This had to be asked... and I suppose it has been answered a thousand times before... Been searching for something on this topic but haven't found it... So... What must I do to install DLR on XP?

I insert the CD, installer pops up, but nothing happens when I select "Install". I have Service pack 3 btw.
Thanks in advance!

Ok. My bad. The installer decided to continue hours after I had pressed the installer button. Don't know what casued it to be put on halt like that but anyway, now it's installed.

I patched with the 1.02 UK patch, and also installed the no-CD patch. Game seems to be working fine, but there are no background songs. Did the no-CD patch cause this?

You can download the DLR soundtrack in mp3-format from the downloads section on this site and play it in the background when playing DLR.

It is also recommended to add -wincursor to the target line of your darklord.exe shortcut.

Gemini_Mystic,

gemini_mystic wrote:


No it didn't.

DLR is such an old game that the songs don't install to your HD because in that era HD space was too valuable to waste 20 megs for songs. So the game played the songs directly from the CD. For that to work, you need to attach a sound cable from your CD-Rom drive to your sound card. These days I don't know if any CD-Rom drive even supports that connection any more (or any sound card for that matter either).

Hence you'll need to do what Onslaught suggested and download the soundtrack and play it in the background.

KGB

Thanks for the help, both of you.

I know that playing without the CD tracks isn't a big deal. It's probably more sane to use the mp3's anyway, as suggested.(Avoid having the CD whirring all the time) But I'm really curious as to why this doesn't work as it used to?
My mediaplayer can play the audiotracks off of the disc with no problems. I even reinstalled the game omitting the no-CD patch but still get no CD tracks in the game.
Could it be a problem that my dvd-device is a K: (rather than normally a D:)?

I guess it just wasn't mean to be... On another note, I just realized how much I've missed this game *sniff*.

Gemini_Mystic,

I thought I made that clear in my post.

DLR itself is not a media player so it can not play MP3's. It requires one to play the MP3 tracks.

At the time of the games release it played the tracks directly through the CD-Rom drive to the sound card rather than through a 3rd party software media player. That was accomplished by a cable that ran from the CD-Rom drive to the sound card. CD-Rom drives contain the ability to play MP3's so that's why it worked. I have not seen a computer with a cable connected between the CD-Rom drive and the sound card since about 2002 because of software media players. So you'd need to purchase such a cable if you can find one (I personally still own one from that era).

KGB

@KGB I'm sorry, you made yourself very clear.
I popped my computer case open just to double check that I have that cable. Yep, sure enough, my soundcard is a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer and my DVD-reader has a small grey cable going straight into the soundcard (the socket is located on the broadside of the X-Fi).
Also, I'm pretty sure I could play the DLR CD as an ordinary music disc in those old-school CD players back then? (Who surely had no support for MP3 files?)

Thanks

Gemini_Mystic,

Sounds like you do have the cable. I'm impressed that your system came with it since I have not seen that setup in years. But then 95% of systems have built in cards on the Motherboard and only about 5% of us have actual sound blaster cards.

You can try an easy test. Just drop in a music CD (or even the DLR CD) and hit play on your DVD player. Don't play through a S/W program like Windows Media Player/iTunes etc and make sure you close any that auto-run. If it plays music purely from the DVD player then you know the cable is set up correctly and that it's the No-CD patch that causes the problem.



Actually those old school CD players did have MP3 support because the audio component of that standard was developed in 1991. They had dual functionality as computer CD-Rom readers and stereo CD players. I remember putting actual music CD's into my player (I had a 4 disk player) and just hitting the play button on my CD-Rom and listening to music.

KGB

It's a necroposting, I do know, but still...

I too decided to stop playing W3DLR in silence (interrupted only with sound of hooves beating and swords ringing) .
I do have OST as disk image. But if I understand correctly, playing it in any mediaplayer I just get all songs playing in some order (random or alphabetical or numerical) regardless of what is happening now in game. So is this a nature of DLR soundtrack - just being a set of songs? And not like it is in games like Heroes of Might and Magic (e.g. 'terrain songs', 'town screen songs', battle songs' and so on), where song-playing depends of specific gameplay situations?

DLR works like Heroes of Might and Magic. There are specific tracks based on what's happening in the game (ie a certain track plays upon completing a quest)

If you want to play the music during the game you need:

1) An original DLR executable (ie not the no-CD crack) which tests for presence of DLR CD-Rom / uses CD-Rom player.
2) DLR CD + CD-Rom. Note this doesn't have to be a physical CD/DVD player. Use can use an iso image of a DLR CD in a virtual CD-Rom player like Daemon Tools.
3) An audio cable connected directly from your CD-Rom player to your video card. Or the virtual CD Rom player must be capable of playing music directly (ie the virtual CD-Rom streams to a media player on it's own).

DLR could not play wav/mp3 files. It simply commanded the CD-Rom to play music in the same way a stereo CD player plays music. This is why the need for a cable or the virtual CD player must support it.

KGB

Note: The CD may have to be mounted as your D drive. I can't recall whether DLR supported a CD anywhere else since 99% of machines in 1998 had only a HD as a C drive and a CD as a D drive.