jorg11: I've always wanted to play Dark Reign, but I see way too many reviews and forum posts about technical issues. Are these issues still there, or were they fixed?
I'm not that interested in multiplayer for now, but I would like to have ingame music. Thus, I would be running 1.4 instead of 1.7. In that case will the GOG release work "out of the box" or do I need additional tinkering?
The current state remains "unplayable to most purchasers," with only a small percentage having managed to make it work without ANY issues.
GoG's "fix" for the game is a mistake. They created a "launcher wrapper" which, unfortunately, does TWO things... it immediately closes down Explorer, as a "hack" to bypass the corrupted pallet issues (by far the worst possible solution to fix pallet issues... many DirectDraw wrappers exist, and I've used several, and currently have identified the version found in the latest dgVoodoo wrapper package to work perfectly with this game!), then (supposedly, but not really) restarts Explorer once you're done playing. It also tricks the game EXE into not realizing that you don't click the 'CD check" window... though the window remains open (but invisible) after the Explorer shutdown, and until you reboot your machine.
The two EXE files used to launch the two versions (the main game or the expansion) are just terribly buggy, and not worth using, in my view.
Using a DirectDraw wrapper works much better to resolve the graphical issues. I can run full-screen (but in correct 4:3 aspect ratio) on my 1920x1080 monitor, with anti-aliasing, usign dgVoodoo... the game (and the game videos) look perfect.
But, when I get to starting a single-player game (I haven't tried multi, nor do I plan to, as I don't play MP), I get the CD-check popup window, and without a CD (or a mounted CD ISO?) it won't play... the "copy protection" remains in the game, and was only "defeated" using a hacky solution, in other words.
Right now, I'm looking for any DR CD ISO I can find, hoping that this will allow me to play the game I just legally purchased. But no luck so far...
I shouldn't HAVE to do this. The version I bought should "just work." I admit, I only paid a few dollars, but still... that should have bought me a game which actually works.
