I put my desktop to 16bit colour and the parameters above work (game launches).
However, I get a new message when I start a race saying 'Not enough video memory available, no d3d' or something very similar.

I have a two nvidia gt8800 cards so theres enough video memory, but the game obviously doesn't recognise this. I'm guessing we need a parameter to set video memory and maybe we'll be getting closer to solving this?

Update: tried adding -NoTextureSizeMax256 but the game crashes. :(

Using Windows XP & Geforce 275 GTX

After a lot of testing I found some kind of a solution:

With the desktop set to 16 bit colors (thanks Krankor) I can start the program from the game.exe in the installation folder instead of the launcher. A shortcut to game.exe with the parameter -D3D does successfully force the acceleration on, and with "Filtered" setting on the game does look a lot better. On the downside the menus look like a mess to me, but the game itself looks just fine.

(My entire list of parameters is -us -FrameRateMax0 -D3D -Zbuffer )

A more permanent solution would be to make the launcher launch the game in 16 bit mode and allow us to use parameters (even with 16 bit colors I can't get the game up using the motoracer.exe with the parameters added to the config.txt file in data directory (set to read only)).

@Peksu:

I followed your instructions and managed to get the game running with D3D thru a shortcut to game.exe; as you said, game looked fine but the ingame menus were broken.
But what's strange is that once I did that trick, now I can run the game normally from the original Moto Racer icon, select "Direct3D" instead of "Software" and the game runs flawlessly even with correct ingame menus; I don't even need to lower color depth to 16bits. Has someone experienced this?

Note: I have the DotEmu version which I suppose it's 100% the same as the GOG one.

Note 2: my pc runs XP SP2 and GeForce 7600GT

It really does work even without -D3D if launched from game.exe, but for me the menus are still a mess. Maybe some driver setting causes it. I'll look into it.
I still have to change color depth.


It's really annoying that the launcher refuses to launch the game if there's anything else than "-us" in the config.txt (even if you just empty it). The file has to be set to read only or it will be overwritten by the launcher, but there is nothing new written to it during gameplay, so it's really an artificial limitation.


Edit: I actually remember having to use 16 bit colors for this game for some reason even back in the Windows 98 days. I recall there being some strange error message on 24 bit colors, the game would run but something would be non-optimal. I really can't remember what, it was ages ago.

Edit 2: Now here's a funny observation: disabling VSync gets the framerate up to almost 2000, but the artifacts in menus appear a lot worse. Probably just a result of rendering more faulty frames and mixing them on the screen, but for now if you use these settings, VSync is recommended (when is it not?).

After a bit of snooping around in the game.exe, I found a cure for that: "-TextureVideoMem268435456"

Try it and see if it works for you too.

Topman 81RED!
Works a treat.

Thanks!

Generally the problem like this (not being able to make changes to files or overwrite files) occurs if you've installed the game in program files folder (applies to Vista and Win7). Solution is to install game outside program files (do this with all games in future, you'll lose less hair that way ;-)) ie. c:\games or something like that.

To get a usable shortcut, go to the install folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Moto Racer, or wherever you installed it to) and create a shortcut of that executable. You can then edit all shortcut properties as usual.

Doing it this way will have the shortcut with the game's original icon, not the GOG one; if you want the GOG icon simply click Change Icon and browse to the game's folder, then select gfw_high.ico (or gfw_high if you have extensions hidden). Click OK to close the icon window and then OK again for the shortcut window and the GOG icon will take effect.

That won't help at all in this case, and is unnecessary in general if you know what you're doing.

I'm probably being stupid...
But is there any way to also add a desktop change to 16bit in your game.exe shortcut?

Not unless the game itself has such a feature, no; Windows can only force a change to 256 colors.

Cheers Arkose. I've been looking into ways I can launch Motoracer with one shortcut (the colour depth is a right royal pain). ;)

In Windows 7, I get a shortcut wizard. I am not allowed to augment it.

Right-click the Start Menu shortcut for the game and choose Properties. You should then see a window where you can change everything.

The name 'C:\GOG.com\Moto Racer\game.exe -d3d' specified in the Target box is not valid. Make sure the path and the file name are correct.

I hate this.