Still Life in Vista
 

anyone know how to get still life working on windows vista?

Welcome to the forums, leigh. :) I've moved your post to the Tech Help forum.

Someone asked the same question a while ago, but no one was able to offer a solution. Maybe you'll have more luck...

If you want to play games, don't get Vista yet. Someone said that about 80-85% of the older and even newer games don't work under it. Operating systems this game supports are...

* Windows 98
* Windows Me
* Windows 2000
* Windows XP

http://www.adventurecompanygames.com/tac/

Vista runs "contemporary" games (say, last two years or so) just fine, for me. Anything older than that is touch-and-go unless you're using an intermediary program like DosBOX or ScummVM.

Maybe it's time to create a Sticky with the names of (adventure) games and the "preferred" OS and a workaround in case the game doesn't work?

Thanks for volunteering. :)

Can i just say.Ive had no trouble installing and playing this game Still Life.On my laptop with Windows Vista Home Basic installed.I install it no different than any other way and plays fab.I do on the other hand have big problems with the game Scratches.And vista dont seem to play open gl games at all well.Direct x games run fine and i have no problems with any.Its just the 1 opengl game i have trouble with,with choppy 10fps gameplay grrrrr.Luckily i also have a gaming pc with xp home installed

Btw this scratches game run perfect on xp just not very well on vista.But having a mess around in the cfg file helps somewhat to a more playable fps anyway

sorry for the off-topic, but I just love how this topic reads from the main forum: "Still Life in Vista"

Sounds like a news story about how Microsoft brings new life into Vista.

Just a quick update appears to me that this Still Life game plays in Windows Vista Home Basic ok but NOT Home Premium.Ive just installed Vista premium as a test and this game runs on Basic but Not Home Premium.So frustrating because theres no real difference between both versions apart from some extra programs u dont really need + the windows aero theme which i cant run anyway.So surely this game should work on both.

I can install the game fine.Try to launch it and it launches but screen stays black.No error or anything.I left it going 10 mins but stayed the same.hmmm

Hi.
I have Vista Ultimate and has got the same problem with Still Life.
Make it working by setting the compatibility of the exe to Windows 98 (and not XP SP2)
Have fun !
Bye

thx mate i managed get this game goin doin what u said.Thx very much :)

Oh, the struggles.
 

I have Home Premium, and I have the same problem (after fixing 987827876376823 others); when I try to run Still Life, the screen just goes blank. I tried running it in 98/ME compatibility mode, but it just brings up an error message saying that "Running this application in compatibility mode is impossible." Any suggestions?

You can get this game goin in compatibility mode however as soon as u gain control of the game and walk up to Gus (the police officer) the game freezes and u cant quit out the game without turning power off on your pc.I gave up on this game awhile back i dont think this game will ever get a patch to sort this out.Ive tried everythin i can think off anyways.

How to get it to work!
 

After reading the possible work-arounds with vista in this thread I noticed one member mentioned one of the only differences between premium and home edition are the visual themes.

So far all I've had todo to get it to work is run in compatability for windows 98 and theres also an option to turn off visual themes below it. So far, I've had different expiriences with the officer at the beginning. Sometimes it just freezes without any indication of donig any work, sometimes a subtitle bar will show but no text will.

It seems as though its trying to retrieve a file to play, but for some reason, even with admistrator status, the game cannot do it so it freezes. I hope we get some more info on this problem soon and hopefully we'll get a patch or some sort of detailed work around.

Welcome to AG Kent Karma! :) Thanks for the info.

Have you tried running the game as administrator?

Right-Click on the executable and choose the Run as Administrator option.

It's got a few old games working for me.

Ya unfortunately, it doesn't help any. Usually it does but Still Life is giving Vista a hard time, I guess.

Hello all!

What Kent was saying about file retrieval made me think perhaps its because Vista is overprotective of it's Programs folder. So has anyone with a partitioned hard drive tried instaling it to their "non-system" drive (e.g. drive D)?

If this works I'll partition my drive - I've been desperate to play this game since it came out!!

Long live the only truly interactive and involving games around, the ADVENTURE GAME!

Jon

I tried it, it didn't work :frown: I got as far as the first bit of dialogue with the cop, and it froze.

I tried installing it on another laptop with XP Home, but it won't work on that either! It installs, but won't load, it has an error message to do with rendering - I think it was designed for old graphics cards so the 3D elements won't work on anything vaguely modern.

Very frustrating!!

One day, I will play this game. One day.

However, Blade Runner would never run on my XP machine, and it is fine in Vista! So I can play that again now.

Still Life Works & In Vista
 

Hey all...

I came across this site looking for a solution. Didn't find one. I did; however, find an answer somewhere else for another older game: Post Mortem. This same method worked for STILL LIFE. Here's what worked for me.

Right click on your shortcut for STILL LIFE. Select PROPERTIES. Click on the COMPATIBILITY tab. Change the compatibilty MODE to run the program in WINDOWS NT 4.0 and also click the checkbox for DISABLE VISUAL THEMES. It runs perfectly.

ENJOY!! It's a pretty morbid game.

P.S.

I saw that someone else said to do something similar; but running the game in Windows 98 didn't work for me. It's worth a try to change into Windows NT.

You can try changing compatibilty for other older games too. Just use trial and error to see which version of Windows settings to use.

Hope this helps! It's worth the play.