China Intrigue in the Forbidden City

[guardsman]

Hi, all!

I am having problems playing the movies in China, Intrigue in the Forbidden City -> http://www.legendsworld.net/adventure/game/2927 . During playback of the intro movie and the first in-game movie, the video portion is sluggish/choppy and parts of the audio portion appear to play repeatedly and sound "broken up". I have the latest K-Lite video codec pack installed on my P4 2.4gHz laptop running WinXP Pro and the latest Catalyst drivers for the installed ATI 9000 Radeon 64MB video card. Based on the game's requirements, I believe that this configuration should be able to run this old 1999 game. If anyone was able to play this game without any problems or have any ideas on how to get it to work without any problems, please let me know. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You!

[hfric]

oh this game ... you have to uninstall k-lite codecs they are horrible even GTA3 will not work if you have them installed ... use those that Cryo added on the disk , and start using VLC a players that does not need codecs

[Meddle]

Or Media Player Classic Home Cinema, another nice player.

[guardsman]

...you have to uninstall k-lite codecs ...use those that Cryo added on the disk, and start using a VLC player that does not need codecs

Thanks for responding, hfric! I don't really want to uninstall K-Lite just to play one game. I actually use the codecs in K-Lite to play the majority of movies on my machine. During the installation of the game, I chose a full install - I didn't exclude anything including any required codecs that might have been included by Cryo.

Virtually all of the other old games I've played worked fine with K-Lite installed. Do you know of any other codec pack that might work with this game? I've heard of CCCP but never tried it before nor do I know whether it will conflict with the codecs in K-Lite.

Or Media Player Classic Home Cinema, another nice player.

Thanks for responding, Meddle! Media Player Classic Home Cinema is actually packaged with K-Lite. I had already chosen to install it during the installation of K-Lite. I think the problem might be with the codec(s) in the K-Lite pack.

[3dslUserLoad]

@guardsman:
Like hfric I would recommend to uninstall KLite, too.
(After uninstalling run a registry cleaner (CCleaner - http://www.piriform.com) to remove dead registry entries.)

For playing almost all video formats (including .BIK files from games) you need only:

- FFDSHOW DirectShow encoder/decoder: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/
- LAV DirectShow media splitter/decoder: http://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/downloads/list

Without any additional player installed you can enter this command in a commandline window:

Code: Select all

rundll32 msdxm.ocx,RunDll /play /close <videofile>

[hfric]

or start using VLC or POTPLAYER , programs that does not need codecs to decode movies and music

[guardsman]

... I would recommend to uninstall KLite, too. ... For playing almost all video formats (including .BIK files from games) you need only ...

Thanks for replying, 3dslUserLoad. I'll try out FDDSHOW and LAV DirectShow see whether the VFW codec included with FDDSHOW and codec(s) included in LAV fixes the problem. As for K-Lite, I think I'll leave it on my machine unless I encounter a message from FDDSHOW or LAV DirectShow that says an installed K-Lite codec will conflict with FDDSHOW or LAV DirectShow during installation. If the problem with the game is fixed, then I'll uninstall K-Lite and see if some of the movies (Not related to the game) that I successfully played before with K-Lite work 100% with the new codecs. I just have to find some time to try it out (The Thanksgiving holiday is coming soon, so I'm going to be busy this week).

[viltowers]

Had no problems running this on a VM (win 98)in Windows XP....Hope you figure out the problem. It's a beautiful game..(beware the opening voice-over..it's one of the worst acting voices to begin a game that I've heard in quite some time)

[guardsman]

Well guys, I installed FDDSHOW and LAV DirectShow (I didn't encounter any error messages that said any existing codec was conflicting with a codec that was being installed) but I still have problems playing the movies while running the game. I also tried uninstalling K-Lite and running CleanMyPC Registry Cleaner to remove any traces of K-Lite but to no avail.

Had no problems running this on a VM ...

Thanks for the suggestion, viltowers. I was hoping to avoid running this 16 bit game under a VM. I don't run VMs often (I have two old machines running WinXP SP3) and I can't imagine running a VM just so I can play one game (DOSBox is another thing since there is not the overhead of running a graphical guest OS involved. BTW - 16 bit Win 3.1 can be installed under DOSBox but I don't want to do it just to play this one game).


If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know. I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

[viltowers]

I'm using an old machine running WinXP SP3 as well, I wish I could offer another solution. IMO it's always a good idea to have a VM available, just in case a program won't function properly or is too old to run smoothly on a newer OS. Do other Cryo games (from that era) work on your system?

[guardsman]

... Do other Cryo games (from that era) work on your system?

I played Egypt 1156 B.C. Tomb of the Pharaoh briefly six years ago and it worked fine without any problems. However, things may have changed on my machine (e.g. - Codecs, Video filters, QuickTime, etc) since then. This was the only Cryo title that I've tried recently. I don't play that many old Cryo games. One in a while, I might try a Cryo title if the story behind it is good and the graphics are halfway decent enough.

If you want to count DreamCatcher games in the same group of games as Cryo, since DreamCatcher bought out Cryo before being later bought out themselves by JoWood, then I've also played to some small degree "The Legend of Lotus Spring" -> http://www.legendsworld.net/adventure/game/4048 without any video playback or gameplay problems.

[guardsman]

Thank You for sharing the proper version of this title, Egon68. Unfortunately, I am encountering the same video and audio playback problems with the in-game videos in the proper version as I had encountered with the version first shared by nanette. I appreciate your hard work though.

[oldman]

i was wondering if the win31 emu package Molitor made awhile back for Crusaders would work with this game.

edit: i doesn't work on win31.

i managed to get it going on winxp in compat. mode win95 ,plus i ticked all the boxes underneath
640 screen res , advanced text services , e.t.c.

though it is still really buggy with camera movement.

edit update:i think i had hardware acceleration turned off in directx.