How the hell do I get this game running on Vista?!

[evensteven]

I dug out my old copy, slapped it in the CD tray, installed it no problem.
Double clicked the icon...Worms Armageddon has stopped working!
Tried running in XP compatibility...Worms Armageddon has stopped working!
Tried running as asmin... Worms Armageddon has stopped working!

Installed the 3.6.26.5 Beta patch... WORMS ARMAGEDDON HAS STOPPED WORKING.

*cries*

I just want to play :-(

My laptop specs are -
Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.66Ghz)
1GB 667 DDR2 RAM
Intel GMA 945
Vista Home Premium.

[bonz]

How about reading the sticky thread at the top of the page?
http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32164

Or the several other threads?
http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32509
http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32481
http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32465

You would have then recognized that there is no real solution yet, just a few workarounds that have worked for some people.

[evensteven]

I did read those. I read all of them.
I even tried running the compatibility admin with settings of my own but to no avail.

[CyberShadow]

If you still have a Windows 98/ME/2000/XP CD, you could use Virtual PC and run W:A under it. It'll be a tad slow, but should be playable with your average Vista-ready computer.

[DragonQ]

I did try that (on a PC that runs Vista perfectly), but the emulated graphics card is just so crap that even at 640x480 the frame rate is unstable. Not to mention the emulated audio drivers, that mean clicks/pops every second at least. Not playable at all.

[evensteven]

Does anyone know what causes it not to work under Vista?

[yakuza]

Does anyone know what causes it not to work under Vista?

Microsoft.

[DragonQ]

Sorry for any offense caused by this, but WA really doesn't seem like a very well-built program at all - the frequent crashes, the lack of easily-added and obvious options such as separate music and effects volume levels, the inexcusable graphics bugs in the main program and front end etc. etc.

Of course, patches have made it far better than the release version, and I am thankful for those who worked on them, as I'm sure everyone here is, but the game wasn't made brilliantly from the ground up and that will always be a problem with things like new OSs. You really cannot lame Microsoft for not making WA work perfectly on Vista, they cannot test every program in existance, especially ones this old. Having WA work on Vista at all would be a testemant to its surprising popularity for its age, but it seems like it will take a lot of work. I'm looking forward to the revamped menu system in the 4.0 patch though, as well as the 32-Bit Colour Support (which should theoretically eliminate most colour bugs in the main program), whenever that may appear.

Again, no disrespect to those who made the game or are patching it intended :)

[SilPho]

I personally would have to disagree with you. Bearing in mind that this game was released before XP was even out means it's not surprising that it has problems with an operating system released almost 8 years later.

Microsoft added an "XP compatibility mode" to Vista which should mean the game runs as it did on XP, obviously this is not the case so Microsoft "could" be ridiculed about that, but frankly I don't see the point. People have got WA to work on Vista, and I'm sure soon we will figure out what a definate cause is.

If you're desperate for separate music and sfx levels, just turn off the ambient music and play your own songs through your choice of Media Player, if you wanted to you could copy the music files from the disc and add them to your own playlist. It's a bit of a workaround for a simple idea, but at least it's possible.

[DragonQ]

Oh I know - anything is possible in the computer world ;) It's just a bizzare oversight within the program itself.

[evensteven]

So I guess there's no solution for me then :-(

I'll have to keep worms non-portable for now

[darthAquil]

I'm using Vista Ultimate and managed to play the game at last;

First, I installed the game as usual and restarted Vista.

Then, I downloaded the official patch (v3.0), there: http://wa.team17.com/main.html?page=supp&area=patc and installed it.

After that, I downloaded the v3.6.26.5 Beta Update, there: ftp://ftp.team17.com/pub/t17/patches/pc/WA_Update-3.6.26.5_Beta.exe and extracted it into game folder directory.

At last, I created a shortcut of Worms Armageddon directory on desktop. I chose the Windows 98/ME compatibility mode. Then it worked=) Hope it works for you too...

[bonz]

I created a shortcut of Worms Armageddon directory on desktop.
The shortcut leads to the directory and not the wa.exe? :confused:

[Dando]

Sorry for any offense caused by this, but WA really doesn't seem like a very well-built program at all -

I 2nd that, alot of what I hear on here makes me cringe...even deadcode agreed that it was badly coded once over.

[yakuza]

Sorry for any offense caused by this, but WA really doesn't seem like a very well-built program at all - the frequent crashes, the lack of easily-added and obvious options such as separate music and effects volume levels, the inexcusable graphics bugs in the main program and front end etc. etc.

Of course, patches have made it far better than the release version, and I am thankful for those who worked on them, as I'm sure everyone here is, but the game wasn't made brilliantly from the ground up and that will always be a problem with things like new OSs. You really cannot lame Microsoft for not making WA work perfectly on Vista, they cannot test every program in existance, especially ones this old. Having WA work on Vista at all would be a testemant to its surprising popularity for its age, but it seems like it will take a lot of work. I'm looking forward to the revamped menu system in the 4.0 patch though, as well as the 32-Bit Colour Support (which should theoretically eliminate most colour bugs in the main program), whenever that may appear.

Again, no disrespect to those who made the game or are patching it intended :)

Very bad post. Worms Armageddon is a 8 year old game. If Microsoft made sure the backwards compatibility was flawless all games would work in Vista.

[redwraith]

Why not install a boot manager, make a new partition (10 GB or so) and install XP as a second operating system? I think it wouldn't work without a boot manager unless you would've installed XP fist, then Vista.
If I used Vista I would definately do that because there are also problems with other older games for sure. I even have Win98SE and DrDOS on my hard disk for full backward compatibility :D

[DragonQ]

Having an XP partition for things like this is of course a good idea, but you really have to keep it bare minimum (anti-virus program, Windows Firewall, Automatic Updates of course, not much else) to get it to start up as quick as possible.

If you have an XP partition like me that is a "main" Windows installation and has many programs on it, waiting the total of ~5 minutes for Vista to shutdown and XP to boot to a usable state is just plain annoying when I want a quick game of Worms. Most people aren't ready to move their main installation over to Vista yet.

Of course, you could have three partitions (XP, Vista, and XP-Worms) :D

[evensteven]

I already have a partition for Vista and one for Ubuntu. The game works fine in Ubuntu after some tweaking - although the menus are dodgy and it crashes randomly sometimes - but I can't play it over the internet, which sucks.

I just want it to work in Vista so I can play it how it's meant to be played.:P

[evensteven]

Hmm..I noticed in the crash error report it said "Fault Module: DirectX2D.dll"

...any comments?

[redwraith]

Hmm..I noticed in the crash error report it said "Fault Module: DirectX2D.dll"

It looks like W:A has problems with DirectX 10 which is only available for Vista at the moment (and also in future if it's true what MS says).

[Cheese]

The shortcut leads to the directory and not the wa.exe? :confused:
I guess the reason for that is this :p
The only way to get rid of this bug is by opening C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon, the folder where your game is. If this folder is closed (i cant understand why) the graphic bug appears. It's the easiest way on vista to play this game without any problem. And during the game if u close the game folder, the graphic bug will reappear.

Voila I hope it will help !

[darthAquil]

The shortcut leads to the directory and not the wa.exe? :confused:

Yes, it leads to the directory, so you can start the game with the "wa.exe" there. If you try this with shortcut of wa.exe on desktop, you'll have some problems about the color scheme as Cheese mentioned.

[JackED41]

Install 160.03 forceware drivers if runin on an nvidia graphics card...