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+--- Thread: KNP games won't work in Windows 98 (/showthread.php?tid=2791)
KNP games won't work in Windows 98 - Q-Nova - 11-09-2021
I got Windows 98 installed on a computer a while ago, and for a while it could only display 16 colors. During this time, games made with Klik & Play (Commander Keen 2000, Mario & Yoshi, etc.) would run, but look horrible. Recently, I was playing around with the system settings, and I managed to get Intel® Extreme Graphics installed and working. To get that display adapter working, I set a couple memory ranges to these settings:
30000000 - 37FFFFFF
FFA00000 - FFA7FFFF
After restarting the computer, I was able to get a lot more colors. Unfortunately, however, the KNP games stopped working. Whenever I try running one, I would get a blank window and then this error message:
Code:
Not enough memory.
Try closing any other applications
that may be running and click on RETRY.
Retry CancelGames made with The Games Factory or Click & Create (a TGF experiment I made a while ago, Yoshi vs. Windows: Platinum Edition, etc.), as well as DOS games (Commander Keen!), will work just fine. Yet, KNP games refused to run, although when I click on "Cancel" the "Klik & Play" ad will pop up correctly. This error message occurred when I have the colors set to True Color -- running a KNP game with 256 Colors or High Color will show a blank window and then the computer reboots itself. I closed all programs, except for Explorer (because attempting to close that one gives me the Shut down menu), and then ran Commander Keen 2000 through a shortcut, but it still wouldn't work! I once changed the second memory range I listed earlier to 2FE8000 - 2FEFFFFF, and it made the computer unusable. And yes, I do have the KNP DLLs (KNPS.DLL and KNPG.DLL) included with the KNP games.
I tried looking for answers online, but I couldn't really find any so far. The only possible solution I found so far is to set the display adapter so that it uses automatic settings (and thus makes it conflict with "System board extension for ACPI BIOS"). It gets the KNP games working again, but the colors return to just a mere 16, the latter of which is not what I wanted.
Does anyone know a solution that gets KNP games running on Windows 98 while retaining the high color count? Is there something I'm missing here?
RE: KNP games won't work in Windows 98 - Vitiman - 11-14-2021
You're treading into dark waters, friend. What we have here is a classic case of Early Windows Incompatibility™. Klik & Play software (the editor itself, games made in it) are all 16-bit, and while in theory this would mean something 32-bit like Windows 98 would have a degree of compatibility with it all, it isn't always a guaranteed win-win. Klik & Play was first released in 1994, and predates the release of Windows 95. It was primarily geared towards compatibility with Windows 3 and 3.1 and you're bound to get some funky issues trying to run KNP software on anything newer, even if that "newer" is still over 20 years old at this point.
I remember way back in the year 2002 when I was first getting into fangaming, I always had trouble getting KNP software to launch on my ancient Windows ME computer. I mean, imagine that right? Especially since ME isn't that far removed from Windows 98 (same MS-DOS backing, for instance), that sounds about right. I couldn't tell you the exact errors I got since it was so long ago, but I do remember it just not playing very nicely. Once you factor in relatively newer graphics hardware, I could imagine several reasons why it'd bug out.
Your absolute best option here, should you choose to pursue it, is to partition your hard drive in this older computer and install a dedicated Windows 3.1 w/ DOS setup for truly vintage gaming and computing. That's what I would do, anywho. Assuming that's a reasonable option for you. Alternatively, installing a second hard disk for the same purpose. Whatever floats your boat. Otherwise, I don't know for sure if a True Color video driver can co-exist with the necessities of Klik & Play. I'm doubly sorry because it sounds like actual DOS software works just fine still on the PC, so I wish I had a better solution for all-in-one DOS gaming. But the truth is it's hard to attain a truly all-in-one solution for that anyway, people usually settle for "eras" that they try to target - and in that regard, you sound like you've hit quite a luxurious one! A Windows 98 PC with modest-to-high specs for the time will cover a lot of ground. But alas, KNP isn't actually very well-designed software. It certainly wasn't very futureproofed!
Best of luck, fellow vintage computer enthusiast!
RE: KNP games won't work in Windows 98 - HylianDev - 11-22-2021
im not nearly the expert on this subject that others are, but i used to keep FreeDOS on a flash drive & boot that to play old DOS games. so I think that vit is correct & you should give DOS a shot. you might even get it to work on a flash drive before you commit to partitioning & etc, but if the hardware is really old, booting from USB may not be an option