[snoopy.girl]

Hi,
I have installed Discworld Noir on an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with 512MB ram that has Windows XP proffessional SP2 installed. After a normal installation, the game goes on smoothly, I can save and reload saved games in the previously described way (New Game > lots of ESC > F1 > Load Game).

The problem is that I might not have saved the game for a while and it may crash! It is not the known notepad problem as this does not happen when I click on the notepad although it can happen at that point as well. In fact I have no way of suspecting when it's about to crash and the only thing I can do up to now is save frequently and "pray"! But how frequently can one save a game -especially when it makes you get carried away!-, and when will it crash? So, I end up playing some schenes twice or three or four times!!!

Does anyone know of a patch that corrects this? please HELP!!! if you do.

Cheers,
snoopy.girl

[NemelChelovek]

As I just got the game, how DO you solve the notebook glitch?

[forbjok]

Hi.

I realize this is an ancient thread, but I just finished Discworld Noir on Windows XP (specifically, Professional x64 Edition), and thought I would post my experience here, so that it might hopefully help anyone who are trying to play the game and having trouble. (as I found this thread easily on google, but failed to actually find solutions to any of the problems I had, except by trial and error)

First off, I've had the game for years (since before Windows XP came out), but never got around to playing through it before now.
I'm a major fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, and I've had the first Discworld game (you know, the insanely difficult and often unlogical, but hysterically funny one) since around the time it came out, and have played through both it and Discworld II "Missing Presumed..." several times since...
Despite that, even though I've only played through it once, I think Discworld Noir is a much overlooked and unique game, both in the Discworld series and among adventure games in general (a genre which I am of course also a long-time fan of).
While the interface is basically fairly standard point 'n click, it really does have some unique twists in gameplay (the notebook system among other things), and quite a few clever (if not too difficult - unlinke the original Discworld) puzzles.
In summary - I highly recommend anyone who haven't played it to do so.

On to my experiences.
This playthrough was done on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (64-bit), on a machine with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU, 8GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS video card.
My copy of Discworld Noir is original discs (3CDs, "Best Of Infogrames Adventures" label), FULL install.

I can not of course guarantee that the experience will be the same with any of the abandonware-releases floating around the net - or for that matter original discs on different machines.

Installing the game was not a problem, nor was running it and starting a new game.
On the main menu, clicking the buttons "Resume" and "Options" will always cause a crash UNLESS you press F1 to bring up the menu first. If you press F1, then close the menu again, and press any of the buttons, they will work as intended.
The game mostly ran fine, though it did occassionally crash to desktop for no apparent reason - this was occassional, and did not happen often - as such it was not a problem, as I saved all the time anyway (and recommend doing so).

I did however encounter two problematic locations that under normal circumstances consistently crashed every time - these appeared to always be related to FMV sequences, and trying to skip the FMVs did not prevent the crashes.
Running the game in Windows 95/98 compatibility mode (more or less the first thing I tried) does NOT fix the crashes (in fact they don't seem to make any difference stability-wise) - instead they cause the game to run like utter crap (constant stuttering in animations and sound), and as such should not be used. Using the newer Windows 2000 or XP compatibility modes doesn't cause performance issues, but they don't fix anything either, so they are completely pointless to use.

The first potential gamestopper is the FMV sequence where Malachite pulls up Regin's carriage from the River Ankh. This would cause a crash every time I tried it, however I eventually found a way to get past it: Turn off Subtitles. I have no idea why this makes a difference, but it does. With subtitles enabled, it will crash every time, but with subtitles disabled it won't.
The second is when first entering the Merchant's Guild, and is apparently once again caused by an FMV sequence which plays only the first time entering.
Turning off subtitles did not fix this one, and it took me quite a while to get around it.
This is how I did it: Using REGEDIT, locate the Discworld Noir registry key at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Perfect Entertainment\Discworld Noir". Under it there should be a value called "Start Windowed", which is set to "No" by default. Change it to "Yes", then change your color depth to 16-bit color (this is required because otherwise the image will look corrupted when running in windowed mode - you can of course change it back to 32-bit when you're past the "issue") in your Windows display settings. When starting the game now, it should (as the setting implies) start in a window, instead of fullscreen. Reload your save before entering the Merchant's Guild, and enter it while still in windowed mode - now the FMV should play correctly without crashing, and you should be able to get past it and save. The crash will not happen when re-entering later, as the FMV is only played the first time. You can change into fullscreen mode at any time by pressing Alt-Enter.

Another issue I encountered later was a crash when using the grapple to climb back into the Patrician's palace in Act III. However, I had done this in previous acts without any of the aforementioned fixes (and later as well), without the game crashing, so I believe it may have been somewhat random.
In any case "windowed mode" fixed this as well, and I did not encounter it again later, even when running in fullscreen.

Using these few workarounds in their respective locations, you should be able to play through the rest of the game without any trouble. (or at least I did)