so tiny...
• Repetitive missions... always the same.

Command And Conquer has:

• Kane!
• Kaaaaaane! (Yes, he counts for two points!)
• Full-motion video is back and you can't help but love the cheesy acting.
• Nice detailed maps.
• A superb engine. The maps load incredibly fast, and there is no huge framerate drop - ever! Even with a lot of units on screen... how do they do it? (Supreme Commander takes ages to load.)
• Cool units.
• Fun multiplayer.
• Did I mention Kane?
• Spectacular effects.

It does need better patching though (especially for people without high-end systems). On my system however the game ran like a dream in 1600x1200 with all options on highest (except AA, which is level 1).

However, if you adored Total Annihilation, you will like Supreme Commander. If you loved C&C, you'll love Tiberium Wars. I liked both, but I do prefer to play a game of CC3.

"Huh?" Or "Where have my past two days gone?"

I've been kinda bored lately. I enjoy playing a game when I stop working. The problem is that lately I haven't been able to find a really good game which kept me hooked. Where are the times of those good atmospheric games like Half Life 2 (Episode 1 if you wish), Beyond Good And Evil, Psychonauts, GTA San Andreas, Fahrenheit, Dreamfall (how I loved that game), Prince Of Persia... Wait a minute... Prince Of Persia.

I decided to reinstall The Two Thrones, which I didn't finish last time I played it. (I only played for half an hour through the game and then became distracted).

While I was thinking about the fact that installing this game would certainly take a lot of my time away I was listening to some PoP-game-music. Hearing Time Only Knows and I Still Love You again enough to convince me. I inserted CD 1.

We're now two days later, it's past midnight again, and I have completed the game. I must say: what an experience. The ending was fantastic. I just can't understand why I am so hooked on that game (I always believed I wasn't the guy for platformers).

Sigh... and now I'm bored again :), but at least I have a sense of accomplishment now (if you can call it that).

Game: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Played a bit of Stalker yesterday. It's a nice first-person shooter but has some issues (don't try playing it on Vista, neither did I).

Good:

• Atmospheric: great graphics, huge maps, great architecture and maps!
• Immersive, open-ended... it seems there are 7 different endings.
• Survival - you get attacked by wild dogs.
• Horror!
• Lots to explore. Again: mapdesign is great!
  
• Lots of different factions.
  

Bad:

• Inventory system could be smoother.
• Story could be clearer.
• High system reqs.

Ugly:

• Bugs!
• Overhyped game.
• Late release.
• Don't use Vista.

Towers 2 Flash Game

My link dump/blog update continues... Very addictive game! Check out Towers 2. I couldn't stop playing for days! It's based upon Warcraft III. You build various kinds of towers to stop the monsters from invading. Give it a try. Now that Flash 9 final is out for Linux, nothing should stop you ;).

Savage Released For Free!

That's right, S2 Games has released Savage 1 for free! It's a great multiplayer game - a mix between FPS and RTS. Two sides (Beast and Human) fight to take control of the map while the Commander of both sides is giving orders and building structures and controlling the players just like an RTS game.

It's easy to learn pick up. But hard to... aim :).

And the best part is: for Linux too.

Game: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade

I've playing a bit of W40k-DoW-DC over the past few days. It's still a great game with fast-paced action. It's especially enjoyable when playing quick skirmish or multiplayer battles. ("Okay... one more game.") But the single player campaign is nice too.


If you've picked up the original and the first expansion, I suggest you definitely buy this one too. It is a stand-alone expansion though: so you can play it without the previous ones...

I still need to try Company Of Heroes. And I can't wait for Supreme Commander too.

Defcon Is Out

A few weeks ago I posted a little something about Introversion's upcoming game: Defcon. The Windows version has been released and I've been playing the demo for a bit. The game itself is nothing breathtakingly special but it is a really nice game to play between the hours (in fact, I've been saying "just one more round" in the middle of the night). It's a game you play in a window at the office when no-one's watching (in fact: the game does have an "office"-mode where you can quickly use a boss-key).

I suggest you go download the demo and buy it when you like it: these guys really deserve it.

