Hey all. I've been having a blast reliving old memories with GoG's Lords of the Realm 1/2 (my original LotR disc was thrown out when we got a computer that couldn't run it and LotR2 was lost to time at some point). One small issue that's been driving me crazy, though.

Lords of the Realm 2 constantly decides it doesn't want to run in 256 colors anymore and suddenly turns into a spastic rainbow mess that makes it near unplayable. Certain actions will undo the color change--ending a turn, exiting the town square interface, opening the file menu and then closing it, exiting the tax rate interface--but the colors will go nuts again one or two minutes later. It's not gamebreaking since it can be undone, but it's extremely inconvenient, especially when it happens in the middle of a battle and I have to go mess with a menu to undo it and lose precious actions controlling my troops (which need constant attention thanks to the woefully dated pathing AI).

I'm running the game on 64-bit Windows 7. Compatibility settings are running as administrator with Windows 95 and 256 colors.

Thanks!

...Huh. Yes, sure enough, leaving the screen resolution window up before starting the game seems to fix this. No more color explosions. Thanks!

There is a tool to fix that type of problems.

http://crappybitter.livejournal.com/tag/directdraw%20compatibility%20tool
don't worry there is a english language version as well.

Here a excerpt from the readme

===============================================================
DirectDraw Compatibility Tool
===============================================================

[ Program purpose ]

DirectDraw Compatibility Tool is designed to fix color palette corruption
in the old games (Fallout, Age of Empires, Worms Armageddon, Theme
Hospital and other from the second half of the 90th).
Corruption occurs because of incompatibility between graphical
interface Windows Aero and games intended to work with DirectX 7
DirectDraw or an older DirectX version. Both Windows Vista and
Windows 7 have built-in compatibility tools for such games. But to invoke
compatibility mode there should be information about specific exe-file in
the corresponding part of the registry. DirectDraw Compatibility Tool allows
to completely automate process of compatibility rules creation.


Second tool that was originally designed for Starcraft but works with other games too having the same problem.
http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/2981-starcraft-fix-holy-cow-22.html#post883615