TheFurryShark: (...) [Screamer 4x4] just keep frezzing my desktop and the "ding" mouse sound..
The game crashes everytime and i tried using all 3 modes, it was running fine on an old win 7 but now i'm running win 10.
Help plz?
Hello TheFurryShark!
When and where exactly does it crash for you?
Do you use the English or one of the localized installers?
With what screen resolution, and in what mode (fullscreen or windowed) are you trying to play?
I have been playing "Screamer 4x4" using both the English and the German offline installer provided by GOG.com on various systems, already - from Windows Vista 32-Bit, Windows 7 32-Bit, Windows 7 64-Bit, Windows 8 up to Windows 10 64-Bit (1909).
Using GOG.com's Direct 3D shortcut always gave me better performance and stability, but the OpenGL (*_gl) one does run for me, as well. (I could get the Glide one to work properly though. But it would be nice, because it allows for the vehicle textures to get dirty during the course of a race.)
Two important things that I have observed with Screamer 4x4 is that its stability depends a lot on the chosen ingame screen resolution and color depth!
According to my experience, resolutions higher than 1024x768 are significantly more instable, likewise the higher 32bit color depth options.
I do not mind playing in for todays standards lower resolutions and 4:3 aspect ratio with black bars or borders. And since my most recent two systems are (/were) Laptops with limited vertical resolution I tend to use either 800x600 (for really older games), 1024x768 (for 2000-ish games) or 1280x1024.
Most of the time, I am running "Screamer 4x4" in 800x600 16bit or 800x600 32bit. This results in a lot less crashes for me! On my current Windows 10 (1909) Laptop it is running quite well in 1024x768 16-Bit using the D3D start option / shortcut and playing in fullscreen.
Anyway, it still crashes sometimes most often when loading the next level / race.
If it crashes AND freezes my desktop, then I use "CTRL+ALT+Delete" to open the windows user account control (where you can lock your session, change the user account, logg-off as current user or open the task manager) and select to "change to another user account". Then, I immediately logg-in back into my original user account with which I was playing "Screamer 4x4"!
This way, the desktop and all functions are available again as usual without the need to reboot the system!
And I can kill the process of the game that is stuck from within the task manager, if necessary.
Frankly, the game is not free of bugs or errors.
Here is a list of common ones that I have encountered:
- Usually, the music volume spontaneously returns to very noisy in the menus.
- Some final races (pathfinder races at the end of the campaigns) bug out (the vehicle is constantly accelerating and turning) depending on which vehicle you have selected. (Though, this never happened with one of the initial two - the first Jeep CJ7 and the Land Rover Defender! It happened to me quite frequently with the Mitsubishi or the Mercedes G-Class.)
- Some later race maps or campaigns do not have any reference times for the checkpoints or the leaderboard summing up the race results has errors.
- The descriptions (names) of the rewarded vehicle upgrades contain spelling errors, text looping and overlapping, or are simply wrong.
- If you frequently switch the vehicles, then you can not get all the vehicle upgrades neither in all let alone in one of the vehicles. (Maybe the game does not separate ceanly the entries in its associated vehicle or upgrade data base.)
- The vehicle deformations are working only after messing with the console.
- I could get all race maps to work in the free ride mode.
- The multiplayer mode(s) are not working properly, and if you enter it with AI players, the AI driven vehicles are waiting in their initial spots until you give them a bump with your own vehicle (crashing once into their cars).
Nonetheless, it is still one of my favorite 4x4 offroad (simulation type of) games!
Maybe running it in one of the lower screen resolutions is doing the trick for you.
And do not forget the 'change user account'-trick!
Good luck in getting it running and enjoy the driving!
Kind regards,
foxgog