Games on Vista
 

As a quick search of the threads on this board will show VISTA is not allways the freindlist OS for games. In that light I thought I would start a central thread about which games work and do not work in VISTA and more importantly what we have to do to make our games work on VISTA. So if everyone would post their experiances I think we would have a good guide of what works and what doesnt on VISTA.

Games Ive gotten to work.
Runaway

Games I havent got to work.
Still Life

Games Im wondering about.
GBII
Tex Murphey Overseer
Runaway 2
Secrets of Atlantis
Moment of Silence

Thanks in Advance

I've gotten these to work:

CSI series
Law & Order series
Nancy Drew - the newer ones since the Old clock.
Amerzone
Tex Murphy: Overseer DVD version with some trouble.

There's more, but I forget lol

Here's a list of games that people got to work on Vista. Hope it helps someone.

Cathy

http://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubb...2526#Post62526

misslilo what kind of tweaking did you have to do to get Tex to run properly. I havent installed it yet but would really like to.

Thanks for the list Cathy I think that well help out alot.

@Texas

I used this site mainly:
http://www.fourthlaw.com/2007/03/26/...install-guide/
He also has links to patches etc.
Furthermore this site: http://home.wideopenwest.com/~hbech/MAIN%20PAGE.swf
Just click on the Downloads at top left...
Then look at the right column, second silver button from bottom (Overseer for XP & Vista).
I believe you just have to install Overseer as normal, then unzip those files into the Overseer folder (or whereever you installed the game to)

I still experience a few crashes to desktop, but not overwhelmingly many.
I got used to save a lot :)
Oh and I have the DVD version, but sholdn't matter if DVD or the CD's.

Oh and if you want to know how to play Martian Memorandum, The Pandora Directive and Under a Killing Moon(playing it now with succes), then I used this site for best result:
http://videogamesoapbox.blogspot.com/ - Games list is at top on left.
Requires DosBox 0.72 -

Btw I make it a habit to save the dosbox.conf with the game name I'm currently playing to have it for later use. (Remember to make a backup of the original dosbox.conf first though).

Right now I'm playing Gobliins, Discworld, Under a killing Moon and more and they all have their own .conf file - like KillingMoon_dosbox.conf or Goblliins_dosbox.conf.
I just go into the dosbox folder and rename the game conf for whatever game I want to play to just dosbox.conf and voila, ready to play.

PS:
Forgot about this site, which also have help for other games.. maybe a bit less complicated, lol.

Here's another game to add to the "Will run on Vista" list :)

Sam & Max: Hit The Road (version 2 from 2/16/2007) - normal installation


I got this tip from another board.
It's for those of us who have a dual core - it sometimes helps to disable one to get certain games to run.

If your dual core CPU is what is causing the problem, then you can disable one of the processor cores in task manager if you can get to the game's main menu without it blacking out on you.

1. Open the game to the main menu
2. ctrl+alt+del to open task manager
3. click the processes tab and find the game's .exe on the list.
4. right click on the .exe and select "set affinity".
5. untick the 2nd CPU on the list.

This will only turn off the 2nd core for that program and it'll only stay disabled as long as the program is running. You would have to repeat those steps each time you open the game.

Fahrenheit won't install.

Installshield can't seem to move the files from the DVD to the HD, and cancels the process.

Doesn't seem to have anything to do with admin access.

Looking into it...:frusty:

Yet another cool game working without tweaking it :)

Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy - just install it as you normally would.

There is however an unbeatable glitch in the game, when you get to the ZOO.

Spoiler:

As you enter the ZOO, you have 3 ways you can go.
Left - Right and at the bottom.
The bottom takes you to the Sphinx - and the game will CRASH.

The only way to get past it, is to download a Savegame right after being there.
Get the direct download from Dreamcatcher here.

Curse of Monkey Island seems to run fine on Vista. Using Win95 compatibility mode with Visual Themes, Desktop composition, and Scaling on high DPI settings disabled. Also checked the "run as administrator" box. Just finished disk 1 and moving to disk 2 and no problems at all so far.

or just use ScummVM for those LucasArts games...

something that got both Bioshock and Civilization IV running flawlessly on my computer (with Vista):

Disable your tablet PC options.

I forget exactly how you do it, but it's just a box that you uncheck. Google it.

Alright!
Got 2 more games to work without problems on Vista.

Return to Mysterious Island & Journey to the Center of the Moon from AdventureShop.
I just installed them as you normally would.

Maybe I should add, that I played the downloaded version of Journey to the Center of the Moon.
I have the 2 CD's game, but the installation wouldn't go through and cancelled before files were copied to the harddrive.

Great games by the way :D

Just went through Destination Treasure Island too. (The downloaded version also)

Any game with Starforce protection will not run on Vista. Games like Still Life, Act of War, and Prince of Persia Two Thrones. They do have some vista support here:
http://www.star-force.com/support/users/group3.php
but at this point, I would say install any starforce drivers at your own risk.
The way I got my legal copy of Act of War to run on Vista was by getting an illegal no DVD patch of the Internet. Kinda ironic that you have to revert to piracy to bypass the security put there, to prevent you from piracy in the first place :)

Just thought I would let everyone know, that I got The Longest Journey (the EU DVD version with the 2CD/DVD patch - tlj-patch-161.exe) to run on VISTA. :)

It was a full install with also the movies copied over to harddrive.

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I also had luck installing Ankh (the first one downloaded from Telltale) with a patch or this one.
Just download the file audiere.dll and replace it with the one in your Ankh\bin\release folder.

When you install the game, you have the 1.9.3 fileversion, witch doesn't work on Vista.
After installing the patch, the fileversion should be 1.9.4.0.

This is the file info from filefront:

Unofficial update for Ankh 1 and Windows Vista
Without this fix, the game freezes at beginning on Windows Vista.
This update works only with the 32 bit version of but it works with the french version too, and it should also work for other languages, but this has not yet been confirmed!

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And lastly I got both AGON: The Mysterious Codex(from AdventureShop) and AGON: Lost Sword of Toledo(from Gamersgate) to run without any problems.

Still life (downloaded from the Adventureshop) works fine on Vista if you run it in compatibility mode like this: Windows NT 4.0 (SP5) and deactivate visual themes.

I just played though it with those settings :-)

Recently I got Keepsake to run without problems.
I did however install the international patch and the english voice patch.

Only thing I noticed was, that you have to be patient in the beginning, when you first click to start the game. Takes a little while.
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And if anyone wonder, then Overclocked DO work on Vista.
I copied the resource.200 file over from the second DVD as someone suggested to prevent lag.
Had no problems whatsoever with it :)

I'd expect all 2008 and onwards (well, until the next backwards-compatibility-breaking version of Windows appears :P) PC game releases to run on Vista, they'd be stupid not to.

I don't run a PC with Vista on it, but I do have a question just because I'm being curious ...

Are the problems with games vs. Vista an issue of Vista not being designed to run games? Or is it more a problem of Vista being so new (and having different internal programming - for lack of a better way to say it) that the games have not yet 'adapted' to Vista?

With older games it's of course because they are not designed to Vista.
But as you can see, many of them DO play in Vista with minimal problems.
And if not DosBox and ScummVM is your friend :D

With the new games, I believe its - as you say, because they haven't adapted to Vista yet :)

Right after buying it I switched computers, and Broken Sword 3 will in no way run on windows vista, I've tried every compatibility setting and so far it seems like it will absolutely not work :(.