A Mac and Linux version will be out later, but in fact I could run this game very smoothly in Wine in Linux (only one crash but I'm not sure that was Wine/Defcon-related). Since the game is programmed using OpenGL, what would you expect? (Maybe I'll post a screenshot of Wine running Defcon later.) So porting it to Linux should go without problems.

Conclusion: nice game for when you don't want to spend a whole evening playing a game ("just a quickie") or when you liked the movie "Wargames" or when you love planning strategies, because the multiplayer aspect really makes this game fun!

Another hit in the shops? Probably not. A cult classic: probably yes.

Neverwinter Nights On My Ubuntu-Laptop

Today I finally decided to spend some time and try to install Neverwinter Nights on my laptop, since I absolutely still love that game. Of course: you could follow this howto, but since I don't have NWN Platinum or Diamond, I had to follow other instructions. I didn't want to pirate the game (I legally own the original and the two expansions, so I figured that would work too).

Instead I followed the instructions from Bioware, congrats to them for making this game available on a Linux (and Mac) platform!

Step 1: "Installing Using Downloaded Linux Client Resources"

Download the Linux Client Resources v1.29 (from BioWare). Extract this archive somewhere (e.g.: /home/user/Programs/nwn).

We will do the English install, for other languages: follow the Bioware instructions, these instructions are just narrowed down and compressed...

Also download the Linux Client 1.29 binaries (tar.gz, 5.3 MB). (Make sure you are logged in into the Bioware site, registering is free.) And also extract these into your installation folder. Make sure you overwrite all existing files - this is a rule for all further archives, unless stated otherwise.

If you have SoU and HoU, don't update to the latest version yet. And wait with playing the game ;).

Step 2: "Installing Shadows of Undrentide Expansion Pack"

Make sure step 1 completed succesfully. Since the Linux installer on the disk is broken, we will do it ourselves.

Make sure you can access the following files, they are in the CDs root folder.
Data_Shared.zip
Language_data.zip
Language_update.zip
Data_Linux.zip

Extract them into your installation folder in the above order (overwrite)!

Then delete the following files from your installation folder if they exist:

/INSTALL/data/patch.bif
/INSTALL/patch.key

And then execute the following command from a terminal:

./fixinstall

Step 3: "Installing Hordes of the Underdark Expansion Pack"

Make sure you completed steps 1 and 2.

Remove the following files if they exist:
/INSTALL/patch.key
/INSTALL/data/patch.bif
/INSTALL/ xp1patch.key
/INSTALL/data/xp1patch.bif

Again: get the following archives from the HoU CD root and unzip them into your installation folder in the following order:
Data_Shared.zip
Language_data.zip
Language_update.zip

Download nwclienthotu.tar.gz and also extract it into your nwn directory, overwriting all.

Again, run ./fixinstall from your installation directory.

Step 4: updating

Now update the game, download the patch here. To update, just overwrite-extract the archive you have downloaded in the installation map.

Step 5: fixing

I got the following error when starting Neverwinter with the ./nwn command:
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
Creating link /home/username/.kde/socket-hostname.
can't create mcop directory

To fix this, I executed:
mkdir ~/.kde/socket-hostname
Replace hostname with your own hostname, of course (it is mentioned in the error).

Then everything worked perfectly fine: NWN starts and I can enter my CD keys, the game doesn't run like it does on my gaming machine, but I'm satisfied that it runs at all with such a small Thinkpad X60 with quite a crappy graphics chip.

Again: thanks to Bioware for making this available (which other game company would host a one-gigabyte file on their servers?).

Happy adventuring!

Now This Is A Game I Am Looking Forward To

Introversion Software presents its third title, DEFCON, a stunning online multiplayer simulation of global thermonuclear war.

You play the role of a military Commander hidden deep within an Underground bunker. Your mission - to successfully exterminate your enemy's civilian population whilst disabling their ability to attack your own. Start by launching your battleships, subs and bombers in order to decimate your opponent's defences. Scramble together your alliances but remember only one can stand victorious.

Prepare your pre-emptive strike before one of your supposed allies gets the same idea. Choose the perfect moment for betrayal, obliterating your opponents with an apocalyptic thermonuclear barrage, but get it wrong and their devastating counter attack will bring you to your knees!

That really sounds cool. Remembers us of the movie Wargames of course. Check the videos on their website. Uplink and Darwinia were such great games too, try the demos if you haven't altready.