Warhammer Dark Omen Forum

Hi everybody,

did someone come up with a functional solution about how to run Chaos Gate under XP? I mean without resorting to emulators, virtual machines et similia, I fear I am not computer savvy enough for those things and I would likely screw up my machine.

Best regards.

im adding up to question. i've tried to play it recently but got errors, untill picked option "run in compat. mode as Win98"
after that game started but video bugged and battle doesnt starts (even thiouhg i was able to create my team).

although i felt liek game is pretty bad when i played it first time 9processed liek 2-3 missions) for some reasons. i dont remember reasons quite good since i was liek 13-14 years old or so.

Is the game for DOS?
If yes try DosBox (http://www.dosbox.com/) (Download->Windows). This program emulates DOS. Yes this is a emulator but better then virtualizing the whole system via Virtual PC ;).
Just Drag&Drop the Game executable on the DosBox.exe.
Has also the side effect that you can play games in a window

...And there is D-fend utility, which has more friendly interface. So you better use DosBOX+Dfend. (if you really need to use it)

Imo Drag&Drop is user friendly enough :)
(Ok if you need a CD it's a bit more difficult ;), one line in the config file)

Heh, which DOsBox is this? I used that one with very hard interface. It something like: 1) boot disk & other things in DOS.
2) you must set settings in DOS!. (after my configuration it always sayed: disk boot not found! or somthing like that)
And it was really great to use D-fend, which is windows-adapted program.

Sure if you just double click it you get a Dos Prompt.
If you use Drag&Drop Dosbox will automount the Game Directory as C and then start the game.

For CD support you just have to enter the following command at the end of the config:
mount d x:\ -t cdrom     (mounts drive d under x:\ as a cdrom drive, you can btw mount folders as CD-Roms too ;))

Many thanks to everybody for replying so promptly. I will give this dosbox thing a try asap. I hope it's really simple to use. It does not alter your registry or reduce overall performance of the processor, does it?

A few more things, since I am at it:

1) does anybody of you know if in the same way it would also possible to play the even older "wake of the ravager" game in xp? I remember it had some problems with expanded memory or something similar, it was hard to run it even on win98; 2) for the member who was unimpressed by chaos gate: give it a try again, it's turn based and is actually quite a good game, maybe not challenging as the 5 star general series or varied as Jagged Alliance II, but it's still one of the better tactical-level turn based squad games.

No it doesn't write anything to the registry, it only writes to the config file in the dosbox directory. The program only takes CPU power when it is running. BUt don't forget that its an emulation and that means huge CPU usage compared to running it native.

Yes expanded memory sound 100% like a DOS game. It should run without any problems under DosBox.

Ghabry, I suppose however that I have to first install the games normally in xp, right? Sorry, I didn't yet get around to actually try it out - work, alas - but while I remember from previous attempts that chaos gate installs fine but then crashes on the first mission, wake of the ravager won't even install. It checks for minimum requirements and finds some kind of memory (I think it was expanded) lacking. I think I remember that even back in the late nineties with a 486 the only workaround was using a program called magnaram. Anyway I'll give dosbox a try in the weekend.

Chaos Gate crashes becose of the Cultist's laser gun bug.
This game is Directx based game, so how come you started it on DOSbox?
On Win98 upgrading DirectX to wersion  ..8.0? - as i recall kills the game and saves

 

Is it a Windows game, or does it have executables both for DOS and Windows? I seem to recall some early games having both... Anyway, if it is a Windows game then you can't run it under DOSBox (unless it is a Windows 3 game and you install that Win version on your DOSBox machine :P ), but if you don't have any luck you could always play it under Linux using WINE, or make a virtual W98 (or something) machine on your current Windows install.