VMware Communities
bernd333
Contributor
Contributor

Age of Empires II doesn't even start anymore...

Age of Empires II doesn't even start anymore. In VMware Fusion 1 it runs great on Windows XP, but since the Fusion Update to version 2 it won't even start anymore. Some Grafik problem...

Tags (3)
Reply
0 Kudos
19 Replies
admin
Immortal
Immortal

Did you upgrade the virtual hardware? Did you upgrade VMware Tools?

Reply
0 Kudos
TheLoneVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Interesting, this is one of the games I use for testing, it works great for me on MacPro with ATI2600 card. However, I am running the demo version of Age of Empires II, not the full game. Should be the same engine... Running through the tutorial right now. Love this game. Anyways, do check to make sure your tools and VM have been upgraded correctly, that's the most likely cause of the problem. If you are still unable to run, can you provide the exact error or problem you are seeing, and what version of the game you are running (are you running the full game, and is there a patch available)?

Reply
0 Kudos
nox21
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, I'm also having issues with AOE II since Fusion 2.0 on my Macbook (10.5.5), VM upgraded, installed latest verision of VMTools - worked like a charm with previous version. When i try to run the game in XP virtual machine switched to full screen mode, I get :

-


Error

-


Could not initialize graphics system. Make sure that your video card and driver are compatible with DirectDraw.

-


OK

-


Running it in a windowed mode it starts. Now if I keep resolution settings on 800x600 i'm able to start the game both in window and fullscreen mode. Switching to 1024x768 causes the game to switch back to windows and drop down the colors to 8bit, positioning the game window to the top left corner, probably having the correct size but around the game window I can see windows desktop (in low color mode)....

With external monitor I was able to run the game in 1280x1024 resolution by starting in a window as well, and after the game was set up and I clicked start game I had to switch to full screen when "Loading..." (or something like that) appeared.

Well, so that's my observations and experiments with Age. Any ideas?

Reply
0 Kudos
TheLoneVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

I'll dig around with this a bit more and try to track down a full version of the game. Thanks for the detailed information, hopefully we can get this figured out.

Reply
0 Kudos
awittenauer
Contributor
Contributor

Does Age of Empires 2 use the same gfxconfig system that Age of Mythology uses? I actually just spent today trying to get AoM:Titans working under Fusion 2.0. I've got it "working" to the point that it is playable. Suffers from water texturing issues and the mouse gets confused about its location.

Anyway, if it does, these might help. Both of these files should go into gfxconfig (and gfxconfig2) for Age of Mythology. If AoE uses a similar system, it might work for you folks as well.

Reply
0 Kudos
nox21
Contributor
Contributor

Hey. No, AOE2 is a plain 2D using only Direct Draw (well, that's what I think) and unfortunately has no such configuration.

Reply
0 Kudos
TheLoneVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

>> I actually

just spent today trying to get AoM:Titans working under Fusion 2.0.

I've got it "working" to the point that it is playable. Suffers from

water texturing issues and the mouse gets confused about its location.

Thanks for the information, I see there is a demo of AoM:Titans, so I'll check it out and see if I can reproduce the water texture problem. As for the mouse tracking problem, there is an option in Fusion -> Preferences for gaming mouse, try setting it to always enabled and see if that helps.

Reply
0 Kudos
Sage22
Contributor
Contributor

I have a major problem. Whenever i try to start a single player game my computer Reboots. Any ideas?

Reply
0 Kudos
admin
Immortal
Immortal

No, but that does sound serious. More details are needed, please see .

Reply
0 Kudos
AVacic
Contributor
Contributor

TheLoneVM, any news on the Age of Empires 2 problem?

I also get "Could not initialize..." error when I try to run the game in full screen. It also switches back to 8bit.

Reply
0 Kudos
TheLoneVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Age of Empires 2 - Fullscreen - "Could not initialize graphics system". Yes, I was able to reproduce this problem in house, and didn't find any easy workaround for it. Game seems to be OK if you start while the VM is in Windowed mode, and then switch to Fullscreen, very weird. Thanks for the input on this one, will get a bug entered.

Age of Mythology: This game does check against a list of graphics cards and if it's not in the list, the game will fail to start. Thanks for the info on how to modify the gfxconfig file to manually add our device to the list. I went about this another way and used a tool called 3D-Analyze to fool the game into thinking the graphics card was an ATI 8500. This tool is also nice in that it also allows for an option "force SW TnL" and switching this on makes the water "wave" effects render correctly. As for the mouse problem, are you running with "VMware Fusion -> Preferences -> General -> Gaming -> Always Optimize mouse for games" enabled?

Sage22 - What game are you running, and what platform (mac type and video card) are you using? I did notice that Age of Mythology has numerous reports of Blue Screen problems even on 'host' hardware configurations...

Reply
0 Kudos
AVacic
Contributor
Contributor

Age of Empires 2 - Fullscreen - "Could not initialize graphics system". Yes, I was able to reproduce this problem in house, and didn't find any easy workaround for it. Game seems to be OK if you start while the VM is in Windowed mode, and then switch to Fullscreen, very weird. Thanks for the input on this one, will get a bug entered.

What settings did you use for the mouse and the 3D setting (although last one should be irrelevant)?

In windowed mode, it switches the VM windows size several times (couldn't figure out how to stop it do that) and finally enters the game but then the in-game cursor is invisible, even though I can click and select with it.

p.s. Something is really weird with "rich text" editor here - it twice did some sort of loading and lost entire message. Typing in Plain text now, with Cmd-A / Cmd-C every 3s.

