Hi,

I am trying to play this Arxel Tribe / Cryo game from 1998 (pity that none of the Arxel Tribe games and so little of Cryo games were GOGed so far). The game runs fine, the only problem is with the save/load system. It seems to be an issue with every single older game from Arxel - while there are unofficial french patches for Pompei and Jerusalem that deal with it and The Legend of the Prophet and the Assassin + The Secrets of Alamut can be played only with autosave and Continue, this isn't possible with the Ring.

I am playing on a new laptop

(Toshiba Satellite C70D-B-305
Windows 10 64bit.
AMD A8-6410 Quad-Core Accelerated Processor
HDD 750 GB
4 (1x) GB, DDR3L RAM (1.600 MHz)
AMD A8-6410 Accelerated Processor with AMD Radeon™ R5 Graphics)

Windows: tried it on Win8.1 first and then on Win10 64Bit. Funny thing is, the problem persists even on the emulated Windows 95 (through VirtualBox). I tried to install the game on my wife's laptop with Win7 with the same result.

There is just following error message: Warning: Cannot save game "Name" / Cannot load game "Name"

I've tried to change the installation orders, run it as admin and with several compatibility modes.

No idea if this will work, but it is something that was usual in games from that age.
Install the game in a different folder that has no more than 8 letters per folder in the path, nor any weird non letter characters, for example "C:\Games\Ring". Some games from that period expected DOS like folder names, and wouldn't be able to access the folder if it wasn't like that.
Hope this works, even though I doubt it.

Good advice that. Never install a game to any Windows folders, always outside. Length of 8 and generally make sure there are no special characters or spaces.

Can you run it in Virtual Box XP install? That might be an option. Even if you don't continue on there, you can see where it writes files to, maybe there is a directory it expects missing. I don't own this one, so can't test it.

Would why a Virtual XP run better than a Virtual 95 for a '98 game?

I would have thought that XP had better compatibility for games of that period, it was released in 99, so between the period of 98 and XP. I have no stats on the matter of course, but if 98 didn't work, then it doesn't hurt to try XP.

You could also try running it with process monitor:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Or something similar running to see what the program is trying to do at the moment of saving, is it trying to access a certain area, or is it missing some program?

The DVD version installs directly into C:\Ring. Saving doesn't work anyway.

I can try later to emulate windows 98 or XP, but it's just funny that it doesn't save even in Win95.

I have more Arxel Tribe games and though they seem to have similar save/load system (Hitchcock, Ring 2), it works without adjustment.

I'll try the proces monitor later. Thanks for the tips!

Hi Fingon,

I just got the same issue, for a game with so many cheap deaths it's quite annoying! Have you managed to find a solution?

If not, I may have a small lead. In my case, even though the installation was ok (troubled, but I made it eventually), when I started the game it couldn't find the CD at first. I then noticed in the installation folder a specific configuration file (I don't remember the name, something .ini probably) which contained a field for the CD path, and its value was wrong (it was set to "\" instead of "D:\"). When I changed the field to the right value, the game finally found the CD and could launch. So my point is, this config file might be the key to the problem, maybe a field missing to locate the savefiles.

What's also weird is that the savefiles folder of the game contains two savefiles, which dates correspond to my last play of the game, like some kind of autosave, but I can't load them.

Anyway if you have any idea on what could be the problem with possibly this file, please let me know. I'd love to be able to play it again, it was quite an interesting piece!

You are one of a very few people to appreciate it, then. Personally I'm of the opinion the OP would be better off just uninstalling the game, the save bug is doing him a backhanded favor by preventing him from wasting precious gaming time that he could spend on a better game. :)

The Ring really earned its poor reviews, I thought it was a poor translation to blame when I played it, but no, apparently it was that bad in the original.

Rebumping as some friends were discussing about this.

Really, you will not know how much you are losing not being able to run a game until you realize that game history is being lost. Ring can be a bad game, but that does not mean that you should disencourage from playing it as it was some kind of dark history. You will see when we get to 2020 and some good, some bad, just history of games is forgotten. Like no one did their hard work on them.

Rebumping too in case someone has an answer to this problem with Ring. I think this also happens with Faust (which is a fantastic game)

Hi Fingon,

I had the same issue with saving and I have found a work around.

1. You will need a correct save game I downloaden them from here : https://www.adventurespiele.net/CmodsDownload-index-req-viewdownloaddetails-lid-77.htm

2. Start playing a new game

3. At the point you want to save, try saving the game (it will give an error that you cannot save) ignore this by canceling the save.

4. Go back to the menu and this time press load a game
choose any of the saves (agian it will give you an error) but the auto save wil take you the point where you just tryed saving your game.

this worked for me on de 6 cd version as on the dvd re-release.
tested on windows 10

I hope this helps for you as it did for me
I also made a working version of the dvd for Mac the orignal Mac version was for power pc and did not have my native language.

Thx! Worked for me too.

Hey!
I posted a few years ago, and I'm still searching about it xD
I was pretty stoked about using the german saves as zeekroket suggested, but I can't seem to create an account on the website, I don't know if it's still active, but without an account I can't download them. I also can't find any other saves anywhere.
Would there be a way to make the saves available again online? I'm thinking that the game is available on some abandonware websites, but they all put a disclaimer that saving is impossible on Win10, and these german saves could actually really push forward the research for the preservation of this game, especially considering so few people talk about it, as Risingson had said earlier.
Anyway, if a solution is in any way conceivable, please let me know. Thank much very much for everyone's help!

Hey! Thank you so much for your save files, it worked on my end too! Can't wait to finally play it again!

collectionchamber did a release of this.
" Uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox 0.74 running Microsoft
Windows '98 "

Notes from txt file: (C:\Games\Collection Chamber)
NOTES: Press Alt-Enter or F11-F to toggle fullscreen.
Press Ctrl-F4 or F11-D to cycle through CDs.
Press Ctrl-End or Ctrl-F10 to capture mouse.
Press Ctrl-Pause or F11-Pause to pause emulation.
Press F11-Esc to toggle menu bar.
Press Ctrl-F5 or F11-P to capture screenshot in PNG format.
Press Ctrl-Alt-F5 or F11-I to record a video file in AVI format.
Press Ctrl-F6 or F11-W to record a audio file in WAV format.
Due to the nature of Windows '95 emulation, DOSBox X's savestate
feature will not work.

The emulated Windows '98 desktop is set to a resolution of 640x480 with a
High Color (16-bit) colour depth. Windows '98 has been configured to
automatically launch the game upon boot, and automatically shut down when
exiting the game.

This is the English-language game has been installed from using the 4-disc
version of the game. While I managed to get the DVD version working, I found
it to be overall a buggier experience. Other than removing disc swapping,
the only difference I can tell between the two versions is a greater choice
of languages to choose from during the install. To save space, language
files that are anything other than English have been removed.