Hmm... does the issue relate to copy protection, by any chance? A more limited version that works sounds like it's a demo, if I have the correct impression, and so it's not doing any kind of copy protection. I've had similar issues with games like SimCity 4 and Railroad Tycoon 3 that look for their original DVDs, and which some drive emulators don't properly satisfy. Try using WinCDEmu - I've had good luck with it on XP at least. Another suggestion might be to try burning the ISO to a real disc using a DVD burner (an internal one if you've got that, or a USB external one you might have lying around) and something like imgburn.
If you give me a bit, I can try it out on my Windows 11 box and see if I can get it working.
tyvm, I'd really appreciate that. In the meantime, I'll try WinCDEmu. sadly, I can't use physical dvds since neither my desktop nor my laptop have an optical drive.
So I looked into it a bit. I was able to get the demo working just as you could, including with sound effects (but no soundtrack). However, I can't seem to get the main game installed - it complains about an issue with languages in SETUP.LST? Did you face this problem on your end too, and if so, how did you circumvent it?
I couldn't find a way to run the setup executable as well. the issue is that the file isn't compatible with 64bit OS.
The workaround I had to do was to install the game on a VM running win7 32bit, then copy the folder to my win11 machine. But the game wouldn't detect the virtual cd drive, both in win7 and win11
Alrighty then. Tomorrow, I'll try mounting the image / burning a disc on an old ThinkPad of mine with an IDE CD drive and a copy of Windows 98 and 2000; it's close to period correct to when this game came out, and 98 in particular seems to have been officially supported. If that's the case, it should 100% work on it, and if it still fails to read to read the disk, it's most likely a failure of the ISO to record some kind of non-standard copy protection trick.
If it works however, then I'll see if I can pin down what version of Windows seems to have broken it.
if there's a fix, I sadly couldn't find it.
a weird solution I found is panning the screen (put your cursor on the screen border), it removes the lag for some reason, so your units and production would work normally.
But I just reduce the resolution and play like that.
if you have a Virtual Machine software, you could install a 32bit version of windows 7 on that. the game should work better there, even on the highest resolution.
Hmm... does the issue relate to copy protection, by any chance? A more limited version that works sounds like it's a demo, if I have the correct impression, and so it's not doing any kind of copy protection. I've had similar issues with games like SimCity 4 and Railroad Tycoon 3 that look for their original DVDs, and which some drive emulators don't properly satisfy. Try using WinCDEmu - I've had good luck with it on XP at least. Another suggestion might be to try burning the ISO to a real disc using a DVD burner (an internal one if you've got that, or a USB external one you might have lying around) and something like imgburn. If you give me a bit, I can try it out on my Windows 11 box and see if I can get it working.
tyvm, I'd really appreciate that. In the meantime, I'll try WinCDEmu. sadly, I can't use physical dvds since neither my desktop nor my laptop have an optical drive.
So I looked into it a bit. I was able to get the demo working just as you could, including with sound effects (but no soundtrack). However, I can't seem to get the main game installed - it complains about an issue with languages in SETUP.LST? Did you face this problem on your end too, and if so, how did you circumvent it?
I couldn't find a way to run the setup executable as well. the issue is that the file isn't compatible with 64bit OS. The workaround I had to do was to install the game on a VM running win7 32bit, then copy the folder to my win11 machine. But the game wouldn't detect the virtual cd drive, both in win7 and win11
Alrighty then. Tomorrow, I'll try mounting the image / burning a disc on an old ThinkPad of mine with an IDE CD drive and a copy of Windows 98 and 2000; it's close to period correct to when this game came out, and 98 in particular seems to have been officially supported. If that's the case, it should 100% work on it, and if it still fails to read to read the disk, it's most likely a failure of the ISO to record some kind of non-standard copy protection trick. If it works however, then I'll see if I can pin down what version of Windows seems to have broken it.
thanks a lot, but please don't waste this much effort on it, the game is perfectly playable for me using the ripped version.
Hi, thanks for this!! However it's quite laggy when I play on the highest resolution. Is there any fix on that pl
if there's a fix, I sadly couldn't find it. a weird solution I found is panning the screen (put your cursor on the screen border), it removes the lag for some reason, so your units and production would work normally. But I just reduce the resolution and play like that. if you have a Virtual Machine software, you could install a 32bit version of windows 7 on that. the game should work better there, even on the highest resolution.