Black Dahlia manual
 

I'm about to buy Black Dahlia from ebay. It seems though it lacks a manual. Does anyone know whether there's a manual on any of the discs or whether I can find a manual online somewhere?

When I searched for it, this is what I found:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Dahlia-P.../dp/0761512136

:) Thanks misslilo. But that looks like something more than just a manual with instructions on how to move, save, exit and so on.

Hmm, right.
Well, I guess I could go search for my 8 CD's and see if it's on there :D

Edit:
Sorry, doesn't look like it :(
All I could find was a README with install text and news about last minutes patches.
Here's the latest patch.

Jelena

Although they don't have Black Dahlia this site has a great collection of downloadable manuals. Maybe if you do get your hands on one you could upload it to this site for other gamers to use.

http://www.replacementdocs.com/news.php

Misslilo
Would you happen to know what this patch fixes?

@GreyFuss
I'm at work right now, so I can't check, but will as soon as I get home.
There were 4 things I believe... and one of them was for crashing.

Anyway, I installed the game last night and *SIGH*!

This is one of those games, that gives you a lot of problems.

It was supposed to be able to install a DOS version, but they didn't include it in the last minute - which makes it a win95 game only.

SO - one should think it plays in win95 compatibility mode - WRONG!
If you do that the mouse will hardly move, so somewhere else I read to turn OFF compatibility mode and play around with the BD.INI file and presto the mouse moved again - only to find it FREEZING on you only 5 minutes further in the game. :(
So good luck - I will keep trying myself :)

Countless old adventures give me a headache, but I guess I've been lucky with Black Dahlia. Wanted to replay it last year and it installed and played fine on my XP. I got distracted by another game though, so I don't know if BD behaves till the end.

But I do remember the annoying freezing problem, from the first time on my older win98/95 machines. Happened many times, for no apparent reason. The good news is that BD picks up where you left off the last time, so you don't have to wast time on the boring bit of restoring and replaying parts you've already done.

Inferno's setup help:
http://home.earthlink.net/~angeldancer27/XpGameList.htm

I have a manual that I'd be happy to photocopy and mail to you. Or, I could scan it and send it.
Let me know.
Jo

@misslilo
Thank you for checking the discs for me. I appreciate you took the time.

@GreyFuss
Thanks for the tip. I'll remember to check replacementdocs next time.

@Fienepien
Thanks for the link.

@Colpet
Great! I'll get in touch with you in case this ebay copy I'm hopefully getting lacks a manual.

To be honest I got a little discouraged from learning this is one of those games that put up a fight. I'm not very good at fiddling around with files to get the game running smoothly. I'm planning to use my old win98/95 and hopefully with the patch misslilo linked to I'll be all set.

Well, it could be my problem is connected with the fact, that I'm playing on Vista :)
I do have a machine with both XP and Vista and I used to play all my games on the XP partition. I've just been too lazy lately to fire it up, lol.

I ran this on my old Win98 machine and I don't remember any problems back then. Haven't got a copy any more so I can't try it on XP I'm afraid.

For anyone interested here is what the Black Dahlia Patch that Misslilo linked to fixes...

Black Dahlia Patch History:

*** Version 1.10: 03/26/98

This patch addresses the following problems:

1. Unsupported RGB Mode error.

2. Random crashes (associated with setting music
volume to zero).

3. Rune (gem) puzzle bug. Note: type the word 'RESET'
while in the puzzle interface if the puzzle is
currently 'broken'.

4. Trouble with people not returning objects to you.

5. Load file error when restoring game (after CD 6).

6. Full subtitle support. To enable, edit the
BD.INI in the directory where you installed the game.
In the [options] section, edit the line: 'subtitles = 0'
to read 'subtitles = 1'.

I got a kick out of number four as I would like to use this patch on people I know in real life.

Black Dahlia is one of those games that have problems with hyperthreading.
It's on Inferno's list of games that have problems with hyperthreading
If your computer has hyperthreading, or a dual core processor, you should disable one of the cores or assign the affinity of the game to a single core.

I never knew that... very useful information. I checked and I do have hyperthreading.

But it's still a mystery to me why the annoying random freezing occurred on my win98 computer and not on my XP.

For those who weren't aware Black Dahlia is also DVD friendly. I think I had read this idea on Vogons and I am currently playing a DVD now.

You will need to use a Dual Layer DVD as the contents of the 8 CD's is just over what one regular DVD will hold. What I did was copy the contents of each CD into a folder I created on my desktop. Then using Nero, burned the contents of that folder to a DVD-DL disk.

So far the DVD is playing great. I am not sure yet if I have played long enough to have gotten past the first CD swap but will let you know if this doesn't work.

Would playing on DVD be an advantage? I seem to think that the game progesses through the CD's so there is no back and forthing.
BTW, I started playing the game this weekend on my Win98. All this talk about it whetted my appetite. I first played it quite a while ago, so many details are hazy.

Thanks crabapple! I had quite a lot of problem with the cursor until I read this and disabled hyperthreading in BIOS. Now it works like a charm. :)

Great looking game btw!