Hell Cab [Solved]

[Talkie]

Hello wonderful people,

I have a feeling no one is going to be able to help (or care)
for this one, but I'm trying to play the Pepe Moreno videogame
Hell Cab, and it's far from working. I took a version on UG
because the version here worked even less, but at any
rates...


Once installed and set to Win95, 256 colors, and 640X?? resolution
(on Windows XP), it not only give me the GDI.EXE error referred about
on the Read Me note (and on the web somewhere), but also there is
an "Error player: rebirth ( 7 # 2 )" minibox appearing, and another PROJECTR error (that's a file from the videogame). I hear the music and
see the start image but nothing works after that.

Anyone have an idea? Or have even tried played this?

I tried to install "Video For Windows" from the WINVIDEO folder
but a message says the program is incompatible with Windows NT
and can't be installed (I have XP, but whatever).

I saw a version that looked pre-installed on DJ Oldgames
but he's asking money for the download and I'm not
willing to risk if it doesn't work any better (say: it doesn't
have all required drivers and whatnot).


I would really like to experience this if anyone has a clue.


Cheers!


Talkie

[Meddle]

Mobygames says this game is for Windows 3.x, so its possible to install windows 3.1 or 3.11 in DOSBox and maybe have luck that way.

[hfric]

its a game 16bit dude ...there is no way you will run it in pure 32-bit winxp

vpc and win98 or parallels work station and win98 will work

[Talkie]

Thanks for the answers. I will look at virtual pc this week (I'll admit it sound complicated, might as well attempt the DOSbox patch before), but...If this is a videocard problem, how does VPC or Dosbox fix that? I looked somewhere and they said a GDI problem might be about an old version of Quicktime? I mean, do these system emulate old video cards too? Sorry if the question sounds dumb.

Talkie

[hfric]

yeah dosbox emulates a 16bit environment and can emulate videocards like ega, cga and the best card ever S3 trio2mb SVGa
but its only good to run dos games and well win3.11

vPc is made for win95/98 emulation but well it only emulates a S3 trio 2mb SVGa so don't count on Playing 3dfx games on it

now there is also parallels work station that works great with win98 and winxP .... same crappy S3 trio 2mb SVGa emulation but win98 works best on it ... but don't count on playing 3D games on it

for 3d go with VMware its perfect for Vista and winxP even win7 ... 3d is so perfect X3 runs 70 fps ON IT

so what are to programs they are sandbox emulators that help you running 8bit/16bit/32bit/64bit applications but well mainly are used to run old games that aren't compatible with todays OS code and they fu.cked up drivers

[Talkie]

Hello,

just wanted to say that I succeeded playing this, but gave up on installing DOS with Windows 3.1. It was doing weird things and I didn't want to take a chance corrupting my system.


But to anyone who would ever meet the same problems as I did, and still want to play this quite ordinary title (but worth to see the Wired magazine launch video publicity... history in the making):

What I did is adjust the compatibility of the Hellcab launcher in C:/Hellcab as W95, 256 colors and 640X480 resolution. Then you adjust your own screen resolution (in Desktop properties) to 640X480.

Then, when the videogame opens, you have to double click Return or ignore each time the two small error windows appear. What this will do is you will often loose your colors and get a distorted image. All you need to do is toggle the Window tab on and off while clicking with the mouse in the videogame frame. The colors end up being right. It's very annoying but you can play like this with no ..err.. further problems.


This said, I had the Windows 3.1 folder thrown in C, and I'm not sure if that helped the thing to work. I don't know if it "found" drivers in it that were lacking when I previously tried to play it. So you might as well just throw the Windows 3.1 folder in C if you have it, and try this instead of mounting Windows 3.1 for real in Dosbox and risking doing bad stuff to your system. Unless you're an expert and you know what you're doing. Than my solution is worthless to you and probably quite desperate and pathetic.


Cheers,

Talkie


(this post was longer than it would take you to finish Hellcab, and it's not really worth it except the part in World War I which is quite immersive judging the title is from 1993)

(by the way I had moved on to other things before attempting the above, hencewhy it's been a while since my last reply)

[zobraks]

for this resourceful (not sure I used the precise adjective, English is not my native language) text, Talkie!
I bet reading it was more fun than actually playing the Hell Cab.