Forums > Game Forums > Men in Black: The Game > FINALLY got this to work
BurningStickMan (17916) on 6/2/2011 6:09 AM · Permalink · Report
I apologize, but I wanted to share this pointless personal victory. Had struggled with this game for about four days.
Could get it to work easily on the Win98 computer, but with no way to capture screenshots (capture utilities didn't work, Print Screen just gave a black frame. Cue days of trying different virtualization solutions, and being reminded of just how shoddy the state of Win9x emulation for games is.
But to be fair, that era was pretty fast and loose in the coding department. "Standards? Screw that. Does it work? Then ship it."
Anyway, screens will finally be on the way!
BurningStickMan (17916) on 6/2/2011 5:36 PM · Permalink · Report
Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 has been the most consistently reliable (in terms of virtualization) but also the least game-friendly. I've only gotten Diablo to run on it, while everything else failed. But on this one, it suddenly decided to work. I updated to DirectX 8.1 (MiB only needs DX 5), so maybe that was it. Or maybe the universe just took pity on me.
I had also tweaked the config to use 16 MB of video memory instead of 8 MB, but I'm not sure that actually did anything/was recognized.
Also VPC emulates an actual video card that actually existed, whereas VMWare emulates a faked "VMWare" card, and VirtualBox leaves you entirely on your own (they recommend a generic driver like SciTech's). Both of those were going nowhere, and this may have been a factor.
Daniel Saner (3503) on 6/7/2011 10:19 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Does VirtualPC support 3D acceleration now? A while back when I compared the different virtualisation solutions for old games, VMware were the only one where you could use hardware-accelerated Direct3D, so for many games it was the only hope to begin with.
BurningStickMan (17916) on 6/7/2011 11:33 PM · Permalink · Report
It does not, and believe they stopped development on it so it won't.
I haven't been impressed with VMware's 3D support though, but that's just the few I've tried in the past (X-Wing 95, Starfleet Command). Like all virtualization, I'm sure it's dependent on what game you're trying to run. What works for one won't for another.
Havoc Crow (29859) on 6/8/2011 4:53 AM · Permalink · Report
Maybe one day, I can use this to finally capture screenies from Wacki.
BurningStickMan (17916) on 6/8/2011 6:21 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start JudgeDeadd wrote--]Maybe one day, I can use this to finally capture screenies from Wacki. [/Q --end JudgeDeadd wrote--] I actually wasn't able to find any built-in screen capture utility with any of the virtualizers, but you can full-screen it and use something like Fraps. That's how I got mine.
Daniel Saner (3503) on 6/8/2011 10:55 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
You have trouble playing that? I have installed it on Windows 7 64-bit and had no problem at all. I don't speak Polish though so it was a bit boring, hehe.
Havoc Crow (29859) on 6/12/2011 12:40 PM · Permalink · Report
Play it, I can (though it crashes ocasionally.) I cannot make screenshots, though (the best I've managed was a completely wrong-colored mess).
Daniel Saner (3503) on 6/13/2011 9:36 PM · Permalink · Report
If it's just wrong-coloured (and not that noisy mess that sometimes comes out) you might have luck with simple post-processing. I once took screenshots from a game with the colours all wrong, and it turned out it was simply the colours being stored in BGR or something like that, instead of RGB. Was able to fix all those screens by just using "Image > Swap Colors > ..." in my image viewer (IrfanView).
BurningStickMan (17916) on 6/14/2011 2:12 AM · Permalink · Report
Have you tried this:
"A workaround has been posted elsewhere: Start Task Manager, kill the explorer process, then do a File>Run and enter the path of the game's executable. When you're done and want your desktop back, go back to Task Manager and do a File>Run>explorer
The workaround works because the old games do not know how to make the new Win7 API call to hide the Taskbar, which appears to be the cause of the color problem."
Stops things like this from happening in XWing95.
Havoc Crow (29859) on 6/16/2011 5:52 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start BurningStickMan wrote--]The workaround works because the old games do not know how to make the new Win7 API call to hide the Taskbar, which appears to be the cause of the color problem." [/Q --end BurningStickMan wrote--] Win7 API in Windows XP?