Dominion Wars on Vista/Windows 7

[toughlittleship]

I managed to pick up a new copy of Dominion Wars recently, although I've had a bit of trouble running it. It works on my laptop, although the display graphics are mixed up (the Badlands appear green) and it doesn't work on my PC with Vista, always coming up with an error message. I've changed the compatibility settings on both, although it doesn't appear to have worked.

Any suggestions?

[CaptJimboJones]

Can't really help, other than to observe that DW was notoriously buggy. I could never get the game to work properly on my XP machine back in the day.

[LutherSloan]

Yeah, I remember when it first came out it never really worked for long. It's just a broken game, as far as I can tell.

[DS9forever]

Dominion Wars refuses to work on XP or Vista, even with compatibility mode activated. It works on Windows 7, although with the graphical bugs like the original poster mentioned. Anyone have any idea how to fix that? Dominion Wars wasn't the best game ever, but it did have its moments.

[yochenhsieh]

Hello,
Dominion Wars works fine on my laptop - a MSI U210L, which has ATI x1250 IGP and Windows 7 x64 SP1. I think this game only works on specific range of old video cards.
ATI 7500~X1000 series
nVidia TNT2~GeForce4 series

I had it worked on WinXP and Vista before, so the video card is the only problem that decides if it plays normally.

Check my youtube channel for some Dominion Wars videos, recorded from WinXP and Win7.
http://www.youtube.com/user/yochenhsieh?feature=mhum

[daedalus5]

Check the Win 7 sticky thread in this forum incase someone has posted how to do this in the past.

[swaaye]

Yeah the biggest problem with this game working is whether your video card gets along with it. It is very picky about what GPUs it will work with. Even old cards from its time won't necessarily work.

I've had it working in XP with a Radeon X800 but I have tried many other GPUs and had no luck. It usually won't even start up but if it does you are probably good to go.

[Komat]

I created a wrapper which improves the compatibility of DW with new GPUs. I did not have time to play the game much so there might be some serious issues in latter missions. So far I have seen few smaller graphical glitches however the game was playable (Vista 64bit, NV GF 460) so it might be worth try http://jiridvorak.webpark.cz/dw/

[Haggis and tatties]

toughlittleship wrote:

---

I managed to pick up a new copy of Dominion Wars recently, although I've had a bit of trouble running it. It works on my laptop, although the display graphics are mixed up (the Badlands appear green) and it doesn't work on my PC with Vista, always coming up with an error message. I've changed the compatibility settings on both, although it doesn't appear to have worked.

Any suggestions?

Did you know that the UK/EU version was a complete nightmare to get working on even XP never mind W7....the US version on the other hand for some weird reason would run pretty well on Xp with compatibility mode....something to do with the EXE file of each version game.

As for getting it running on W7 i think its futile....i gave up on most of my fave Trek game with vista, the technology has simply moved on too much, although the funny thing is that its easier to get Dos trek games to run with the likes of VDM and dos box, than to get Trek games made for windows 95/98 and ME.

Its crazy.

[swaaye]

Komat wrote:

---

I created a wrapper which improves the compatibility of DW with new GPUs. I did not have time to play the game much so there might be some serious issues in latter missions. So far I have seen few smaller graphical glitches however the game was playable (Vista 64bit, NV GF 460) so it might be worth try http://jiridvorak.webpark.cz/dw/

Oh this is very nice. Thanks for the time and effort. The secondary display issue alone made the game not work on many cards because it would always try to use the wrong output and crash.

Your patch got the game working on my Intel GMA 900 netbook. I have a feeling this might mean it will run on most hardware now. The only problem I've seen is a mouse cursor delay that was solved by setting the game to Win98/Me compatibility mode.

[yochenhsieh]

Komat wrote:

---

I created a wrapper which improves the compatibility of DW with new GPUs. I did not have time to play the game much so there might be some serious issues in latter missions. So far I have seen few smaller graphical glitches however the game was playable (Vista 64bit, NV GF 460) so it might be worth try http://jiridvorak.webpark.cz/dw/

It works!
I really thank you for this wrapper, for it just solves the problem and I can now run Dominion Wars on a modern PC!
Tested on my desktop which has ATi HD5570 and on Windows7 it doesn't need to set any compatibility mode. May I write a link to your page in wikipedia/memory alpha?

[Komat]

yochenhsieh wrote:

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May I write a link to your page in wikipedia/memory alpha?

Yes. Note that it is unlikely that you will be able to get it at wikipedia as there is no credible unbiased third party source mentioning the wrapper.

[yochenhsieh]

Komat wrote:

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Yes. Note that it is unlikely that you will be able to get it at wikipedia as there is no credible unbiased third party source mentioning the wrapper.

At least I should try it first. If it's rejected, I will try other means to asist people who want to play DW find your wrapper.

This is an important step for Dominion Wars 'fans' who still keep a low spec pc to play it, or want to play it but cannot because they upgraded to a new pc. Perhaps someday we will have something for Dominion Wars like ATX for Trespasser...

[MilleniumLance]

yes!!! FINALLY!!! STICKY THIS PLEASE!! ***MOD*** can i post the hex code string to change for the wrapper to help others?!?

[RRtexasranger]

I've downloaded the wrapper, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it. Does anybody mind giving more detailed directions?