[Sanjuro]

Is there any kind of patch or anything I can do to get the text working in this game on Windows XP? The game runs great except for text. I can see NOTHING in terms of dialogue trees, etc. I have to blindly choose a text selection, sometimes out of 4 or more choices... It's not worth it. Games shouldn't be annoying to play. Apparently this problem affects the CD-ROM version of the game as well, though I am playing on DVD. Inferno over on Inferno's Windows XP Compatability List says: "For some reason during the installation process...The Text program for this game does not install. An OCX command line is missing. So, here is a plea to the "patch writers and gaming hacks" out there in the universe. If you can write a patch for or better yet already have let us other poor folk know about it!"

Is there a patch? Or is there anything else I can do to get the text working in this game? I have heard elsewhere that the newer CD and DVD drives go too fast and miss the text file or some such thing. I tried a few programs that supposedly slow the DVD and CD down, then installed, but still no luck. Any recommendations on a specific utility for this? Or any other ideas or solutions? Please, if anyone can help me, I'd really appreciate it.

[rustycat]

I am also having same problem with the game. No written text options. Did you ever have a positive response? or suggestion of what to do. I have just installed the game today on my Win98. I'd appreciate some guidance.

[rustycat]

I also noticed that I am unable to Save any games as I can't write a description for the save game. What a drag. I just lost hours of work.

[Lucky's Rainbow]

The problem is not related to XP. It is inherent within each CPU. Or more likely each CD-ROM drive. Some computers can read and install the necessary font file and some can't. The OS doesn't matter. There is no patch for this bug, and SouthPeak gets very defensive and even belligerent if you call them to ask about it. Your only solution is to try installing the game on various computers until you find one where the font works. You have about a 50-50 chance on any given computer, whether Win9X or WinXP. You may also need to do the compatibility mode dance to get it to run on an XP machine, but this has nothing to do with the font problem.

Originally Posted by rustycat

I also noticed that I am unable to Save any games as I can't write a description for the save game. What a drag. I just lost hours of work.

You can write a description but it doesn't show up on the screen. I'm not trying to split hairs, the difference might be important, I'm not sure. Did you type a name and save your game anyway? Try to restore it. I know it sounds crazy, but it worked for me in Temujin (another game by Southpeak, apparently with the same font bug). I could only see what I had typed when I restored. There are no dialogue trees in Temujin, so the font problem is just a minor annoyance.

Originally Posted by Lucky's Rainbow

Your only solution is to try installing the game on various computers until you find one where the font works. You have about a 50-50 chance on any given computer, whether Win9X or WinXP.

What makes you say it's a 50-50 chance?

[Fairygdmther]

I guess I'm on the wrong side of the 50%, sigh. I couldn't get either Temujin or DSOM to run on my Win98se - it must be the wrong kind of CD drive.

FGM

[paulcdavis]

It is possible to read the text on DSOM.
It's not easy.

I installed microsoft virtual pc (45 day freee trial)

Then installed windows 95 in the virtual pc.

Then installed DSOM, which also installed directx 5.

Start the game - Text on screen!. Able to name and save games!

I'm thinking that this has always been a directx problem, although since I'm running windows95 in a virtual machine, it is also running like an older, slower machine as some have said is necessary.

[Winterfury]

Hi, fellow adventurers.

I've been a long time lurker and finally mustered enough determination to register. The reason I'm necrobumping the thread is that I think I might have found a possible solution to the missing text problem. I've tested the game on my Windows XP SP2 with my two DVD drives (the ancient AOpen 1640 Pro-A and the relatively modern Pioneer DVR-115D) and it ran without a hitch. If anybody cares to test it on their system, please let me know and I'll explain further.

Update: Using DXWnd tool, I've managed to run DSOM in windowed mode, take a look at the screenshot. As you see, the game runs natively (no VMWare or VirtualPC) on Windows XP and the text is where it should be. As you also see, the game isn't especially fond of being forced to run in windowed mode.

[HandsFree]

Yes, please explain. I've been struggling with this just this week.

[Winterfury]

Originally Posted by HandsFree

Yes, please explain. I've been struggling with this just this week.

