Does this mean I have to reinstall Privateer 2 all over again? Any way to modify the patch to take into account the new directory?

Change the first two lines in DARK.FIX to

C:
C:\GOG Games\Privateer 2 - The Darkening


cheers

Still doesn't work on Win98/ME and Win95 modes.

Odly enough I can play it in XP Service Pack 3 compatibility/Win7/Vista/Win8 compatibility modes. I have Windows 8.1 btw.

Privateer 2 has a bug that crashes the game if the installation path is too long. I don't remember the limit without looking it up, but i'm pretty sure it's relatively short by today's standards. What could be happening here is that your installation path could be hitting this limit.

I'll try to fix this in the next version of the patch, by tweaking the EXE in a few spots, but for now, you could try the following workaround: Change the first two lines of dark.fix to:

G:.
G:.

(change to reflect the drive letter you have the game installed on, notice the dot)

sfried: That is odd indeed. It may be some P2 issue that the patch still isn't addressing. I'll try to reproduce this issue and post some more info if I can figure what's going on!

Bojamijams: hopefully there'll be a new version of the patch soon ;) I've been in crunch mode at work, so I ended up halting work on the patch for a bit. Fortunately it's returning to normal now, so i've been able to resume work on the patch.

Thanks! If it helps, I also have Coolsoft VirtualMidi Synth also installed (currently configured to use WeedsGM3.sf2), but it has not given me any problems so far with DOSBOX games.

It most likely is related to the use of Coolsoft VirtualMIDI Synth.

(i'm pasting below my reply on the CIC forums on this issue, for the benefit of people not following that thread)

My experience with CoolSoft VirtualMIDI Synth and Privateer 2 has been a bit hit-and-miss, particularly in Windows 7 (curiously P2 seems to work fine with it in XP).

As far as I can tell, Privateer 2 tends to open and close the midi mapper often, and it sometimes hangs on the close operation. The VirtualMIDI mixer shows that there's one channel that is apparently not properly closed, so this is most likely what's holding the close operation indefinitely.

So there's definitely some weird interaction between P2 and VirtualMIDI Synth that is causing P2 to hang. I'll look into it, if the problem is in P2 i may be able to patch it up.

In the meantime, try selecting the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth as the default MIDI Out device, on the VirtualMIDI Synth Configurator. It won't use the new soundfont, but it should work better...

I think starting with Windows 8 (and subsequently 8.1), the midi mapper has been takien out. Even in the CoolSoft VirtualMidiSynth configurator it shows greyed out.

Anyways, I tried using a third-party mapper to select the default Microsoft GS Wavetable synth and it still doesn't work. I also uninstalled the old version and reinstalled the newer version of VirtualMidiSynth (1.8.2).

Forgot to cross-post it here, from the CIC thread:

I made a small update to the P2 patch which allows forcing the game to use one specific MIDI device. It should help with situations where you have multiple devices in Win8 and need to choose a specific one.

With some luck, i should be able to figure out why Privateer 2 doesn't like VirtualMIDISynth. Until then, the game should work with the Microsoft GS Wavetable. You can select it with darkfix_setup

You can get it here: http://hcl.solsector.net/p2_patch_test2.zip

Hopefully other updates (mostly display-related) will follow soon.

Thanks! darkfix_setup worked wonders! Now I'm able to play the game with sound (alas with Microsoft GS Wavetable, which isn't the best, but still works)!

btw I'm running this game natively on Win 8.1 native and so far no issues. Running it on 95/98 & ME does make video playback go smoother but them my joystick starts giving me funny reads as the game will randomly switch cameras. This problem is solved when playing the game in Windows XP and above, but at the cost of slightly frameratey looking video..

with this version, i can'T seem to configure my controller anymore. the unoffical patch game uses it as 2 button joystick. xpadder can'T overwrite it either.
also, my mouse tends to get stuck in this version, didn't have that so far in the dosbox version

If you're using xpadder, just keep in mind this game may not have rudder control. That's an issue I myself would like to know since my flightstick supports twist but it doesn't want to react. Same with hat switches.

Anyways, I find the issue was solved when callibrating my joystick in native mode, then playing again on compatibility mode. Must be a polling issue or settings control.

no, mostly it's so i can use all the buttons. when it worked, it was okay. only used to keyboard inflight for the map and jump. but it's not a big thing, just wanted to write it here to have it mentioned

(sorry for not answering before, the day job just kicked up into crunch mode...)

Good question about P2 support for rudder control / hat switches. I'm not sure if P2 Win95 (which this patch improves upon) supports it natively, although i can try to look it up.

The mouse getting "stuck" is strange though. It's exactly the problem i'm trying to fix in Windowed mode (which is why i haven't enabled it yet), but it shouldn't be happening in full screen mode. Are you trying to alt-tab out of the game and back in? If so, that doesn't work properly yet (meaning, it could have some side effects).

Hopefully i'll be able to come up with a fix for this.

Oh wow. I got the GOG version because I was hoping that their DOSBox solution would have solved this. I have Privateer 2 on CD, and it runs at a very stable speed on the pentium that I have that runs dos. Privateer 2 was the only game that I couldn't work out how to run acceptably in DosBox myself. But the pentium takes up room, and needs PS2/serial peripherals that also take up room, so it's been in the cupboard for years.

Looks like I could have just downloaded this in the first place! Doh! Oh well.

Thanks a lot for your work on this! Looks like the pentium is staying in the cupboard! :D

Thanks for the patch guys! The video now looks great!

Unfortunately I've got a couple of problems. It recognises my joystick but the up/down axis seems reversed, then when I land the mouse control freezes and I can't move the cursor and have to shut down the game. These problems don't occur on the unpatched version.

Apologies if this has already been answered, I couldn't see this problem when I looked at all the threads.