Running Black & White on Windows 10

[Teratrain]

You probably need to nuke your registry and existing install files like I explain in the opening post.

No joy I'm afraid, but thanks for the suggestion.  I've purged every possible install location and all the registry keys highlighted and it's still Catastrophic Failure all the way down. 

All the Googling I've done points to it being a problem with Installshield, but nothing I've done to the Installshield directory seems to have changed the outcome.  I've tried adjusting the permissions, nuking the whole directory and manually updating ikernel from the Installshield site, same error either way.

(also, getting a little ahead of myself here... but do the instructions in the OP cover Creature Isle, by any chance?)

 

[Taijavu]

Unfortunately, there isn't even a Lionhead folder or registry keys for me to delete, since it hasn't even been able to begin installing. And the uninstaller that is in the ISOs I have won't work either.

 

[Taijavu]

No joy I'm afraid, but thanks for the suggestion.  I've purged every possible install location and all the registry keys highlighted and it's still Catastrophic Failure all the way down. 

All the Googling I've done points to it being a problem with Installshield, but nothing I've done to the Installshield directory seems to have changed the outcome.  I've tried adjusting the permissions, nuking the whole directory and manually updating ikernel from the Installshield site, same error either way.

(also, getting a little ahead of myself here... but do the instructions in the OP cover Creature Isle, by any chance?)

I too have tried doing the following for Installshield before and following the internet's suggestions, and still no luck.. The closest I ever got was when I burnt the ISO onto a blank CD, but said CD was scratched so it didn't work either. I ordered a new pack of blank CDs, so we'll see how that goes...

 

[Matt]

Can you post a SHA256 file hash of your ISO? I need to make sure your ISO is the same as the retail copy, if it isn't that's probably your issue and you need to source it from somewhere else. (Unfortunately illegal to talk about here even though the game is impossible to buy)

 

[Teratrain]

I don't think there's a problem with my ISO or install files, pretty sure I'm running on an unmodified rip of the original CD (I'd run from the CD itself if I hadn't unhooked my DVD drive in favour of another SSD)

The first time I ran the installer, it installed all the way without issues or without complaining.  I was even able to launch the game (it crashed on loading, sure, but it did run briefly!).  The problem started with the first patch (so the second time running Installshield).  Same "Catastrophic failure" on every patch.  Same error on the uninstaller, hence having to manually flush the game files and registry.  Then from that point on, any attempt at installing gives the same error.

I'm confident there's something stupid going on with the installer software itself, it's just that I have no idea what changed between the first and second uses of it.

 

[Fiatil]

Unfortunately, I have not been able to get his patch to work either.    I want to start off by saying that you're awesome for making it -- I tried to get the graphics to "work" (ie draw distance not stupidly low) a few years ago and every guide seemed to ignore that it was even a problem, and I wound up dual booting Windows XP on my laptop to get the real Black and White.    Sadly, that laptop has died.

I installed the game on my C Drive (I was using program files, then decided to just put it on the base drive as some people have had success), patched to 1.4, ran the config tool, and everything seems to be going great.  It's clearly rendering at a higher resolution.  But, as soon as I get past the intro video and into the loading screen, the bar makes it about 1/10th of the way through loading before it crashes neatly and cleanly, every time.  I've tried windowed as well as full screen, with resolutions from 720p all the way up to my monitors native 1440p. I'm running the patch as an administrator, and not making any other tweaks aside from the 1.4 patch -- no crack.  I have tried running as administrator as well as compatibility stuff, just for the hell of it.  When I've had to reinstall to try some way to trick it into working, I've uninstalled using control panel and then CCleaner to clean up the registry (it typically finds a few things related to the game, and deletes them, after which I checked the locations detailed in the instructions in my registy and they don't exist).

I've verified that the game works with no modifications, to the extent that it can.  If I just install, don't patch, and use the 1.0 crack the game will launch and I can play.  It just looks terrible and wont render above 800x600, but it does work.

If it helps at all, I'm running a 980 Ti with 384.94 drivers on Windows 10. 

Edit:  Just ran an as clean as I can imagine test on my spare PC -- it's a GTX 760 on Windows 7, and my first install.  Exact same result sadly -- I install, patch to 1.4, set resolution and it starts up great.  As soon as the bar moves on the first loading screen, immediate crash to desktpp.

 

[Taijavu]

Can you post a SHA256 file hash of your ISO? I need to make sure your ISO is the same as the retail copy, if it isn't that's probably your issue and you need to source it from somewhere else. (Unfortunately illegal to talk about here even though the game is impossible to buy)

Edit: Sorry, my mistake. I accidentally sent the Shaw-1. It's BAB38D5EB063DDC91EA5D15FB03D951FBCC2BE0BED5CF2A3B64A53B59AE4B2CF. Might be a couple of mistakes/missed digits since I had to type it out manually, and welll it's a very long code. xP
I also burnt it on a proper CD this time, and yeeppp, same errors.. It was worth a shot, at least.

