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Balls of SteelColor and speed problem on Windows 7(6 posts)solved(6 posts)solved
(6 posts)solved
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Posted June 21, 2013
So I thought I would play this on my desktop with Windows 7 x64, but there are odd color artifacts on all the tables (not in the menu), the dot panel has odd colors overall (feels like inverted) and the game speed is so high it's unplayable.

I've tried to take a screenshot, but PrintScreen gives even worse results and what's even more weird, screenshots from Fraps come out correct.

It works perfectly on my laptop with Vista x32.
Is it incompatible with x64 systems or is there something on my end?
This question / problem has been solved by Trekkyimage
Posted May 18, 2014
Had the same color issue (Win7 x64, Radeon) and I stumbled upon a slightly odd way to fix it: Make a copy of LAUNCHER.EXE in the game folder and rename it BOSLOADER.EXE and run that. This fixes the color issues, enables F or Alt+Enter to switch between Full Screen and Windowed modes and also reduces table load times considerably.

Only downside I found so far is that the Help Screen activated by F1 during gameplay only shows a black screen when playing with this method, but that doesn't seem like a big issue.

Seems the original filename for that exe is bosloader, so maybe GOG renamed it causing some of its functions to work incorrectly?

Weirdly the gog version with laucher.exe works fine on my 32-bit Vista laptop, so perhaps this is an issue with 64-bit Windows file handling?
Post edited May 23, 2014 by Trekky
Posted October 22, 2014
avatar
Trekky: Had the same color issue (Win7 x64, Radeon) and I stumbled upon a slightly odd way to fix it: Make a copy of LAUNCHER.EXE in the game folder and rename it BOSLOADER.EXE and run that. This fixes the color issues, enables F or Alt+Enter to switch between Full Screen and Windowed modes and also reduces table load times considerably.

Only downside I found so far is that the Help Screen activated by F1 during gameplay only shows a black screen when playing with this method, but that doesn't seem like a big issue.

Seems the original filename for that exe is bosloader, so maybe GOG renamed it causing some of its functions to work incorrectly?

Weirdly the gog version with laucher.exe works fine on my 32-bit Vista laptop, so perhaps this is an issue with 64-bit Windows file handling?
win7 x64, radeon this worked for me. Fixed the speed issue and color issue, but the window will not close and I have to terminate the program.
Posted May 25, 2017
avatar
Trekky: Had the same color issue (Win7 x64, Radeon) and I stumbled upon a slightly odd way to fix it: Make a copy of LAUNCHER.EXE in the game folder and rename it BOSLOADER.EXE and run that. This fixes the color issues, enables F or Alt+Enter to switch between Full Screen and Windowed modes and also reduces table load times considerably.

Only downside I found so far is that the Help Screen activated by F1 during gameplay only shows a black screen when playing with this method, but that doesn't seem like a big issue.

Seems the original filename for that exe is bosloader, so maybe GOG renamed it causing some of its functions to work incorrectly?

Weirdly the gog version with laucher.exe works fine on my 32-bit Vista laptop, so perhaps this is an issue with 64-bit Windows file handling?
Worked for me with nvidia GTX 970 so the type of card we use doesn't seem to make a difference. If you're suffering from ugly graphics and speed that's too fast, this is your fix.
Posted January 20, 2018
f you have Problems with old Windows-Games that use DirectDraw and show faulty Graphics, you can activate the Task-Manager and kill the "explorer.exe"-Process. That doees it for all Games I've tried it with: Balls of Steel, Kiss Pinball, Devil's Island Pinball, Outlaws, Diablo 1 and more...

You can reactivate the explorer.exe in the Task-Manager again by adding it as Task (c:\Windows:\explorer.exe) after the Game-Session.
You must kill the Process when the Game is started or a Window to start it has opened, Cause you won't have Windows to open Directories with anymore....

EDit 20.01.2018
You can use a Batch-File to do all the Stuff automatically

taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
bos.exe
start explorer.exe
exit

On the Balls of Steel-Version here on Gog, I had to use the unofficial Patch 1.3d (BallsOfSteel13d.exe) to solve the Speed-Problems. Just copy it into the BoS-Folder and type "." (without quotes, just a point) to patch the Game when the Directory is asked for.
Post edited January 20, 2018 by Hoessi666
Posted June 10, 2020
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Hoessi666: On the Balls of Steel-Version here on Gog, I had to use the unofficial Patch 1.3d (BallsOfSteel13d.exe) to solve the Speed-Problems. Just copy it into the BoS-Folder and type "." (without quotes, just a point) to patch the Game when the Directory is asked for.
Do you still have a copy of the Unofficial 1.3d patch. It seems to be impossible to find.

Thanks
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Balls of SteelColor and speed problem on Windows 7(6 posts)solved(6 posts)solved
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