Reply
0 Kudos
AVacic
Contributor
Contributor

Here are two screenshots. First how the game resizes the window and then when the play starts it gives me this horrible display where window resizes to accomodate 1280x1024 resolution, but fails and then falls back to previous size, but display is really wrong and game cursor and play is unusable.

After few more test,I got to the bottom of this. My monitor is Apple 20" with resolution of 1680x1050. With the Mac menu line above and the Fusion title bar, there is no 1024px available for the actual VM. so, if I set 1280x1024 in the game settings, Age tries to switch to that, Fusion then intercepts this and shortens the vertical resolution and the game display goes haywire.

If I set the game into 1024x768, then it works and display is ok. I tried also to start in this resolution, swtich to full screen - up to this point all is fine. Then inside the game, while I'm still in full screen and there should be 1024px available in height, the switch also fu*ks-up the graphics like in the attachments.

AoE II is hardly usable in 1024 and 1280 is the eons more usable for game play. Can something please be done with this mode switching? I believe the fault is on Fusion side, as it somehow intercepts the Age video mode swtiching and thus causes the game to render itself badly.

Reply
0 Kudos
rbaleksandar
Contributor
Contributor

Well, I hope that this isn't an off-topic since I run my VMware Workstation on WinXP Pro SP3. The OS is Win98 SE. I use this OS not only for old games, but for some testing. Well, AOE2 is my favourite. And I wanted to play it. But WinXP somehow doesn't want me to 😕 The problem with DirectDraw appears everytime when I try to start the game. But so much with WInXP. Back to Win98 Smiley Happy So, I installed DirectX 6.1a (I think that was the version) which was on the CD with AOE2 (Age of Kings forgot to mention). I use 800x600 resolution. When I start AOE2, a black screen appears...And thats it. Even if I send CrlAltDel via the VMware Workstation menu, nothing changes. No sound, no picture...Nothing. I have to restart the VM. I remember an year ago or so with a previous version of VMware Workstation I had no problem running this game. It didn't matter the color depth or the resolution. But now it can't start. Any help appriciated! Thanks in advance.

EDIT: It works FINALLY! Okay, here is a simple solution that may force you to reinstall a couple of times the video drivers and VMware Tool. This works for Win98, but I think it will work for WinXP too. Set the screen resolution to 800x600 and the color depth to 256 colors. The desktop might look crap*y, but AOE2 looks as usual - perfect Smiley Happy You won't be able to play the game in a different resolution though (this is - 800x600). I used DirectX 6 (included in the CD). Don't remember to be doing all that configurations with my old version of VMware Workstation. Something's different in the new one and not in the good way Smiley Sad

Reply
0 Kudos
TheLoneVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

>>Age tries to switch to that, Fusion then intercepts this and shortens the vertical resolution and the game display goes haywire.

Actually, it is the OSX window manager that forces the resize. It has to do with how OSX handles windows that would otherwise overlap the Dock, and unfortuately, there isn't anything we can do about it on our end. One workaround would be to reposition your OSX Dock to the left side of the desktop. Bring up the Dock preferences box, and there will be am option for "Position on screen". This should allow your Fusion window to display at the full 1280x1024resolution without resizing.

Reply
0 Kudos
AVacic
Contributor
Contributor

>>Age tries to switch to that, Fusion then intercepts this and shortens the vertical resolution and the game display goes haywire.

Actually, it is the OSX window manager that forces the resize. It has to do with how OSX handles windows that would otherwise overlap the Dock, and unfortuately, there isn't anything we can do about it on our end. One workaround would be to reposition your OSX Dock to the left side of the desktop. Bring up the Dock preferences box, and there will be am option for "Position on screen". This should allow your Fusion window to display at the full 1280x1024resolution without resizing.

Just tried that, but no luck. Even with Fusion's status bar hidden, and the toolbar hidden, maximum height available is 1006px.

Interesting thing happens when setting resolution. Inside the WinXP, using Desktop Properties/Settings, I set 1280x1024, it goes to that, WinXP asks do I want to keep the new setting, click Yes and it still switches to lesser resolution, window is fitted in available height so that no scrollbar appears. Only when I repeat the procedure the 1280x1024 is maintained, with both hor. and vert. scrollbars.

If it's OS stuff, then I'm probably out of luck. Might go with Bootcamp then, for Age playing.

Reply
0 Kudos
awittenauer
Contributor
Contributor

<span class="jive-thread-reply-body-container"> As for the mouse problem, are you running with "VMware Fusion -&gt; Preferences -&gt;

General -&gt; Gaming -&gt; Always Optimize mouse for games" enabled?

Turning that on fixes my mouse issues. I'll try the software hack in the future.

Thanks!

Reply
0 Kudos
lensovet
Contributor
Contributor

Is there any sort of ETA on a fix for this? Parallels plays this game with no problems. I was able to get the game to start, albeit in only 800x600 mode, by turning off 3D acceleration. However, even then, the game changes the screen resolution to 8-bit (i.e. 256 colors), making for a rather suboptimal playing experience.

You would think that playing an old game with significantly lower hardware requirements would be easier, not harder, on a virtual machine...alas...

Reply
0 Kudos
dunkmaster31
Contributor
Contributor

Do you think you could let me know what boxes you checked in 3d Analyze for AOM??

Reply
0 Kudos