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Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick ObscuraWindows 8 (solved)(57 posts)(57 posts)
(57 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 25, 2012
For the record: I had some troubles getting Arcanum to run under Windows 8 CP. When installed as usual, the intro movies were shown completely distorted and the main menu showed up in wrong colors and didn't react to input. (btw. I have an NVIDIA graphics card)

These are the steps I had to take to get the game to run:

1.) Install Arcanum to a folder in, or under, your home directory. e.g. C:\Users\Goger\Arcanum

2.) Delete ddraw.dll from the installation folder (or, to be safe, rename it to something like ddraw.dll.old)

3.) In the compability mode settings for Arcanum.exe, select "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)". Note that this will also make the game ask for administrator privileges upon starting.

This way I got the game to run. Scrolling the map results in some graphics glitches though, which disappear when I run the game with the "-no3d" commandline option.

Hope somebody else can use this.
Posted October 08, 2012
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MTH: For the record: I had some troubles getting Arcanum to run under Windows 8 CP. When installed as usual, the intro movies were shown completely distorted and the main menu showed up in wrong colors and didn't react to input. (btw. I have an NVIDIA graphics card)

These are the steps I had to take to get the game to run:

1.) Install Arcanum to a folder in, or under, your home directory. e.g. C:\Users\Goger\Arcanum

2.) Delete ddraw.dll from the installation folder (or, to be safe, rename it to something like ddraw.dll.old)

3.) In the compability mode settings for Arcanum.exe, select "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)". Note that this will also make the game ask for administrator privileges upon starting.

This way I got the game to run. Scrolling the map results in some graphics glitches though, which disappear when I run the game with the "-no3d" commandline option.

Hope somebody else can use this.
Funny, no problems whatsoever here.

Oh, right. You know that you are using such an outdated build of Windows 8 that it doesn't matter anymore?

Go to microsoft website and download the Release Preview. They fixed alot of stuff since CP&DP versions. Supposedly even more compatibility issues are resolved on the RTM, but I have no MSDN access :(
Posted December 03, 2012
I didn't have to move the folder to my home directory, but I did have compatibility mode set to XP SP2 (Old games tend to favour SP2 over SP3.) The tip to delete ddraw.dll helped a lot though, it was the missing ingredient I needed to get rid of the purple rainbow menus the game displayed.

Cheers!
Posted February 05, 2013
How has this been working for you guys? I've tried everything I've found and got the game working speed wise once (mouse flowed great) but that gave me really messed up menus. So I tried something else (XP compatibility mode I believe) which fixed that, but broke mouse speed and all that again.

Now now matter what I do I can't get to a state where the game is enjoyable, I'd even be happy to have the funky menus back if it meant I could scroll around the game faster than a snail, and if it didn't get all choppy. I'm on Windows 8 myself.

Could maybe somebody post exactly what their setup is in regards to the game that has this working great on Windows 8? What command line options you have, if you're using compatibility mode, all the steps you took, and if you're using any mods (I have the high-res one installed). Thank you
Posted February 11, 2013
In the end I had to play the game in either 800x600 or 1024x768 in order to get more than 20 frames per second, still haven't figured out why, I can play the latest games with max settings in 1920x1200 but Arcanum just drops to a crawl in any resolution above 1024x768. Gonna work on it more when I'm back playing it, could be the ddraw issue.
Posted March 09, 2013
I have problem the game starts fine and I can save and load but when walking everything starts lagging and when trying to move the camera there is also black box in the middle of the screen that comes and goes.
The game is not playable in this state.
Post edited March 09, 2013 by Zorky
Posted April 23, 2013
Using 1366x768 will help a lot as higher resolutions still have to render in an engine never designed to handle it. 1366 specifically is the smallest widescreen resolution on most common monitors otherwise you either have black bars or it's stretched which makes it look even more horrile.

I'm still having a lot of issues, and I had none on my old Win7 machine.

What has helped:

Adding -doublebuffer -no3d -scrolldist:0 -scrollfps:70 to the shortcut command line.

