Hello all,

I'm having some issues playing Heroes 2. I can play full screen but sometimes when I double click (particularly on heroes) it brings up the attached/below error and quits the game:

DirectDraw Error

DDERR_Generic

File:'F:\h2xsrc\source\wingraph.cpp'
Line: 552


Has anybody else had this issue? Thanks for the support!

Thiev,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, it is the windows version. I am running a PC, Windows 10 and my graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 745M using Intel Core i7. Please let me know if you need anything else. Thank you.

I have similar problem with HOMM III. I´ve found multiple "solutions" via different websites and forums but nothing seems to help.

The exact error is:

"
Unexpected Program Termination

DirextDraw Error (16385):

'DDERR_UNSUPPORTED'

File: 'C:\Dev\Heroes 3 Exp 2\Game\WINGRAPH.CPP'
Line: 347
"

Sometimes I can see the "commercials" before the intro, but then the screen goes blank and I can only hear the sounds of the intro. When the game starts I see a mouse arrow, I can move it (it leaves a "trail" of arrows wherever I move my mouse, so after a while I see a hundred arrows on the screen) and I can click the buttons, but I'm not able to see the game itself. Then wen I terminate or exit by pressing esc and then enter, the error code shows up.

My specs are i7-2600 / GTX 1060 / Win 7 64bit
Tried updating drivers, taking out second monitor, changing resolution before starting up the game, XP Mode, Codec pacs.

Well, I suppose the game itself was quite cheap and I had my doubts when I bought it. Too bad if there is no solution, since the game itself is so damn good :P.

If you have multiple monitors try disabling them...

Could you link to the proposed solutions that failed for you, so that we can exclude them from further consideration? Does it matter if you set the game to be windowed instead of full screen? Is your desktop set to run in 16bpp color depth, as the window mode requires?

You can change full screen mode in the registry at key *HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\New World Computing\Heroes of Might and Magic® III\1.0* by changing value *Main Game Full Screen*. You can also disable the introduction movie here by changing *Show Intro*. I do not expect disabling the movie to help with your problem, but it does make the game start faster.

So I've been looking into this issue for a LONG time, I have the disc version from way back. What I'm thinking now is that it's where either a movie file is corrupt or isn't compatible with Win 10. I've also come across the fact that in Win 10 Heroes 2 Gold doesn't create a registry entry. I'm currently looking at different possibilities to by pass this issue. To bypass the registry issue (which may or may not make a difference to the game, not sure) simply install on a previous version of Windows and export the reg key and then add it to the Win 10 registry You'll have to make the necessary changes in the key to match your file location on Win 10 and so on. For the issue of the movies that play, I'm trying to find if there is either a way to turn off the movies or a way to delete the file.

I know that the issue isn't the game itself being playable because if you start Heroes 2 Gold without the disc it takes you into the menus. And what makes me think it's a movie issue is that when you go on to the trailers door on the menu it gives the same issue and quits. This must mean the issue is the movies.

If I find any kind of work around I'll post it. I'm pretty determined to try to find a work around.

Hi there!

I´ve got exactly the same error when starting heroes chronicles.
The solution was f*ckin simple.

I have my PC connected via Analog to my Display.
But at the same time connected via HDMI to my Television.

1. I only had to right-click on my desktop and open my screen resolution.

2.There i changed my main-screen to PC-Display (before i had my Picture displayed on booth Tv and Display at the same time)

3. Only Problem was that the Mouse Pointer was stuck in the Game...
So I changed the screen-resolution to 800x600 before starting the Game

4. Problem solved :)
Hope that works for you

hello, after having searched for 3 days, I finally found the real solution to the problem. for heroes 3. the game was made to be shot in 65536 colors (16 bit). right click on the desktop screen resolution advanced settings list all modes select the desired resolution in 65536 color (16 bit) mode. good games.

all of you are wrong... perhaps you should enable the direct draw stuff like you would add features to windows 10 normally

Try dxwnd.

I'm putting together a compatibility pack for HOMM2 Windows. Not quite done yet, but feel free to try this early release:

https://nofile.io/f/JmebVHwsX2Z/HOMM2_Compatibility_Pack_alpha1.zip

You'll need to install the x86 VC++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017: https://aka.ms/vs/15/release/vc_redist.x86.exe

In the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 (Win) folder, remove any existing ddraw.dll, winmm.dll, or wing32.dll files and place both ddraw.dll and oggwinmm.dll there.

These changes will

1) Convert fullscreen rendering to Direct2D (DirectX 11), maintaining 4:3 aspect ratio. (OpenGL version coming soon)
2) Greatly reduce CPU usage by incorporating non-blocking sleep within message loop
3) Restore CD music (CD or CD+Opera)
3a) Customized driver to resume CD music tracks when terrain changes, mimicking how the actual CD version of game behaved.

Also, *highly* recommended to set HEROES2W.exe to be run on single core. Use Imagecfg tool (https://robpol86.com/imagecfg.html) and run "imagecfg -u heroes2w.exe" from cmd prompt.

Thank you for doing all this work!

Any specifics? Error messages? Poor performance? No change? Just curious what "didn't work for me" really means.