Al Emmo under Vista?

Jordik

Has anyone been able to play Al Emmo on the Vista OS?
When I try to launch it the screen goes black, and then returns me to the desktop without an error.
None of the compatibility options help here.

Other games made with the AGS engine (e.g. the Kings Quest remakes) have similar problems, but there you can solve it by changing the resolution with the setup program to 640x400 from the default 320x200 (which Vista seems to reject). Al Emmo's winsetup.exe doesn't work though, so you cannot change this.

Fortunately I still dualboot with XP so I can play it, but a Vista solution would be appreciated...

Emily

You should post your question on Himalaya's forums (if you haven't already). They'll be better equipped to answer you.

Please be aware that the activation system we have Al Emmo using is not currently working under Vista, so if you're playing our version you should stick to the XP boot until we update it.

Jordik

I've got it working :-)

The problem was something called "ffdshow".
I'll share the fix here:

Step 1:
Look for something like "ffdshow configuration" or "Video decoder configuration" in your start menu. This might have another name, look for anything with either ffdshow, decoder, or codec. If you have this shortcut, double-click it and go to step 2. Otherwise continue below.

If you do not have a shortcut for it, create a new shortcut on your desktop. Type ‘rundll32.exe’ as the target and save it. Now open the shortcut properties, and go to the end of the Target box, and type ‘ffdshow.ax,configure’ at the end. It should look something like:

Target:
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe ffdshow.ax,configure

Press OK. Double-click the shortcut.


Step 2:
Go to the "Info & debug" panel, and tick the "Don't use ffdshow in:" box. If there's nothing in the box under the tickbox, just simply put in App.exe. If there's already something in there, just put a semicolon between the last entry and your new App.exe entry. In my case it already had two entries, so the full entry is now:

explorer.exe;oblivion.exe;App.exe;

Apply the settings. Al Emmo should be able to play the intro movie and launch now :-)

Jordik

Oh, and something else I found while troubleshooting:

make a copy of App.exe and rename it ‘Al_Emmo.exe’ (with underscore). This will allow you to use winsetup.exe to enable nice effects like the graphics filter and play in a higher resolution (for fast PCs), make Al Emmo run windowed, and other settings.