Watching old tfl films

[gehennom]

Does anyone have any advice for watching films from the MWC '98? I can get myth to work on my windows 8 box, both in 1.0 and 1.5 versions. But 1.0 doesn't see the 1.3 films, and the game crashes when I load them in 1.5. The 1.3 patcher can't find Myth on my computer.

Can anyone help me?

[Pyro]

I'm on Windows 8 and I'm able to run Myth TFL v1.5. It crashes once I exit a film but it loads them fine. I also have a Windows XP Virtual Machine (lets me emulate Windows XP on my comp) but that might be too much of a hassle for you.

Have you tried messing with the compatibility mode? Right click on the Myth_TFL executable. Click on "troubleshoot compatibility". Select the recommended option and test the program. It could help. It didn't seem to change my situation but I am able to run films.

[gehennom]

Yeah, I'm running in windows xp compatibility mode.

It's actually pretty weird what it does for a film-- it starts loading, screen goes black, and returns to the select a film screen. Then when I try to do anything, I ctd. Maybe I will look into xp virtual machine.

[Pyro]

Another thing that could help is changing the resolution your desktop uses. It might not help, but Myth TFL was altered at some point to use whatever your desktop used. A really high resolution (relative to an old game that only had 640x480 when made) might be causing it trouble. I tried a lower res on mine but that didn't change its behavior. It wouldn't hurt to make sure you have updated graphics card drivers just to rule that out.

How silly of me, I just thought of something we overlooked. Go to preferences and try using Software instead of OpenGL. I did and now I don't crash TFL after exiting a film. That might help you too.

[gehennom]

alas, I tried all those things, and no luck. software rendering makes it take a lot less time to get dumped back to the select a film screen. Whereupon I ctd when I do anything.

[Pyro]

Weird. I'm on windows 8 and switching it to software fixed it for me with no compatibility mode needed. Perhaps our graphics drivers are different. Make sure you have yours updated. If you don't have a graphics card installed then you likely have integrated and can still update them though Intel or AMD depending on what kind of processor you have.

[gehennom]

hm.. trying it again, I noticed that it progressed through the whole loading bar for my test film, on crow's bridge, but only got a little way through loading the MP map. So I tried firing up a one-person lan game, and that gave me a ctd as well. So I'm thinking I maybe don't have good map files for the MP maps somehow?

So I guess I should probably try redownloading the 1.5 patch. And probably get my folks to mail me my old tfl cd instead of downloading it off the net.

[Pyro]

Well we could compare MD5 checksums of the TFL game files to see if we match. If we do then perhaps you don't have corrupt files (unless I have the same corrupt files which seems unlikely). You can find instructions here. Instead of doing it to the Myth2 install tag files, do it on TFL's GOR files.

[gehennom]

all right, let's give that a try:

Code: Select all

[Path] / filename                              MD5 sum
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[C:\Program Files (x86)\myth_TFL\TAGS\]
ARTSOUND.GOR                   97491614b429402eb0acdac794cf870e
CUTSCENE.GOR                   6bd202cd7ec438c21fc4c1d34b18d74b
LOCAL.GOR                      6f71eec65654b9e3742e9868cb372a53
PRIVATE.GOR                    d895161e04567f140c7bcb6dac520f13
SCRAP.GOR                      6d2fae6cc69f9744cc855229fc7436f8
TAGS.GOR                       eb841d9b935703744352228308081ded

[Pyro]

Hmm I'm getting different results between what is in my Myth TFL and my Myth TFL install. My results from my TFL CD are as follows:

Code: Select all

artsound.gor       acaa55e1d575bc7002896b2e91bcc88b
cutscene.gor       fb399b65b4dadf019670dbaae5d93b9e
scrap.gor          234a8ac806cfbff8f56707287928fabf
tags.gor           eb841d9b935703744352228308081ded

Only our tags and private Gor files match. Do you have a non-English Myth TFL or the UK version? Mine is the North American/US version. I think the UK version has the intro cutscene altered to include something about "Distributed in Europe by" and a mention of Eidos.

The "artsound" file contains the bulk of the images used by the game for units and maps as well as most of the sounds. The "cutscene" file contains only the cutscenes you see in single player and is not needed to play the game. The "tags" file contains the rest of the data the game uses plus some of the images for the interface of the game. The "local" and "scrap" files will change each time you load the game. I don't recall what the "private" file is for but it isn't important.

If your TFL is the American one, then your "artsound" file being different could explain some of the issues you have with TFL running correctly. The "tags" file would matter as well but we have it the same it seems.

[gehennom]

Ah. I got it from some random place on the internet, which I figure is (morally) ok because I did buy the game. And know where my cd is, too, it's just about 500 miles away from me. The 1.5 patch probably overwrote tags.gor with the correct one, but left the other ones wonky.

I'm going to try a different download source, and see if that works, before trying to get my original cd.

[gehennom]

A reinstall from a better source worked!

Thanks for all your help.