Posted May 01, 2014
SOLVED: From black screen to a playable game: Walkthrough, testet with Win7, notebook.
There are many problems with the Cossacks Anthology on newer computers, especially Win7 and notebooks with uncommon resolutions as I had to find out.
I tried everything I could find on the net, but nothing helped against the black screen in the main menu, with music playing.. until I found a walkthrough in this forum from "baranello", whom I want to thank for this very, very much!
I write this conclusion to may save you from googling around trying crazy things and wasting time you could spend fighting with battleships and cannons and stuff.
-----------------======= My problems were... =======----------------
1) Black screen after the intro-video(s), sound playing.
2) After solving 1): strange colours and flickering black screens again.
3) Crash to desktop when starting a map.
------------------------======= Solutions =======------------------------
1) Black screen: The walkthrough from baranello did the trick, so I just copy it here (formatting changed):
now ok, I dealt with this Sh*t finally:
download this patch and extract it to somewhere:
http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=downloads&ss=299&s=patch
then make copy of
D:\GOG.com\Cossacks Anthology\Cossacks - Art Of War\mdraw.dll
and delete original file (mdraw.dll)
NOW copy downloaded patch ddraw.dll IN PLACE OF mdraw.dll (copy to dir and RENAME to mdraw.dll)
THEY FAILED TO NOTICE US THAT YOU NEED TO CHANGE FILENAME AS WELL (I MEAN DOWNLOADED ONE)
now it works. hope this helps. good luck. (my system is WIn7 x64, Nvidia Quadro1000M, latest drivers - whose download didn't help)
After I did this, the black screen problem was gone. I got to the main menu. But then the...
2) Colours got strange and the picture flickered black:
I read about this solution in another forum: You need to close explorer.exe to get rid of this bug. The easiest, most comfortable way to solve this issue is, to create a .bat file which closes explorer.exe, starts the game and restarts explorer.exe after closing the game automatically:
a) open a new text editor file
b) copy-paste, but notice that your game directory may be different - change it if you need to! (If you have this issues with european wars or back to war, you have to adapt - but I didn't try that)
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
cd "C:\GOG Games\Cossacks Anthology\Art Of War"
dmcr.exe
explorer.exe
c) go to "save as..", select "all files" in the drop-down menu and save it as "Cossacks.bat" on your desktop.
d) double-click the Cossacks.bat to start the game. the bug should be gone now.
REMEMBER: Always use the .bat to start the game! Delete the standard shortcut.
3) Crash to desktop when starting a game/map:
Adjusting the resolution to a more common value from my strange notebook-resolution "1366*768" to "1360*768" worked for me. You may need to try some others, but it should do the trick.
Finally I have to say, I read much about changing the compability modes to solve this problems, but that never solved any of my issues. Now I don't have any compability mode activated!
I hope this walkthrough could bring some light into the darkness, and feel free to give me feedback! English is not my mother tongue.
- Lukas
Update: If you experience freezes during the game like me, just ALT-Tab out an in to the game.
There are many problems with the Cossacks Anthology on newer computers, especially Win7 and notebooks with uncommon resolutions as I had to find out.
I tried everything I could find on the net, but nothing helped against the black screen in the main menu, with music playing.. until I found a walkthrough in this forum from "baranello", whom I want to thank for this very, very much!
I write this conclusion to may save you from googling around trying crazy things and wasting time you could spend fighting with battleships and cannons and stuff.
-----------------======= My problems were... =======----------------
1) Black screen after the intro-video(s), sound playing.
2) After solving 1): strange colours and flickering black screens again.
3) Crash to desktop when starting a map.
------------------------======= Solutions =======------------------------
1) Black screen: The walkthrough from baranello did the trick, so I just copy it here (formatting changed):
now ok, I dealt with this Sh*t finally:
download this patch and extract it to somewhere:
http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=downloads&ss=299&s=patch
then make copy of
D:\GOG.com\Cossacks Anthology\Cossacks - Art Of War\mdraw.dll
and delete original file (mdraw.dll)
NOW copy downloaded patch ddraw.dll IN PLACE OF mdraw.dll (copy to dir and RENAME to mdraw.dll)
THEY FAILED TO NOTICE US THAT YOU NEED TO CHANGE FILENAME AS WELL (I MEAN DOWNLOADED ONE)
now it works. hope this helps. good luck. (my system is WIn7 x64, Nvidia Quadro1000M, latest drivers - whose download didn't help)
2) Colours got strange and the picture flickered black:
I read about this solution in another forum: You need to close explorer.exe to get rid of this bug. The easiest, most comfortable way to solve this issue is, to create a .bat file which closes explorer.exe, starts the game and restarts explorer.exe after closing the game automatically:
a) open a new text editor file
b) copy-paste, but notice that your game directory may be different - change it if you need to! (If you have this issues with european wars or back to war, you have to adapt - but I didn't try that)
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
cd "C:\GOG Games\Cossacks Anthology\Art Of War"
dmcr.exe
explorer.exe
d) double-click the Cossacks.bat to start the game. the bug should be gone now.
REMEMBER: Always use the .bat to start the game! Delete the standard shortcut.
3) Crash to desktop when starting a game/map:
Adjusting the resolution to a more common value from my strange notebook-resolution "1366*768" to "1360*768" worked for me. You may need to try some others, but it should do the trick.
Finally I have to say, I read much about changing the compability modes to solve this problems, but that never solved any of my issues. Now I don't have any compability mode activated!
I hope this walkthrough could bring some light into the darkness, and feel free to give me feedback! English is not my mother tongue.
- Lukas
Update: If you experience freezes during the game like me, just ALT-Tab out an in to the game.
Post edited May 01, 2014 by loadedluke89
No posts in this topic were marked as the solution yet. If you can help, add your reply
