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Hello, my Cryptic Passage add on won't start.. I click on the startup and DosBox window comes up then the screen turns black for 2 seconds and goes back to my desktop with no signs of an error or anything else. I have tried to run as administrator but this has done nothing. Another question, can anyone give me a run down of what they have their keyboard controls set to? I'd like to play the game with some simple controls and I'd also like to be able to use my mouse to look up and down aswell as all around. Thank-you.
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Magnifishit: Hello, my Cryptic Passage add on won't start.. I click on the startup and DosBox window comes up then the screen turns black for 2 seconds and goes back to my desktop with no signs of an error or anything else. I have tried to run as administrator but this has done nothing. Another question, can anyone give me a run down of what they have their keyboard controls set to? I'd like to play the game with some simple controls and I'd also like to be able to use my mouse to look up and down aswell as all around. Thank-you.
Have you tried running through a normal dosbox window (i.e. running dosbox rather than the cryptic passage shortcut). This might at least show you an error message that can be used to diagnose the problem.

As for your mouselook question, I have no idea. Remember that as with most sprite based 3d games, Blood wasn't really designed with mouselook in mind; infact, using the mouse to aim might actually make the game feel a bit easy.
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Magnifishit: Hello, my Cryptic Passage add on won't start.. I click on the startup and DosBox window comes up then the screen turns black for 2 seconds and goes back to my desktop with no signs of an error or anything else. I have tried to run as administrator but this has done nothing. Another question, can anyone give me a run down of what they have their keyboard controls set to? I'd like to play the game with some simple controls and I'd also like to be able to use my mouse to look up and down aswell as all around. Thank-you.
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pds41: Have you tried running through a normal dosbox window (i.e. running dosbox rather than the cryptic passage shortcut). This might at least show you an error message that can be used to diagnose the problem.

As for your mouselook question, I have no idea. Remember that as with most sprite based 3d games, Blood wasn't really designed with mouselook in mind; infact, using the mouse to aim might actually make the game feel a bit easy.
I've come to accept the normal mouse look, I guess I never had it when I was a kid so why would it matter so much now. :P

With that out of the way, can you give me a little detailed step by step instruction on how I would go about running dosbox itself then making it run Cryptic Passage?
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Magnifishit: ... can you give me a little detailed step by step instruction on how I would go about running dosbox itself then making it run Cryptic Passage?
It doesn't look like this has been answered yet. Have you worked this out on your own? DOSBox isn't really hard to tinker with, but you will need to know where it will generate a configuration file if you are running DOSBox on it's own. The shortcuts GoG provides with the installation tells DOSBox which config files it should use, and what directory is active.
I really have no idea how to do anything. I just need to know how to run cryptic passage and a walkthrough to go along with how I would go about doing it.
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Magnifishit: I really have no idea how to do anything. I just need to know how to run cryptic passage and a walkthrough to go along with how I would go about doing it.
Well, let's get a few preliminary items out of the way. What OS are you running? If you are running Windows 7, the default installation directory: %ProgramFiles%\GoG\One Unit Whole Blood\, isn't given the proper rights to run cryptic.exe, (it wants to change some of the file structure of the directory). You mentioned that you tried running it as Administrator, but it didn't work. I'm inclined to think that it's still having read/write/execute issues, or Cryptic.exe is broken. The easiest thing for you to do, would probably be to reinstall Blood into a directory that you have rights to. Something like: %userprofile%\Programs\Games\Blood\, this will be within your user profile, and you will have full access to the file structure by default.

Should that fail, and you are still having problems running Cryptic passage, you can add a PAUSE command to your dosboxBlood_addon.conf file. Where ever you have Blood installed, open up your .conf file with notepad. At the bottom of the document you will see an entry:
CRYPTIC.EXE
exit

Change this to read:

CRYPTIC.EXE
PAUSE
exit

When Cryptic passage fails, this will halt DOSBox's command line process and will be given a chance to possibly see what happened before DOSBox closes itself. This might not actually tell you anything, but it might have an error message that could lead to a solution.

