Hi there! I managed to get Warlords 3: Darklords Rising running on my Windows 7 thanks to some of the advice given in this forum, however I seem to have a problem that I still haven't read about in all these threads (forgive me if I've missed something out). See, everything works fine (well, fine considering it's running in Win7), the graphics, SFX and all that, even the extra units etc, but the music won't work, at all. I thought of maybe looking for the music files somewhere in the install folder (if that's at all possible) but no luck on seeing anything that I could even recognize as an OST, the SFX are all there though. Anyway, I'm wondering if anybody has ever encountered this problem and could offer some advice or if it's possible that I just have a bad copy of the game. Right now I've been playing the music separately through my iPod. It's bearable, I mean, I know the game well enough now (had it for a good 11 or so years, though it wasn't the same CD) that I know what track to play at every instance, but it is somewhat distracting and annoying to have to keep changing the music myself every time I end my turn, get a level up, etc. Any ideas on what I could do to resolve this little problem? Thanks a bunch.

Jon.

Jon,

It's been talked about but you've likely missed it.

The OST files are not loaded onto the hard drive. The reason is that in 1997 hard drive space was precious and using 20 megs for music was out of the question. So all the OST files remain on the CD itself.

So if you are running the No-CD cracked version of the game there is no music because obviously the No-CD version doesn't have CD access

If you have the original game that requires the CD then music *is* possible. But it requires that you have a sound cable connected directly from your CD drive to your sound card (if you don't have a separate sound card then it would have to be directly to the mother board). That's because the game plays the music directly from your game CD where the OST files are treating it like a music CD (rather than through a program like windows media player that didn't exist in 1997).

The other alternative is to get the OST files in the downloads section. Then play them in Windows Media player in the background. Or burn to a CD and play in CD player. But you've sort of already done that with the iPod so I am guessing that's not the route you want to go.

KGB

Thank you for such a prompt reply. I do recall someone asking about music while running DLR in WinXP a while back, but my system being different I thought it might not work the same way. Anyhow it seems by what you say that my way of getting the songs to play right now isn't half bad and certainly it would be a lot of work to get it working properly, through the proper methods, plugging the cable to the sound card, etc. It's not so bad I suppose, I'm thinking one day I'll just buy myself a Win98 again. I really liked the simplicity of that system and I miss the real Warlords cursors that we all seem to have to replace nowadays in order to play it in later Windows versions. Thank you for your help and lets hope that people continue to play this wonderful game and if part 5 ever comes out.

Im having an issue and im sure its been discusses already. I have two copies of dlr because i thought maybe something was wrong with my first copy. I got it to work on my newer systems easily enough. However, no game music. So i broke out my old windows 98 system to see if maybe the game music just doesn't work on new systems. Not to much surprise after installing it on my 98 system, no music. All the sound effects work and the game runs just fine obviously. But no music. Im at a loss here because neither copy i have has the music on it. Any insight here?

GrimmRelic,

First, are you using the official copies from the original CD's and not the 'cracked' version from this site (which has the music removed).

If you are, then the only way to get the game music to play is connect a cable from your CD/DVD Rom drive directly to your sound card. That's how DLR plays the music files (it does not install them on the hard drive, it just plays them as tracks on a CD).

The way you can test if you have things connected correctly is that you should be able to put any music CD into your computer and just press play on the CD/DVD drive and it should play music without the need of any windows software (ie no iTunes etc). A lot of newer drives lack the play button so you may not be able to test it other than just trying for the music in the game once you connect the CD/DVD drive to the sound card. See this link for the type of cable you need.
superuser.com/questions/566611/sound-out...ctor-on-cd-rom-drive



KGB

Hi.

I also have a question about W3DLR music. I used to play disk version on my XP machine that runs flawlessy except the absence of music.

I got the recently released GOG version but it doesn't work on XP. I tested it on some Win7-64 desktop, and it runs fine, and with music playing. GOG version seems to use winmm.dll to emulate playing from CD. Is it possible to use it to make music play on 'normal' disk installation on XP machine (use files from GOG version)?

Probably not. winmml should already be on your XP machine. The GOG version is just emulating the CD to get the music to play.

However, you might be able to emulate your CD in XP using an application like Deamontools. This creates a virtual CD that can play music directly. You would just need the ISO image of your Warlords CD.

KGB

KGB wrote:


I just thought there could be a way to combine two installations into one that plays music while not using disk emulation (like GOG installation doesn't, isn't it?).

It's the GOG emulation of DLR that is using winmmi.dll to play the sound tracks. So you would need to get that working under XP and you've already said it doesn't work.

The original DLR played the sound tracks directly from the CD-Rom in the same manner that you would push play on a CD player on your stereo. The CD-Rom then outputs the music directly to the sound card (in other words it does not come back through Windows). That's the part that GOG is now emulating (playing tracks directly).

If you don't want to install a 3rd party tool like Daemontools on your XP machine then your next best bet is to contact GOG and ask them why their version doesn't work under XP.

KGB

No-no, I don't need GOG version working on XP (GOG doesn't support XP anymore), and I'm quite happy with my 'native' installation. I just was curious about means GOG used to make music work and if it'd be possible to use these means somehow to make music play in 'normal' disk version (without disk emulation, since GOG doesn't use it... or does it?).