I have the same problem.

Altho OP thank you for your hard work and effort in trying to bring back the multiplayer/skirmish aspect of the game, I was even surprised to see some of the Army Men games listed as supported in GameRanger, which prompted me to this patch as well as bringing the computer play back.

You've inspired me to try and make a similar multiplayer patch for Toys in Space, or at least try to, so far my idea is still on the drawing board but I might come to making it one day when I have some more free time on my hands.

Speaking of which, I actually tried doing some modding of my own, started out with the basic stuff by changing the music and some sounds of both Army Men 2 and Toys in Space, then found out about the additional multiplayer maps provided by 3DO and tried to transfer some of World War's maps over to Toys in Space or vice versa, can't remember right now, and then made my way down to trying to bring over the Machine Gunner and stationary AA gun/20mm from World War over to Toys in Space but I failed at both as far as I remember.

If possible can you provide me with some assistance on that? Any ideas or tips if you've done some work in that particular aspect besides the multiplayer? It's nothing special really, just a late teenager trying to mod his childhood games, that's all haha.

Anyhow, keep up the good work and cheers.

Is it possible to patch the steam version?

Is there a way to install the patch without getting all these stupid web browsers and anti-virus/malware applications that I don't need? I followed the link above and got so inundated with these programs and browsers that I never heard of and don't want. It made me nervous so I just quit the install and uninstalled everything that came with this.

I can confirm using the original EXE from the disc version of Army Men Toys in space does restore multiplayer functionality to the GOG version of army men toys in space. Like army men 2 you need the cd in the drive in order for it to work. And while I'm at it I'm going to answer my own question from before.

This patch does not and will never work with the steam version of the game (Plus GOG has army men world war which automatically makes it better than steam)

It not a patch. This is old exe file +(mini)-image. So it can work even with some online-DRM versions... but Steam is similar to GOG - drm-free.

And it's not flickering and minimizing your game?

Because I tried installing this patch again over a GOG installation of Army Men II and it continues to do so just like somebody else and I reported about an year ago here.

Or did you manage to fix it somehow?

I'd greatly appreciate any help with fixing the multiplayer as it's the main reason why I kept playing the game as a child really, I mean the campaign was nice and all but it was... confined so to speak.

This solved mine issue as well. Thanks!

You're welcome :)

Hey! if you need World War disc to make this happen, I got a spare copy! add me on discord and we can talk?

Victor Seras#3713

So this worked for me as well altho then the game for some reason started having lower FPS. Is it because I had Chrome opened in the background or something?

As stated, this doesn't really "solve" the issue, at least for myself and a few others. It solves the constant minimizing issue, but results in a drastically reduced frame rate. By renaming the ddraw.dll file local to the installation directory you're causing the game to use the global ddraw.dll file in the system32 folder instead. What we need is a version of ddraw.dll that is compatible with older versions of DirectX.

I was able to download the version found here: https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/releases/tag/experimental and replace the version of ddraw with the downloaded one. This allowed multiplayer to work at the correct frame rate.

I tried a version prior to this "experimental" one, but it resulted in color issues. This is likely not a static release, but hopefully any future releases from that repository continue to work.

I haven't done extensive testing, but played a couple games without issue. I hope this helps others!

Hey y'all is there a Patch for the Army men 1 Multiplayer that does the same thing as this Patch
also would putting back files that are missing the in gog version with files form the CD vresion fix mp as well.

OP's workaround is unnecessary. Here's a simple fix (requires hex editor):

Re-enable "multiplayer" menu option: Edit offset 4D8FE: EB 55 -> 74 55