[Len Green]

I have twice downloaded the Ankh Demo and tried to play … both in German & after converting to English . IMMEDIATELY I TRY TO START, I get the identical crash with a full window of error details. The most important seem to be (??) ……………………

!!ERROR!! in method ‘Pina::Application::init’
Error #: 9
Function: D3D9RenderSystem:: D3D9RenderSystem
Description: Failed to create Direct3D9 object.

N.B. The specs say only DirectX9.
Surely the error can’t be caused merely by my having on this particular computer DirectX9b rather than DirectX9c .

All other games etc.have worked 100% OK to date … I don’t want to ‘tempt Providence’ unless/until absolutely necessary!!

[Igor]

I'm not sure if i got the same error (i got it at start too).. but in my case, all i had to do was to turn antialiasing off in my graphic card's options.
Otherwise try to download DirectX9c

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Len Green

Surely the error can’t be caused merely by my having on this particular computer DirectX9b rather than DirectX9c .

I don't know about this error, but I wouldn't bet on it not coming from the version of DirectX9.

[Tetra-Loo]

Don't recall if I got that particular error but I too was crashing immediately upon startup. After hacking around with ankh.ini file, it appears that my problem was solved when I changed the resolution in the .ini file to match that of my desktop. In my case, I changed the resolution from 1024x768 to 800x600.

[ART_Adventures]

Len, this game uses the same engine that I was using for Meet The Creeper. This error is caused when the game cannot initialise DirectX on your system, and I believe this may be because you do not have the correct version it requires.

Thanks,
Alan.

[Amerzone]

I don't get any error, but the demo is running very slowly and I can't see any of my items in the inventory! They are shown (at the upper left corner, isn't it so?) as dots only... Running XP SP2, DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904), GeForce FX5200, NVidia 61.77 drivers and I did not have problems with any other of the recent adventure game releases.

[Dale Baldwin]

Originally Posted by Amerzone

NVidia 61.77 drivers

Those aren't the newest. Perhaps you should try updating them?

[Amerzone]

Yap, that did it. I installed the latest Forceware drivers 81.98 and the items in the inventory are ok now. Yet, the game is practically unplayable in 1024x768, high textures, medium shadows, effects on with my card. It is very slow, and not only under the water... Even with 800x600, the flow is not good and the sequences have terrible problem with the lip syncing.

Oh, and a glitch: open the pirate chest and then right-click to use it. What? "Still locked and need a key to open it"?!

[oubliette]

I too am having major issues in getting this working.

I've tried many things, including all of the mentioned methods.
To begin with I was getting the infamous blue screen of death relating to a nv4.dll file which looks like it was driver based.

I finally managed to get further but the game still locks up/drops out to the desktop.

Any ideas?
I'm desperate to play a new adventure!