You could probably fix it if you could tell it to go to software-only for managing the graphics (I'm sure our systems can handle it's graphic fidelity). Hmmm... Well one thing at a time i guess, i hope installing 13.1 didn't ruin other games i'm currently playing (which isn't very many). Be easier if it was a more modular system like <span class="bold">SLAX</span>, then just plug in what you need and it works just fine, that would do wonders. Course if you could set the FS to act like COW (Copy-on-write) you could pre-set settings for various driver settings and just boot with a particular set (although SLAX works better)

No chance of the game being recompiled for this. Particularly when NVIDIA & ATI will just break it again 6 to 8 months down the road. The problem is the drivers and not the newer hardware.

Hey, since this is the newest Google search entry for this issue and still has people commenting about it as of the 14th:

I had the same general issue, with the executable given the compatibility mode of Windows XP SP3, running on Windows 8 (64-bit.)

However, I got it to work flawlessly as of the WHQL Nvidia driver: 331.82, after playing with the settings in NVidia Inspector (of course, go under the Darkstone profile, and specifically add the Darkstone exe so it's not just applying to the old demo exe)

[Note I can't post links so I'll just type the relevant things I changed here]:

Antialiasing - Gamma corrrection :: Off
Antialiasing - Line Gamma :: Disabled
Antialiasing - Mode :: Application Controlled
Antialiasing - Setting :: Application Controlled / Off
Antialiasing - Transparency Multisampling :: Disabled
Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling :: Off / Multisampling
NVIDIA Predefined FXAA Usage :: Disallowed

Toggle FXAA on or off :: off

Texture Filtering - Quality :: High performance
Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization :: On

Multi-Display/mixed-GPU acceleration :: Compatability performance mode
Power management :: Prefer maximum performance

Threaded Optimization :: On

YMMV, but this fixed the menu text, the flickering issue, sound rate problems, etc and the game has been running smoothly since. I hope this helps anyone looking at this problem, it's possible the January released 332.21 WHQL will also work, but I have not personally tested that driver yet.

I just set "-32bits"
And in nVidia driver : Refresh Rate : application controlled. This one is the only one can cause the game crashe.

Hi!

This may be an old post, but I needed to share this.
I was having the same issues of the graphics, but searching in another post referring the command line parameters I was able to make the game run avoiding this problems.

I used the next ones:
-nointro -noplaycine -soft -triplebuffer

The only thing is that the walls don't get transparent so they may get in the view, but besides that the game works great, it might work for someone else

In my case, the "-soft" argument makes all menu items disappear.

I used the following at the end of target URL
-sortbyz -32bit -window
without compabilitymode and it works perfectly on my Windows 10 !!

In my Envy Windows 7 Ultimate AMD 7600 Radeon I used sortbyz in Darkstone.exe and my game is finally working great. Hope this can help others that like me still love this old game.

This game works great with dgVoodoo 2 (in original 640х480).
No problems with menu (but problems with music and dialogues still remain. At least on Win7 and forceware v347

Tried all fixes, game still has distorted graphics. It's going back to "Hidden" status.

hi everybody !

like serzh_ak said
(many thanks !!!)

i do that
that s work

simply extract the 3 files from MS FOLDER
in darkstone folder

run the game
640x480

good
------------------------
method by -sortbyz
not really acceptable
there is bugs

here, no, except screen and resolution they do not match perfectly
but playable

that s emulate an old card in direct8 mod
(nice idea)

no problems saw
music dialogues good for me
(tested on AMD) win10 (64)

thx