If you really want to just skip the whole Cryptic.exe business, in dosboxBlood_addon.conf you could replace CRYPTIC.EXE line with the following file commands:

REN TILES007.ART TILES007.AR_
REN TILES015.ART TILES015.AR_
REN CPART07.AR_ TILES007.ART
REN CPART15.AR_ TILES015.ART
BLOOD.EXE -ini cryptic.ini
REN TILES007.ART CPART07.AR_
REN TILES015.ART CPART15.AR_
REN TILES007.AR_ TILES007.ART
REN TILES015.AR_ TILES015.ART

I hope simply reinstalling does the trick for you. Let me know if you need further help.
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Magnifishit: I really have no idea how to do anything. I just need to know how to run cryptic passage and a walkthrough to go along with how I would go about doing it.
Apologies - I have been having problems with my computer and haven't been able to help - has your problem been resolved?
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Magnifishit: Hello, my Cryptic Passage add on won't start.. I click on the startup and DosBox window comes up then the screen turns black for 2 seconds and goes back to my desktop with no signs of an error or anything else. I have tried to run as administrator but this has done nothing. Another question, can anyone give me a run down of what they have their keyboard controls set to? I'd like to play the game with some simple controls and I'd also like to be able to use my mouse to look up and down aswell as all around. Thank-you.
It did not work for me until I ran it as administrator, also make sure you use the shortcut in the start menu. Just go to SM and select GOG or whatever folder it is installed in and select the game in the GOG folder (hopefully unless you installed it somewhere else) and once the game is selected Cryptic passage should be there in the SM Blood folder. As for keyboard controls I use WASD for movement, leftcontrol to crouch, q for actions, spacebar for jumping, e for secondary fire, and if you want mouselook just hit u during gameplay which switchs between mouselook and whatever people call the other configuration.
Post edited May 07, 2011 by khnk222
I'm having the same problem. I mounted the .GOG folder manually as drive E, ran Blood.exe without any problems, then tried cryptic.exe and got runtime error. If I try to run the game throught the start menu / gog.com folder, the screen turns black for a second, like it should do, but then it just shuts dosbox down without any messages or anything :I
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Trollmann: I'm having the same problem. I mounted the .GOG folder manually as drive E, ran Blood.exe without any problems, then tried cryptic.exe and got runtime error. If I try to run the game throught the start menu / gog.com folder, the screen turns black for a second, like it should do, but then it just shuts dosbox down without any messages or anything :I
Cryptic.exe was written in a gimped up version of TurboPascal, that crashes whenever it runs on a system faster than 200MHz. You can read about it here: http://pcmicro.com/elebbs/faq/rte200.html
Go there, and download the PatchCRT patch that the author mentions and apply it to your copy of cryptic.exe. However, you can get around the whole business by just running Cryptic passage as a standard Blood mod with the -ini tag. (see my previous posting)
Post edited May 09, 2011 by DustyStyx
oh, thank you! never thought about that -ini parameter :) I'm mapping for blood pretty much everyday, so that's kinda weird that haven't crossed my mind :D
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Magnifishit: I really have no idea how to do anything. I just need to know how to run cryptic passage and a walkthrough to go along with how I would go about doing it.
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DustyStyx: Well, let's get a few preliminary items out of the way. What OS are you running? If you are running Windows 7, the default installation directory: %ProgramFiles%\GoG\One Unit Whole Blood\, isn't given the proper rights to run cryptic.exe, (it wants to change some of the file structure of the directory). You mentioned that you tried running it as Administrator, but it didn't work. I'm inclined to think that it's still having read/write/execute issues, or Cryptic.exe is broken. The easiest thing for you to do, would probably be to reinstall Blood into a directory that you have rights to. Something like: %userprofile%\Programs\Games\Blood\, this will be within your user profile, and you will have full access to the file structure by default.

Should that fail, and you are still having problems running Cryptic passage, you can add a PAUSE command to your dosboxBlood_addon.conf file. Where ever you have Blood installed, open up your .conf file with notepad. At the bottom of the document you will see an entry:
CRYPTIC.EXE
exit

Change this to read:

CRYPTIC.EXE
PAUSE
exit

When Cryptic passage fails, this will halt DOSBox's command line process and will be given a chance to possibly see what happened before DOSBox closes itself. This might not actually tell you anything, but it might have an error message that could lead to a solution.

