Hi.

I'm not a total tech neanderthal but fairly close. Looking through the various 1.13 and Straciatella forums and posts on Steam, the Bear Pit and Gog makes me not want to bother, but here's a last shot.

Is there a simple, easy and convenient way to just get this game working. I'm on an Asus S56CA laptop with Windows 8.1

Help? Incidentally I'm kicking myself for buying this on Steam instead of on Gog now with the recent money-back guarantee. I've been burned too many times lately trying to get old games via Steam only to find out it's a mess with Windows 8.1

Cheers.

Yeah, a really easy way is the following:

Download the old wine files (exe).
Do not execute the file, but extract it (e.g. with 7-Zip). Note: newer releases do not include the necessary ddraw.dll

Copy the following files (I think it was from $SYSDIR folder) to your JA2 Gold main folder:

ddraw.dll
libwin.dll
wine3d.dll

If the game is not starting:

Edit in 'Ja2.ini' in your game folder
PLAY_INTRO = 0 [It's the intro that borks up the start process]

Worked well on Lenovo E130 Windows 8.1 (64-Bit).

There are some glitches on the tactical screen with the green and red missile informations (helicopter), but otherwise it worked flawlessly!

For myself, I use Steam and GOG and GOG is a lot easier to modify and use, but probably, the community is not so big.

According other references its the Syswin folder where you have to take the dll files from.