[MuzikNFilm]

Bravo for the text fix, but now we have a fatal bug issue. I am running the game via DVD on XP service pk 3 and it crashes to reboot every time I play the Blackjack game with Kit. Also (since we can earn money thru slot machines eventually and continue game), when you get to the Gravity Dice game with Alberto, it crashes to reboot everytime as well. Please help me somebody out there. I love this game and am experiencing it for the first time! I have followed Inferno's compatability instructions to the T and have tried each compatability format that there is, but it still crashes. I am shedding a tear, feeling as if I am all alone in this mess. H E L P P P !! !!

[GreyFuss]

I am not a computer tech and I don't know if these will work but there are a couple of things you may want to try.

First try reducing your Video Acceleration a notch at a time and try the game again. If after trying each of these with no results try reducing the Audio Acceleration a notch at a time to see if that may work. Hope this helps, it truly is an excellent game that has passed so many adventure gamers.

[Winterfury]

For those of you who have to disable video acceleration to make DSOM work, I've made a small patch which forces the game to use hardware emulation only, preventing it from using any hardware-supported features. The result should be exactly the same as disabling hardware acceleration, only the patch won't affect any global settings in your system (so you don't have to restore anything after playing the game).

The patched game dll is in this archive. Open your DSOM\Bin folder, find the file named xvideoio.dll and make a backup copy of it. Then copy the patched xvideoio.dll from the downloaded archive to DSOM\Bin

I recommend you use the patch only if the game doesn't work properly on your system unless hardware acceleration is disabled completely. Don't use it otherwise.

GreyFuss, thanks for spreading the word.

[GreyFuss]

My pleasure Winterfury. I will also post this extra fix for those that need it.

BTW, I played and finished the game with your original fix with absolutely no problems.

[Winterfury]

Thank you again, GreyFuss. But I'm afraid that here: "an addition fix for those who had a little trouble with the above fix" you got it a bit wrong. It's my fault, I should have provided a better explanation. These two fixes aren't connected in any possible way. The second fix tries to solve a completely different and entirely separate problem. It's in no way an additional fix for those who experienced problems with text fix, it's a fix for those who have different (not text related) problems which go away after they disable video acceleration. Let me quote sanford from GameBoomers forums:

"Hi everybody. I have Win XP and I finally got DSOM to work correctly on my PC. Here's how: I installed the TEXT PATCH as mentioned. I also went to DXDIAG>Display, and disabled DIRECT DRAW. <skipped>"

What he in fact did was not disabling DirectDraw (if he somehow managed to do that, the game not only wouldn't work correctly on his PC, but in fact would refuse to work at all) but disabling DirectDraw acceleration. Well, the xvideoio.dll fix does exactly that. It disables DirectDraw acceleration, but it does it locally, for the game only, thus eliminating the need of executing DXDIAG, disabling acceleration, executing DXDIAG again and restoring old settings afterwards.

So, to sum it up: if you have (video related) problems which disappear when you turn off video acceleration completely, you might want to try the second fix.

Originally Posted by GreyFuss

I played and finished the game with your original fix with absolutely no problems.

I'm very glad to hear that.

[GreyFuss]

You are right WinterFury. I have reworded those posts

[MuzikNFilm]

Okay I admit I got antsy and finally broke down (after 4 years!) and figured out how to install Virtual PC. I had problems installing it before and just got frustrated and gave up. With DSOM looming, I just had to figure it out and now it works through Win95 (VirtualPC) without a problem. Thanks for all your help, now if I ever want to play it again, it WILL work on my system.

[rennervision]

I just felt compelled to register and express my extreme excitement at discovering this fix. Thank you Winterfury for sharing this!

This has literally been an 11-year-old mystery for me. I happen to have a Windows 98 machine that could already play DSOM - and another South Peak adventure game based on the movie Wild Wild West. However, when I originally bought WWW in 2000, it would not play on my PC.

What I could never understand is why it would freeze with no visible text back then. I even tried another computer with the same results - both of which were running Windows 98. I emailed South Peak for help and they told me they were no longer supporting Wild Wild West. (It had only been out for about 8 months when I bought it from a retail store and took it home to play!)

Then years later it started working again on that same PC. Thinking I was going crazy, I checked it on some other computers - it worked on Virtual PC, but it still exhibited the same problem on any other computer running Windows XP or higher. So I always wondered why it worked on some Win98 builds and not others. (Even the same computer where it originally couldn't!) But I decided to just consider myself fortunate and, ending my vow to never buy another South Peak game due to their horrible tech support, got DSOM to install and play after that.