Renaming ddraw.dll to ddraw.dll.bak (instead of just deleting it)

It still slows down a hell of a lot after a map travel or some time and I'm trying other stuff but suggested ddraw hooks just crash it and I am at a loss at the moment but thought I would post what has helped me thus far scrabbled together from other posts.
Post edited April 23, 2013 by themendios
Posted April 23, 2013
Alright, finally found something that works and it's pretty simple

Just add "-window" to the shortcut. Also tell it to do maximized on the shortcut if it's below native.

I did this in addition to the stuff I just posted and it's now perfectly fine.
Posted May 30, 2013
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themendios: Alright, finally found something that works and it's pretty simple

Just add "-window" to the shortcut. Also tell it to do maximized on the shortcut if it's below native.

I did this in addition to the stuff I just posted and it's now perfectly fine.
I tried everything I've found on the internet but I can't get the game to work properly on windows 8. If I apply your method, the game run smoothly but there's some kind of "ghosting". If I found a solution, I will post it here.
Posted May 31, 2013
I had problems at first, but was able to solve them quite easily:

It appears, that the Hi-Res patch has its troubles with Windows 8. My first try was to install the patch directly from its download location, which made the game unplayable. None of the suggestions above solved the problem. Then I reset the game to 800*600 and everything worked fine. So I finally copied the hi-res installer into my game directory and ran it in WinXP SP3 compatibility mode with Admin rights, and voila! Everything is fine now. I'm playing on 1024*600 on a 15 inch Notebook.

I restored my ddraw.dll and removed all additional options (-no3d, ...) from the command line. Only tried for a few minutes but all looks good so far.
Posted June 02, 2013
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flapheadx: I had problems at first, but was able to solve them quite easily:

It appears, that the Hi-Res patch has its troubles with Windows 8. My first try was to install the patch directly from its download location, which made the game unplayable. None of the suggestions above solved the problem. Then I reset the game to 800*600 and everything worked fine. So I finally copied the hi-res installer into my game directory and ran it in WinXP SP3 compatibility mode with Admin rights, and voila! Everything is fine now. I'm playing on 1024*600 on a 15 inch Notebook.

I restored my ddraw.dll and removed all additional options (-no3d, ...) from the command line. Only tried for a few minutes but all looks good so far.
I'm gonna give a try. Thank you !
Posted June 03, 2013
Sorry, I have to revert my previous post. With the descritption above, the game runs properly only for a few minutes. After that, the lag issue described in several other posts starts and makes the game unplayable after a short while.

I ended up creating a VMWare installation of my old WinXP, which was quite annoying, but at least, I can now play the game.

Good luck...
Posted June 04, 2013
For those still having problems, try putting wined3d.dll, libwine.dll, and ddraw.dll in the arcanum folder where the exe is. This fixed the lag and screen tearing when scrolling for me. I use those files to fix graphical issues in infinity engine games. Not sure why it works, but it does.
Posted June 04, 2013
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Masoniter: For those still having problems, try putting wined3d.dll, libwine.dll, and ddraw.dll in the arcanum folder where the exe is. This fixed the lag and screen tearing when scrolling for me. I use those files to fix graphical issues in infinity engine games. Not sure why it works, but it does.
Still doesn't work for me, this one give me the ghosting artefacts. Which version of those .dlls did you use, could you post them here?
Posted June 04, 2013
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Masoniter: For those still having problems, try putting wined3d.dll, libwine.dll, and ddraw.dll in the arcanum folder where the exe is. This fixed the lag and screen tearing when scrolling for me. I use those files to fix graphical issues in infinity engine games. Not sure why it works, but it does.
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flapheadx: Still doesn't work for me, this one give me the ghosting artefacts. Which version of those .dlls did you use, could you post them here?
I can't post links, but I sent you a pm with a link. I am also using the -no3d command line, and that in conjunction with the DLLs fixed the lag and artifacts.
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Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick ObscuraWindows 8 (solved)(57 posts)(57 posts)
(57 posts)