If you really want to just skip the whole Cryptic.exe business, in dosboxBlood_addon.conf you could replace CRYPTIC.EXE line with the following file commands:

REN TILES007.ART TILES007.AR_
REN TILES015.ART TILES015.AR_
REN CPART07.AR_ TILES007.ART
REN CPART15.AR_ TILES015.ART
BLOOD.EXE -ini cryptic.ini
REN TILES007.ART CPART07.AR_
REN TILES015.ART CPART15.AR_
REN TILES007.AR_ TILES007.ART
REN TILES015.AR_ TILES015.ART

I hope simply reinstalling does the trick for you. Let me know if you need further help.
Ok, so I tried the code at the end and while CP plays now it is all kinds of jacked up. The background (sky etc.) are all moving and trailing. Any idea how to fix that? It gets so bad it's not playable.
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sjrbsp: Ok, so I tried the code at the end and while CP plays now it is all kinds of jacked up. The background (sky etc.) are all moving and trailing. Any idea how to fix that? It gets so bad it's not playable.
It's possible that the naming on your art files has gotten mixed up. Have you tried reinstalling?
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Magnifishit: Hello, my Cryptic Passage add on won't start.. I click on the startup and DosBox window comes up then the screen turns black for 2 seconds and goes back to my desktop with no signs of an error or anything else. I have tried to run as administrator but this has done nothing. Another question, can anyone give me a run down of what they have their keyboard controls set to? I'd like to play the game with some simple controls and I'd also like to be able to use my mouse to look up and down aswell as all around. Thank-you.
Hello, excuse me bumping an old topic but I see half your question is unanswered.

To enable Mouselook, you have to press the "enable mouselook" key (by default its either U or I, I forget which), and it stays enabled through multiple sessions.

My ideal setting is to run blood's setup program (setup.exe IIRC) and choose keyboard+mouse and set them up as follows:

Keyboard:
Up = W
Down = S
Strafe Left = A
Strafe Right = D
Jump = F, and/or Spacebar unless you prefer that to open
Crouch = V, and/or Left Control
Open = E, and/or Spacebar if you didn't set Spacebar to jump

Any time it tells you the keys conflict, just find the one it conflicts with and either delete it (highlight it and press the delete key) or set it to something else. With my setup I usually have to delete the keys for "Show Opponent's Weapon" and "Map Follow Mode" so I'm not even sure what those even do.

Mouse:
Left Button = Fire
Right Button = Alternate Fire
Mouselook is a toggle key.
(My preference is also to invert mouse aim, but use whichever you find more comfy).

Delete all other button mappings.

Now here's the important part: Go into "Mouse Sensitivity" and jack that all the way as high as it will go.

Finally, go to "Advanced Control Settings," then "Mouse." There should be two sections: Analog and Digital. Ignore Digital and go to the two "Scale" settings and, just like sensitivity, jack them up all the way.

There, now you have a modern mouselook setup in a classic build engine game.

Incidentally this will also work with Duke Nukem 3D and possibly Shadow Warrior.
Hi all. I recently bought the GOG edition of One Unit Whole Blood and also couldn't get Cryptic Passage to run, even after trying all the methods described here. After much troubleshooting and frustration I stumbled upon a patch site from Hybridgames that specifically addresses this issue. I downloaded the OUWB-PlayInOneExeGOG zip file, extracted into my blood directory, and then loaded the game up normally. Cryptic passage was included in the game as the fifth episode, with Post Mortem as the sixth episode in the list.

I can't post a link to it, but if you google "exclusive-our-first-ever-mod-for-one-unit-whole-blood-released" the hybridgames link should pop up first in the search results.

Hopefully this post helps anyone who has also tried other troubleshooting techniques and has come up short.

Also, hopefully the patch site will stay up by the time people get around to reading this.

Cheers!