Hello Steely_Gaze!

Initially, I did not experienced those ball shot animation freezes as soon as the ball reaches his peak height on its trajectory. But after testing and experimenting with other alternative wrappers, I got this behaviour, too. (Even after a clean fresh re-installation!) In addition, the intro video kept black--only the audio could be heard.
=> After applying the current version 1.35 hotfix patch from GOG.com, these errors got resolved!
And now, I can play again as before.


Regarding the "occasional animation freezes while putting":

I call those the "near hole / approximately 50 yard - SW issue". Because those freezes and game crashes occur only when the ball had landed before in an approximate range of 35 to 75 yards from the hole so that the computer automatically chooses the SW (sand wedge) in the proximity but outside of the green!

I have been successfull in avoiding this type of crashes by staying outside of this range--always taking a mulligan if the ball stopped in this 'dangerous zone'--aiming my shots for landing either on the green (wihtin feet not yards distances of the hole) or maintaining at least 90 to 100 yards from the hole!

Kind regards,
foxgog

So I got it to work on my Ryzen 9.

I had to set it to Window mode in the DX executables settings.
All I did was change that setting and now it works fine.

I repurchased Links LS 98 because the game was on sale and I was interested in knowing if something changed

I believe I have achieved a stable game with every feature switched on. But I'd like to know if anybody could test it further. It could be worth the try.

Not having any luck with the bundled wrapper, dgvoodoo, ddrawcompat and similars I used another iteration, the one used in the game Take no Prisoners. It seems to be a version of a wrapper used for old Command and Conquer games. It also comes with a text based configurator to edit various things.

I have tested the game with that wrapper and for around 45 minutes I played a game with IA, all animations enabled and with 1024x768 32 bits without any freeze. Movies working, sound, smoothness.

I believe it could be interesting testing if deeper and longer to see if it can be the definitive solution. The truth is that with every feature enabled I was never able to play more than a minute without freezes and subsequent restarting so it is encouraging

Greetings

Hello Gudadantza!

Thank you; this is really good news!

May I ask, how to identify this newer wrapper iteration in other GOG.COM games?

And more importantly, which files exactly would I need to copy over into to the GOG install of "Links LS 1998 Edition" to make it work (or try it out as you have done it)?

I am playing around with "Links LS" again, trying to get a smoother and crash-free experience. Due to its better compatibility (at least in DOSBox) I even went to get the DOS-based predecessor "Links LS 97".

Kind regards,
foxgog

Hello Gudadantza!

Just a little 'ping' to remind you about my question.

What is this wrapper called/named?
How to identify it and its specific version?
(Or at least the corresponding "Take no Prisoners" offline installer file, since my success with dgvoodoo2 in other games highly depends on its release version.)

And why do you assume this specific wrapper was 'used for old Command and Conquer games'?

Hopefully, my asking does not disturb you. Unfortunately, I can not initiate a PM/chat with you. But I am really eager to get the issues with "Links LS 1998" resolved!

Kind regards,
foxgog

Hello everyone interested in "Links LS 1998 Edition"!

I have not yet tried Gudadantza's advice on testing the wrapper which GOG.COM included in the game "Take no Prisoner".

However, I found in my play sessions that a reduced amount of secondary camera views in game has a positive effect on stability. Usually, I have an overhead view and at least the landing camera or even the green/hole camera on in parallel. But when I turn them off, playing just with the main view or with at most one additional camera view, then the game performs significantly more stable on my machine.

Just thought, it might be interesting for other players.

I am stil curious to see what effect the different wrapper--mentioned by Gudadantza earlier--can have, especially with regards to the frequent crashing near the greens (landing in wedge distances).

Kind regards,
foxgog

You can check out pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Display_wrapper to see if any of those might help. The cnc-ddraw in the directdraw wrappers sections might be the one that Gudadantza mentioned. I've tested it with Links 98 and it seems to work fine for me, but I didn't encounter any freezing problems before using it so I might just be lucky.