Windows 10

Discuss Drakan: Order of the Flame with fellow players and post any technical problems here where an 'unofficial' support team will try and help you. Gameplay help questions can go here too.
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AXE
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Windows 10

Post by AXE »

Here we go Again!!!!! Drop any comments here reguarding your wonderful experiences with the new Win 10 OS. 8)

I had no difficulty doing a fresh install of Drakan, from cd. ran the game with disk in, and NO MOUSE! hard to play with no mouse? ya!

Installed the Gold pack with AIO patch, still NO MOUSE!!!!!!!!!

OK I do like win 10 and understand the security reasons behind it, but it will take time to get the bugs out. No Drakan for awhile hmmm!

Help my Drakan needs a fix, more than just rum. 8)

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Arokhs Twin
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Arokhs Twin »

Hi Axe,
I can confirm that Drakan (Single Player) works fine on Windows 10 however you have to use the AIO patch and the 3DFX virtual graphics card plus latest windows specific sound card drivers. This may help - I had mouse issues too as it wasn't running full screen - its because desktop composition on Windows 10 cannot be turned off so it causes problems with older games written for Win95/98.

See this thread for more info - the virtual 3dfx graphics card solved my problems with being unable to run it full screen. It improves the frame rate too. http://www.arokhslair.net/forum/viewtop ... f=2&t=4018

Multiplayer however - now that's different. It constantly crashes to desktop even on running a dedicated server.
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UCyborg
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Re: Windows 10

Post by UCyborg »

At the time of Windows 10 release, I didn't encounter any problem running Drakan (at least single player), if the same troubleshooting techniques to make it run properly on Windows 8.1 were applied.

Do you two have the latest AiO Patch? The version from October 2014 has a critical bug, which could theoretically crash dedicated server on any Windows version because I've overlooked an important assembly level detail when it comes to API calling conventions and CPU registers preservation.

I will install Windows 10 in virtual machine this weekend and see if I can reproduce any problem with multiplayer. As for graphics and fullscreen issues, the best solution ATM is dgVoodoo v2.44. The latest version (2.45 ATM) seems to have some new bugs, like moving and shrinking other programs' windows when tabbing out of the game.
Last edited by UCyborg on Fri Sep 25, 2015 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

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Arokhs Twin
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Re: Windows 10

Post by Arokhs Twin »

Yes, the latest version of the AIO patch stopped the multiplayer crash. All seems OK now - have been playtesting it for a couple of hours and it works fine.
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UCyborg
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Re: Windows 10

Post by UCyborg »

Ah, so that bug affected Windows 10 too. Been playing with Windows 10 on both virtual machine and a real machine, no new bugs found when it comes to Drakan, except the usual bugs in virtual machine due to virtual graphics card being rather poor compared to the real thing. In multiplayer, the biggest issues are probably various errors in some player created levels, exploiting bugs in the game engine, making it crash.

I was unable to reproduce any sort of mouse problems, but definitely try running the game with dgVoodoo. Another thing that comes to mind, maybe you have some weird program running in the background.

As for Windows 10 in general, right now, it seems to lack polish and fluidity of Windows 8.1. There is still software out there that needs to be updated before it works properly with the new OS. And then we have the annoying new policy that all updates from Windows Update must be installed, including buggy drivers. They can be hidden, but no option in GUI, instead, separate app must be downloaded to get the functionality back. Or how about the annoying Xbox app that records games in the background, slowing them down, and can't even be turned off normally without signing into M$ account. Can be turned off via registry, or removed altogether with a PowerShell command, but still. And that's just some of the things, one can find a lot more bull**** when it comes to Windows 10.
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

UCyborg
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Re: Windows 10

Post by UCyborg »

and NO MOUSE! hard to play with no mouse? ya!

This happens with Drakan when Windows applies DPI scaling (when DPI setting is above 100%), more specifically, when per-monitor DPI scaling is enabled, which is a thing since Windows 8. The mouse is still there, just confined in the corner.

It could've been avoided by going into compatibility of Drakan.exe and disabling display scaling (on newer versions the checkbox of interest is called Override high DPI scaling behavior. Scaling performed by: and pick Application, there's a button Change high DPI settings to get there on application's Compatibility tab), though it's not needed for Drakan with recent patches anymore.

Looks like Windows 10 version 1809 (Build 17763) fixes the old DirectDraw bug from Windows 8 that causes 3s delay when tabbing in and out, at startup, basically whenever video mode change request is made and the settings match the desktop (resolution and refresh rate).
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

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