And finally it all makes sense. This PC I use was a Dell. I just pulled out the old recovery disc and extracted the riched32.dll file to discover it had a file version of 4.00.834.839. But sometime years later I updated the BIOS on the MB, and I had to buy a retail version of 98 to later reinstall the OS. (The recovery disc no longer recognized it as a Dell.) And so I checked the version number of riched32.dll currently on my OS and there it was - version 4.00.993.4. (The one Winterfury found to be the only compatible version of Rich Edit!)

So I just thought I would share my little discovery in case anyone wonders why these games run on some builds of 98, and in other cases don't - some OEM versions install an incompatible riched32.dll file.

[Timeraner]

Originally Posted by MuzikNFilm

Bravo for the text fix, but now we have a fatal bug issue. I am running the game via DVD on XP service pk 3 and it crashes to reboot every time I play the Blackjack game with Kit. Also (since we can earn money thru slot machines eventually and continue game), when you get to the Gravity Dice game with Alberto, it crashes to reboot everytime as well. Please help me somebody out there. I love this game and am experiencing it for the first time! I have followed Inferno's compatability instructions to the T and have tried each compatability format that there is, but it still crashes. I am shedding a tear, feeling as if I am all alone in this mess. H E L P P P !! !!

I registered to see if anyone could help me....

I currently still have the same issue involving Blackjack with Kit. I was able to find an entirely unrelated patch to allow this game to run on 64-bit Windows 7, and it ran perfectly fine, until said blackjack scene. I tried installing the patch, but blackjack (and everything else, all of a sudden) started crashing. I just reinstalled the game and I'm going to try playing up to the casino with the video patch again.

Here's that fix for 64-bit Windows http://www.visualtour.com/downloads/xp_fix.exe

[Tuco The Rat]

This is great news.

This game has been on my shelf for a decade now and I just got it running again. This has been one of the games I've been most eager to play and now it works.

HOWEVER, I forgot about all the disk swapping. My PC is under my desk so it takes some effort to stick my head under there and switch DVDs.

Is there an installer out there? Kind of like there is for the Tex Murphy games or Black Dahlia?

[Aerothorn]

So the text patch works fanatically, but I'm having a different problem. Playing in Windows 7 and the audio is clipping at fairly regularly intervals, which pretty much kills immersion. Has any one else had this problem, and is there any known solution? I thought it might be slow load times from the CD, but using virtual mounting software didn't fix the problem.

[Aerothorn]

Of course, as soon as I posted that I realized the problem (needed to update my audio drivers). Thanks!

[Aerothorn]

Oh, and Tuco - while I don't know an installer proper, you can use a virtual drive system (I'm using Virtual CD) to set make images of all the DSOM CDs and then set up multiple concurrent virtual drives. The game then recognizes all CDs as being loaded, auto-switched, and there is no switching involved (basically, it's like you're running the DVD version). A pain to set up but totally worth it.

[Winterfury]

I've reuploaded the video fix (patched xvideoio.dll) since the file I uploaded earlier was removed:
http://www.mediafire.com/?bm707wxoytg62rw

I've also uploaded the latest version of RICHED32.DLL (5.0.1461.82), the one that was shipped with Windows ME. It was the last 'true' version before Microsoft switched to emulation:
http://www.mediafire.com/?pokv5p07xqfx4p9

Originally Posted by rennervision

And finally it all makes sense. This PC I use was a Dell. I just pulled out the old recovery disc and extracted the riched32.dll file to discover it had a file version of 4.00.834.839. But sometime years later I updated the BIOS on the MB, and I had to buy a retail version of 98 to later reinstall the OS. (The recovery disc no longer recognized it as a Dell.) And so I checked the version number of riched32.dll currently on my OS and there it was - version 4.00.993.4. (The one Winterfury found to be the only compatible version of Rich Edit!)

Actually, 4.00.993.4 is not the version of Rich Edit, it's the version of riched32.dll (the file which contains implementation of Rich Edit 1.0 control). Think of it as the build version. Both riched32.dll of version 4.00.993.4 and riched32.dll of version 5.0.1461.82 (for example) are implementations of the same old Rich Edit 1.0 control. The more recent build may have some internal changes and introduce some fixes and optimizations, but it's essentially the same thing. Well, at least it's supposed to be. Also, it's not the only compatible version. The version that was shipped with Windows 95 is also compatible, so is the one that comes with Windows ME (5.0.1461.82). Somewhere along the way Microsoft decided to switch to Rich Edit 1.0 emulator and starting from Windows 2000 (I believe), each and every Microsoft OS was shipped with the emulator instead of the 'real thing'. That's where the problems come from. Apparently, the emulator wasn't tested enough or Microsoft just didn't care enough to fix the compatibility issues. The bottom line is, only the 'real thing' is compatible with DSOM, the emulator isn't.

If it doesn't make much sense, don't blame me, blame Microsoft. =)

[micokeman]

Thank you for uploading the files again!