Thanks for the suggestion, but it doesn't seem to work. I had already tried the same with jv16, now I tried with ccleaner which indeed found some more registry keys it deemed useless (I found out it also deleted the cookie allowing me to log in here automatically), but after deleting them I still get the message that an install of dark omen is already present.
Hi folks, I hope you're willing to help me out here.
As I said, in the weekend I was going to try out the "special army" file kindly made for me, as well as the goblin and dwarf campaign. At first all went very well. I played through the whole campaign yesterday with the special army in "fast mode" (without taking any sidequests). I was wondering if I could defeat the dread king with a non-optimal experience, and of course I wasn't. Pistoliers and elven archers were, as logical, impressive in the first half of the game - the vampire was a bit disappointing, I remember the undead army file of several years ago had the vampire able to summon zombies, while this one never got that spell due to low xp I suppose - but in the end, not having most of the items and with not enough experience I was summarily slaughtered at the black pyramid. Till there all well, great fun to replay the game after years, and I was even thinking about using the win32 editor to try building my own campaign.
Then however, instead of going to sleep, I decided to have a quick peek at the start of the goblin and dwarven campaign, and there things went wrong. Although I had stored the original game data in a separate folder, I must have been a little sleepy and got it overwritten at some point. So this morning I thought I could solve things making a second install on my separate second hard disk, but this only got things worse. I soon found out for some reason the game was always reading the army files form the second installation instead of from the first. As a result I couldn't get it to run the mods anymore. So I uninstalled both of them - manually, because going through uninstallshield did not work. However, when I try to install a fresh version now I always get the message that dark omen is already installed. I presume there must be lines of it left in the registry, and that's a bit risky for me to go deleting things...
So what can I do to solve this, to get a new functional install to tinker with without risking to screw up everything? Many thanks to those kind, patient and computer savvy enough to help.
The first time I got to fight the final battle there just was no way I could win it, no matter how many times I tried. I noticed however two things: 1) the more experienced units survived longer; 2) I killed a lot of my own by not halting cannon and mortar fire in time (I'm not that good at real time micromanagement, I do a lot better in turn based ) So I came to a drastical solution: I replayed the campaign deciding right from the start which were going to be the final 10 units, and thus giving xp only to them. The list was, at first, easily made: grudgebringer cavalry (forced, and one of the best anyway), grudgebringer crossbows, ragnar wolves, fire mage, flagellants, ogres, elven bows, pistoliers. The rest was a bit harder. The ice mage requires a lot of micromanagement and is hard to get experienced; greatswords and dwarves more or less suck, cannons are dangerous for your own people... so I took the grudgebringer infantry, which is nothing to write home about but at least you get it from the start, and never deployed cannons, mortar, steam tank. Some levels were a nightmare without their long reach, but in the end my units were all at full xp or close, and the final battle was, if not really easy, finally winnable. Then I experimented a little with less than 10 units, I can't really remember what was the lowest number I managed to beat the dread king with, but I do remember once killing about 90% of the undead with the fire mage.
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.
Thanks Malus, I'll give it a try later today if I find the time (busy day).
To bembelimen: no, not yet. I will try the orc and the dwarven campaign, however from skimming summarily through those thread I got the (erroneous?) impression they where still in an experimental status. I read something like only one battle being ready, but maybe that referred to an earlier stadium of mod development. Anyway, can they be as easily installed and uninstalled as with the simple substitution of a file?
Malus, I will try the editor when I find the time, but if meanwhile you're willing to adapt a file for me that would be very kind. If it is not too time-consuming, come to think about it, there are some more units you get only in the end I would like to get earlier... Can you swap them also with some of the 4 you start with? Could you, say, make a file where at the start I get a vampire lord (or if that's not possible the ice mage) instead of the cannon, the pistoliers instead of the infantry, the elven bowmen instead of the crossbows? All that PLUS the treeman in place of the greatswords? If it takes too much time or is complicated obviously only the treeman-greatswords exchange would be fine.
I know this will probably make the campaign too easy, but when the game came out I completed the game several time, so I'm more looking for alternative things than for challenge here. And maybe through the editor also the challenge level can be raised making the enemy stronger or more numerous, right?
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.
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.
I too recently discovered this site - very recently actually, a few hours ago - and immediately grabbed the chance to replay the only RTS game I ever truly liked. Many thanks also to the thread starter for the three alternative "campaigns". I do however remember a very old undead army file which gave you a vampire lord right at the start, able to cast undead spells. I guess it was way overpowered, alas I couldn't find time back then to play it through and now I can't find the file anymore. Does anybody else remember it? It's not the undead army file downloadable from here, which gives you ghouls, skeleton archers, a skull thrower and the black grail.
And another thing while I am at it. It's probably the wrong forum, but is there any mod that allows you to take the treeman to the final battle, yo make him thus a "staying" unit from when he appears (close to the end) to the black pyramid, or maybe even one where you get him from the start?
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