Hi all,

First post, so sorry it's not a more positive one:

Quite simply, this isn't the Rayman I remember. The music isn't the same, the image quality isn't the same (despite doing my best to create the correct settings and following all the advice I could find on this forum), and the feeling of the gameplay isn't the same. It's a shame, because I have very fond memories or Rayman, and was excited at the idea of being able to relive it.

On a positive note, I'm still very very glad that I found gog. I live in Cambodia, and this is the first site I've found that will actually allow me to buy legitimate games online. In addition, I've found and purchased some other games here, and I'm very happy with all of them. It was just Rayman that I found to be a bit of a let down.

So thanks GOG, you are awesome, and have earned another loyal customer, but in future if you know parts of a game aren't like the original, I think it would be more fair if you made that clear before purchase

Hey MonstaMunch

As to the music, have you seen this post? I was also quite dissapointed that the music in Rayman Forever didn't match the music in the Rayman Gold version I had but this guide has helped me getting the right music for Rayman back.

As for the image quality: Can you try describe how Rayman Forever looks like to you and how you imagined it would have been? I own both Rayman Forever and Rayman Gold (installed from CD) and to me there isn't any difference. That's why I wonder if there perhaps is a wrong setting making your experience worse than it should be.

Best Regards

Thanks for the help Stockpile,

I'll try following the advice with the music update, but without meaning to sound like a complainer, I still think that if it doesn't come with the initial purchase, it would be more fair for them to say so first. Still, looking forward to trying to recify it.

As for the image quality: One of the things that drew me into rayman when I first had it on a PS1 when I was in my teens was the beautiful artwork. Screenshots of the original that I've found around the web have shown me that I'm not simply "misremembering" how it looked. What I get now with this version is very "blocky" (pixelated I guess), and the animation is less smooth.

I'm willing to concede that it could be an issue with my settings or even my laptop, but I've tried fiddling with it, all to no avail.

If it helps in diagnosing the problem, here's some info that could be relevant:
- I'm running a Sony Vaio with 64bit Windows 7 with 4gb of RAM and an i7
- A few games (including a pirated version of Witcher 2) seem to stutter a lot, even with all graphic settings on minimum (if it works, I'd very much like to buy witcher 2 from GOG, but i need to find out the problem before i go spending money on it)


Any help would be much appreciated

Cheers.

You're welcome :) AFAIK The original product "Rayman Forever" neither included all original soundtracks from Rayman or Rayman Gold because they had used the space on "Rayman by his Fans". I recommend you to have a look at this topic this topic if you want to know more. What resolution is your laptop screen? What graphics card do you have? And were you playing on a CRT screen back when you played on PS1? Could you link to the pictures you have seen on the internet? Were these pictures in the same resolution as your computer screen? These factors likely explain why you see the image quality & animation as worse so it would interesting to know in order to adress the issue you are describing. With that said there is a few things you can try out already though:

Find the dosboxRayman.conf file. If Rayman Forever is installed in the default suggested path you should be able to find it in this folder:
C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Rayman Forever\Rayman\
This is the DOSBox configuration file for Rayman Forever. You could try the following settings:

To improve the looks
a) Find [render] and then change scaler=normal to scaler=hq2x. Feel free to experiment with the other enhancers described in the same section.
b) Find [sdl] and try changing fullscreen=true to fullscreen=false. This should start the game in its original resolution in windowed mode.

To possibly get smoother animations
a) under [cpu] try change cycles=8000 to cycles=max.

I hope I was to any help! :)

Thanks for all the help!

Laptop screen is 1600x900, graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 310M (I've since found out they are crap, but it's my own fault for not properly researching before i got it).

Using your instructions for rendering, I've managed to improve it a bit, and will keep fiddling with it to see if I can get it better.

I tried the thing to make it smoother, but it made the entire game run far too fast so changed it back to 8000 cycles.

I just bought the Witcher Enhanced Edition (downloading now, which will take about a million years on my crappy Cambodian internet connection), so when I can try that it should be a better indication if there's an overall problem with the laptop or just this one game. I've bought around 5 or 6 games from gog so far, and this is the only one I haven't been able to get working in quite the way I'd hoped for.

Once again, thanks for all your help, and thanks to gog for being the only place where I can legally buy games online where I live :D

Update: Thought I'd quickly update this post to say that I now have the graphics working as they should, and am happily reliving my fond Rayman memories. The solution was messing around with graphics card settings for ages (which means they were probably wrong to begin with).

I can't stress enough how epic this game is to anyone thinking of buying it. Best plat former of it's generation imo (i'm talking about Rayman Forever).

I was referring to this topic. Be aware, though, that the megaupload link dinofan137 provides doesn't work anymore. You can download the soundtracks from here instead.

I hope i was to any help :)

Are The Cages in this version the same as the PC version or are the cages like in the PS1 version?

Has GoG ever considered readding the music? Also, I just read about the France-only Rayman Collector.