Posted September 14, 2015
I'm creating this thread to document the changes needed to the Caesar installer and associated editor and player. While what I have observed is on Windows 7 others report the same problems. The current installer has been inadvertently broken.
1. Present Caesar installer (2.10.18) does not install a working version of Caesar on the machine. My understanding is that the older installer worked, but I don't have it. Users are able to launch the program but see some problem with the buttons on the game splash screen menu. When battle is started either "Caesar.exe" stops working or if the AI has the first move the battle loads then repeats two "Interpretor Error" boxes over and over again (I tried clicking through 1,000+ times without ever reaching an end.)
2. The associated GBCE player and editor are not being installed. This is approximately 1/2 of what the install should do (or 2/3 depending on how you look at it.) The .exe's are in the directories but do not have the appropriate compatibility profiles or registry entries. Also, the program shortcuts are not being created.
I know that Caesar.exe, GCBE.exe, and Scenario Editor.exe all could be installed on Windows 7 and will run from the original CD after making sure Win95 compatibility and administrator privileges are used on the setup.exe's and program.exe's. Following the incomplete/unsuccessful GOG Caesar install I've gotten all three to install from CD. The CD install included shortcuts and registry entries for GBCE and for Scenario Editor which are both omitted in the GOG installer.
There are some other things reported by some users as problems from the previous installer that do not appear to be the fault of the installer and are instead inherent to the game's executable and OS's from XP on up. If there is a solution, great, but these are problems in the CD version as well. I'm only listing them as known issues, not ones that need to be remedied.
3. Music halts. It will start when called for in the splash screen and in the battle menu and at the end of a battle, but rather than looping or continuing onto the next track it stops after it plays a few notes of the next track. The wrapper succeeds in getting it to play those few notes...the original CD version just halts at the end of the first track in battle. Some toggling in preferences will eventually restart the music from the beginning before it halts again. Since the wrappers .ogg files are much smaller than the original .WAV files, perhaps the three battle tracks could be joined into a longer track and perhaps repeated to provide 30 minutes or so of music?
4. "Center on leader" function does not work in any of the games. My understanding is that this is an OS issue across multiple other games as well. This was a problem for the original game in XP, Win7, etc.
5. The old in-game game help is not supported by modern OS's.
1. Present Caesar installer (2.10.18) does not install a working version of Caesar on the machine. My understanding is that the older installer worked, but I don't have it. Users are able to launch the program but see some problem with the buttons on the game splash screen menu. When battle is started either "Caesar.exe" stops working or if the AI has the first move the battle loads then repeats two "Interpretor Error" boxes over and over again (I tried clicking through 1,000+ times without ever reaching an end.)
2. The associated GBCE player and editor are not being installed. This is approximately 1/2 of what the install should do (or 2/3 depending on how you look at it.) The .exe's are in the directories but do not have the appropriate compatibility profiles or registry entries. Also, the program shortcuts are not being created.
I know that Caesar.exe, GCBE.exe, and Scenario Editor.exe all could be installed on Windows 7 and will run from the original CD after making sure Win95 compatibility and administrator privileges are used on the setup.exe's and program.exe's. Following the incomplete/unsuccessful GOG Caesar install I've gotten all three to install from CD. The CD install included shortcuts and registry entries for GBCE and for Scenario Editor which are both omitted in the GOG installer.
There are some other things reported by some users as problems from the previous installer that do not appear to be the fault of the installer and are instead inherent to the game's executable and OS's from XP on up. If there is a solution, great, but these are problems in the CD version as well. I'm only listing them as known issues, not ones that need to be remedied.
3. Music halts. It will start when called for in the splash screen and in the battle menu and at the end of a battle, but rather than looping or continuing onto the next track it stops after it plays a few notes of the next track. The wrapper succeeds in getting it to play those few notes...the original CD version just halts at the end of the first track in battle. Some toggling in preferences will eventually restart the music from the beginning before it halts again. Since the wrappers .ogg files are much smaller than the original .WAV files, perhaps the three battle tracks could be joined into a longer track and perhaps repeated to provide 30 minutes or so of music?
4. "Center on leader" function does not work in any of the games. My understanding is that this is an OS issue across multiple other games as well. This was a problem for the original game in XP, Win7, etc.
5. The old in-game game help is not supported by modern OS's.