1. Download this zip archive. Inside it you'll find a file named riched32.dll. Extract it somewhere.

2. Open the folder where you installed the game, then open 'bin' folder and put the extracted file in there. If, for example, the path for your installed game is 'CProgram Files\SouthPeak Interactive\DSOM', you should put the extracted file (riched32.dll) in the folder 'CProgram Files\SouthPeak Interactive\DSOM\bin'

3. Run the game and tell me if it works for you.

[Winterfury]

Hmm... I've replied some time ago, but for some reason the message didn't go through - I was informed that it's currently awaiting moderators approval. I figure it's some kind of spam prevention measure, and I'm not complaining (okay, maybe just a bit), but I'm a little surprised that the mere fact of my going through the registration ritual isn't proof enough that I'm not a spammer. Well, as they say, "when in Rome..."

[HandsFree]

Great, it works! (and not even windowed)
What a coincidence you're posting this just when I run into this problem.
Thanks

[Winterfury]

I'll provide some details in case anyone is interested. The common belief is that the problem with the missing text in DSOM is caused by the game being unable to read text or some files not installed properly. I've run the game in the debugger and found out that it is not really the case - the text is actually there in memory while the game is running, it's just that for some reason it's not showing up. While examining the game in the debugger, I've also found out that DSOM handles text in Rich Text format and uses Microsoft Rich Edit control. Up till now there are several versions of Rich Edit and the newer ones, according to Microsoft, are supposed to be backward compatible with the older ones, but in reality it’s only true up to some degree. Now, different Rich Edit versions (read: different DLLs) are distributed with different versions of Windows. Rich Edit 1.0 (riched32.dll) is included in Windows 95. Windows 98 includes both Rich Edit 1.0 and Rich Edit 2.0 (riched32.dll and riched20.dll accordingly) and Windows XP includes Rich Edit 3.0 (its corresponding DLL is confusingly named riched20.dll) and Rich Edit 1.0 emulator (riched32.dll, which is in fact a thin wrapper around riched20.dll). DSOM loads riched32.dll, i.e. uses Rich Edit 1.0 (which figures, since the game was made for Windows 95.) I suspected that there might be an incompatibility between the Rich Edit 1.0 which the game was programmed with in mind and the emulator provided by the recent versions of Windows. So I copied the riched32.dll from my Windows 98 distribution to the game folder where there other DLLs that depend on it and you know the rest.

Also, there are three different versions of riched32.dll (can you imagine that) and only one of them (with the version number 4.0.993.4) is redistributable. Fortunately, the one that is also happens to be just the one that is required by the game.

The bottom line is that Microsoft is to blame for breaking compatibility and creating this mess.

Originally Posted by HandsFree

Great, it works!

Glad to hear it! Now, can you please tell me what CPU you have and which Windows version you're running?

Originally Posted by HandsFree

(and not even windowed)

Well, it isn't supposed to be windowed. I used a special utility to force the windowed mode on it so I could take a screenshot to present it as a proof of DSOM indeed running on XP with the text being visible.

[HandsFree]

Originally Posted by Winterfury

Now, can you please tell me what CPU you have and which Windows version you're running?

It's an old laptop winxp, 160 GHz.

[Winterfury]

Thanks, HandsFree.

It would be nice if someone could test it on Vista or Windows 7. I believe it should also work on these operating systems, but I would appreciate if someone confirmed it.

One other thing worth mentioning. You might want to turn off hardware acceleration if you run into graphics glitches. It's not related to the dialogue text problem at all, it's just that the game is old and it shows.

P.S. I installed the game on my P4 2.40 Ghz Windows XP notebook to test it on a different hardware and apart from the aforementioned graphics issue, which went away after I disabled hardware acceleration, everything seemed to work just fine.

[GreyFuss]

Fantastic Winterfury

After all these years of people trying to create a fix for this great classic game you have come up with the solution. Congratulations and thank you. I tried it on one of my computers that runs XP Home with a Pentium 4 3.00GHz and the game ran perfect with all the missing text visible on my XP Home. Kudos to you and you efforts. So many gamers have never had the chance to play this game because they didn't have an older computer or the know how to use Virtual PC.

Great work.

[lakerz]

Let me add my thanks for your efforts in resolving this issue! That is some great detective work to figure out exactly what was happening with the text. I downloaded the dll just in case I ever want to try to play this game on a new computer.

[Winterfury]

Thank you, guys. I can't help but think that if SouthPeak used the time they spent brushing off customers a little bit more productively like, say, actually investigating the problem, the solution could have been found long ago.

[GreyFuss]

I hope you don't mind Winterfury but I think your fantastic work needs to be spread around so those who could not enjoy this classic adventure know what you have done for them.

Including everyone here at Adventure Gamers threads have been started at Adventure Point http://adventurepoint.forumotion.com...de-of-the-moon and Game Boomers http://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubb...tml#Post702917 to get the word out