 

[Fiatil]

Well hooray.  I managed to fix it by installing all of the patches in order -- I guess I misread somewhere back that you only needed to use 1.4

 

[Taijavu]

UPDATE: I tried using the actual retail CD, and funnily enough, I got the same catastrophic failure, and even stranger, "This build of code is invalid" again if on compatibility mode, (And it most certainly is a "valid" code, since it's the actual CD.) At this point I don't think it's the game's fault, but that of my computer that is old, kind of glitchy, and has been having dll errors for months. I could try getting a Windows XP emulator, buuut I'm not sure if I want to go through all of that just for it not to work again, especially as I'm not well versed in PC/OS emulators.

 

[Matt]

You don't need to mess with compatability modes or anything. I can put the CD in my Windows 10 PC and run setup as admin, install the patches + my own and then the game works fine.

 

[Taijavu]

You don't need to mess with compatability modes or anything. I can put the CD in my Windows 10 PC and run setup as admin, install the patches + my own and then the game works fine.

Unfortunately, without the compatibility modes on, it still doesn't work. It just keeps saying, "Catastrophic Failure," or now as a new error, "Ikernel.exe cannot be installed/copied..." If I have compatibility mode on, it at least works a little bit longer without those errors, but then the, "Invalid Build Code" one pops up after. I've tried scannow, I've tried chkdsk, I've tried updating the Windows updater, deleting and renaming the Installshield folder, booting up different ways, but nothing works. I think my computer is just glitchy and needs to be taken in for repairs.

 

[MacH]

I hope you can help, many thanks for your work on this. Last time I tried B&W two years ago it had textures which I didn't remember. I was eager to try your patch!

Everything installed correctly, I followed the instructions (install setup as admin, then patch 1.1, and 1.2 then BWFanPatchInstaller). The game plays fine. I installed from using my original disc, which I found I had kept inside my creature isle expansion box, but the textures don't appear to have changed.

See the images, am I mis-remembering something? The crops in particular look bad.

I have a GTX 970 on Windows 10 with Creator Update. [I just ran a test using my laptop a surface book with the same software updates and the textures are not changed].

Any ideas? I've run through all the steps multiple times, I don't think I can sit through the intro sequence again!

 

[Matt]

I'm pretty sure the game has always looked this bad There's only so much we can do with a fan patch.

 

[MacH]

I'm pretty sure the game has always looked this bad There's only so much we can do with a fan patch.

Thanks for quick response! I must be mis remembering

Any thoughts on why the game crashes upon saving, it seems to be able to save once (with CTRL S) but do it again and the game crashes, the same when autosave runs. Sounds like permissions, but I've enabled write all for everything on the folder. Any thoughts of things to try? [Not running with compatibility, and have tried with and without admin. I also can't seem to get the game to start a new game, which suggests it's having issues with the file system. I've tried installing the game to different drives too, to no avail )

 

[Matt]

If you have any mdmp files or just general crash logs I can help you out with this error. I've never been able to reproduce this bug, but it seems a lot of people have it. If you provide me with crash dumps I might finally be able to fix it.

 

[MacH]

If you have any mdmp files or just general crash logs I can help you out with this error. I've never been able to reproduce this bug, but it seems a lot of people have it. If you provide me with crash dumps I might finally be able to fix it.

Many thanks for looking into this! It's replicable upon a second save, e.g. auto save will work once, when it does it again it will fail, or if I save in the temple (works once), and then do a CTRL+S or autosave happens then the game will crash.

I managed to extract the following before Windows cleared the temp directory - is this the sort of thing you need?

https://ufile.io/whmxv [Happy to email it or host it elsewhere if that doesn't work]

 

[Matt]

Awesome that works perfect, straight away I can see it's an error to do with referencing a null pointer. Need to investigate a little more to see what the actual cause is.

Are all the save room pictures pink for you too? And do they disappear when you enter and leave the temple? I can't seem to reproduce the crash by saving over and over again however.

 

[MacH]

Awesome that works perfect, straight away I can see it's an error to do with referencing a null pointer. Need to investigate a little more to see what the actual cause is.

Are all the save room pictures pink for you too? And do they disappear when you enter and leave the temple? I can't seem to reproduce the crash by saving over and over again however.

Sort of, this time it courrupted the image, I then tried to save again. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to try, e.g. send me copies of your save games, and try to load etc.

and a second crash dmp

https://ufile.io/5upjg

 

[Matt]

Does this happen on a specific land? I'm really struggling to recreate it.

 

[MacH]

Does this happen on a specific land? I'm really struggling to recreate it.

I can't get off of the first land since saving a second time will cause the game to crash. I've disabled autosave as that also caused the game to crash whenever a scroll was completed.

The game will also crash on exit, due to it trying to save.