Hello to all on the Forum.

I've recently been replaying all Tex games (from Mean Streets through to Pandora Directive), and have started on Overseer - played in the past but the most notorious to get running properly on modern systems.

I'm running on Windows 8.1 and have managed to fix most issues (transparent textures, no sound) by setting up DgVoodoo and Virtual MidiSynth. This is the latest GOG version I'm running - apart from the issues noted below everything else seems to work.

Most things now work fine (FMVs, exploration etc.) but I've had crashes at certain sections. The most common are puzzles (the dominos, which crashed upon solving after the comment about the 489 solution) and the cogs at Anasazi (again, this crashes after the Tex comment which seems to trigger this). Some other things seemed to trigger crashes (manipulating the desk in Linsky's attic without the key and examining the passcard reader after it was installed in the computer at the warehouse).

Crashes don't appear random as they only occur in specific places, but obviously can't proceed past Anasazi. Other uses have reported crashes at the cogs / puzzles (a similar issue was mentioned over at Steam forums also). This is presumably some kind of codec issue.

Is anyone else experiencing this (or better still - have a possible solution)? I may have to resort to playing my old physical copy on my XP machine or wait for the Poisoned Pawn update.

Andy P.

Am having exactly the same problem. Managed to make it to Val Davis' lab. Crashes right after the dialog after using another one of the cards in the reader. Just tried dgvoodoo (Didn't replace the file in the windows folder for Win7 systems though) and for a brief moment I saw the lab again before it crashed. Every other time it crashes right at the end of the dialog.

Some observations. Game will crash right after dialog has finished but is still on the screen for the puzzle. But not every puzzle. As lordepsilon mentions it happens on the dominos, cogs and inspecting the locked drawer in Lysky's attic. Will add that it has also crashed on the brick puzzle in the ruins and circuit puzzle in Val's lab.

What I've found is for any puzzle where it crashes at the beginning, after dialog, but before you can actually try the puzzle you can still proceed. If you launch and restore three times the dialog (Voice and text) is no longer loaded and it proceeds right to the puzzle. However if the dialog is at the end of the puzzle or like looking at the cards the dialog will always be loaded and of coarse crash.

While writing this I just loaded up the Anasazi Ruins save I have. Wanted to see if music plays while you try to solve the cog puzzle. First off, no there is no music so in my mind this is not a midi error. Second I noted that with dgvoodoo loaded it would crash every time I tried to load and interact with the puzzle just as described above. However if I removed it then the trick I also mentioned works again.

While I'm not well versed in game creation I'm going to make a stab in the dark guess at what is happening.

When a full screen interactible or dialog observation is loaded what you are seeing is a picture and not the actual interactible thing. Much like when you swipe on a phone you are not moving the icons, or whatever, but a picture of that screen. So when Tex is talking (dialog), he is talking over a picture and not the interactible thing. When the dialog is over there is supposed to be a handoff that happens to remove the picture and load in the interactible (Whether it's the puzzle or environment). The game is either not finding the interactible right away or the handoff is sloppy either way it decides it cannot proceed. My trick seems to support this since it goes directly to the puzzle and the player has no issues navigating the puzzle.

What I don't know is where the problem ultimately lies. Is this a video codec/driver issue or is it a coding one? Is this error happening every single time you interact with something and for some reason the game isn't retrying (error correction) to find what it needs on a only a few items? That would make me think coding. But you could also make the case that the video drivers are not handling the handoff properly.

I'm stumped on how to proceed beyond just watching a playthrough.