Grim Fandango on WinXP

D

dataangel

Guest
I have never had so many damn problems with a game :p

I picked this game out of the bargain bin because I was told it was an adventure classic. Unfortunately, my system is relatively new (XP 3000+, Radeon 9700 Pro, WinXP), and this game was released back in '98. On a fresh install, running the game causes me to see the load screen briefly (a grim reaper dude riding some giant machine) before a crash to desktop with no error message.

So then I looked online and found a patch that's supposed to fix problems with newer computers. Half the time I run the patch, it crashes. Completely randomly it will patch sucessfully. I have no idea why. When it does patch, and I run the game, I get the exact same problem, a straight crash to desktop with no error message.

So, not to give up hope, I tried running GRIMFANDANGO.EXE in Win95 compatibility mode. Same problem. 98 mode? Same problem. All modes same problem. Still I endured, and downloaded the microsoft compatibility toolkit. In the toolkit I turned on win95 compatibility mode and the LUA and LUA cleanup modes. This managed to make Grim Fandango stay at a black screen (no loading screen), never closing, but frozen. I then disabled a couple of the LUA tweaks, and got it to tell me that it couldn't find the CD. No frickin' clue why, it was in the drive :p

So then browsing around on the net I find a registry trick to let you play without the CD. You create a key called good_times and set it to TRUE and copy the Grimdata folder files from both cd's into your install directory. This seemed to have no effect. Fooling around with the compatibility toolkit more, I managed to get it to give me a new error, Grim Fandango could not find files! Make sure the game is installed correctly and the cd is in the drive.

Now, fooling around with the toolkit some more, I could not recreate the error message asking me for the CD. For some reason it seems to have disappeared. So then I get the idea to find a cd crack. Maybe that'll let me play it, but NOOOOOOOO. Grim Fandango keeps giving the same error about not being able to find files, even after trying several versions of the crack with and without the patch.

Reading around on the net forums some more, I managed to find out that there was a newer version of Grim Fandango released in a DVD case that did a complete install and had fixes to work on newer computers and WindowsXP. I don't know if this is just fandango with the 1.01 patch I downloaded, but the setup program at least would have to be different. So my idea now would be to find somebody with the DVD copy and get them to send me their exe and see if that works. But I don't know anyone.

I am absolutely friggin' sapped of ideas for how to get this damn game to work. I even tried downloading wine (couldn't figure out how to get it to work, only heard of it being used on linux and don't know what to do with the windows binaries). I also found a program in beta called residual (from the makers of ScummVM if you're familiar with that) that acts as a virtual machine for running Grim Fandango but at this stage it's very buggy and when I load the game with it it still crashes to desktop (interestingly enough the errors it gives have something to do with LUA -- could be why the LUA tweaks in the toolkit seemed to make some difference).

OK, so I go to my last resort. My mom owns a P2 450mhz laptop running Win98. I install the game. I run it. Same goddamn crash to desktop. I check her DirectX version and notice she has version 7. I have version 9. The game was designed for 6. Not 100% sure that could be the problem, but I don't think I can revert her win98 to running 6 (is 7 the version that comes with 98SE? Not sure she has SE).

Well, now I'm off to try on her laptop with the patch. Wish me luck, and lemme know if you guys have any ideas :p
 
P.S. Before anyone asks, yes I have the latest drivers and BIOS, and I'm running with 16-bit desktop color like Grim asks for.
 
the solution is simple .. take it to the trashbin hehe
j/k

did u try installing it in a different folder or drive while installing it from the cd burner ?
 
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