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A Rock Raiders Christmas


The_Wanderer_HTL
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The_Wanderer_HTL

I downloaded Rock Raiders from myabandonware and installed it. It runs, but plays Christmas music instead of the game's music. Then, after a minute or two, the screen goes black and I cannot continue. I cannot find anything anywhere about this issue. I assume this is an anti-piracy measure, but my childhood copy of LRR is beat to crap and no longer works. Are there any solutions?

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Personally, I don't know about the black screening, but the Christmas music sounds like you have a Christmas CD in an optical drive that the game is playing.

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The_Wanderer_HTL

There was a Christmas CD in my drive. Probably been there since Christmas 2018 (tells you how often I use the drive). I tried the game again but it still went black. I was playing "Driller Night" and when the tool store is found the screen goes black. I changed a setting on the startup menu when I restarted, and the game runs fine now. Thanks mates.

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You should tell us WHAT SETTING did you change in case others have the same problem. When I had problem with black screens I limited framerate to 30 FPS using Riva Tuner Statistics Server program and that fixed it for me.

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6 hours ago, The_Wanderer_HTL said:

There was a Christmas CD in my drive. Probably been there since Christmas 2018 (tells you how often I use the drive). I tried the game again but it still went black. I was playing "Driller Night" and when the tool store is found the screen goes black. I changed a setting on the startup menu when I restarted, and the game runs fine now. Thanks mates.

I'm curious what setting on the startup menu was. The black screen when you find the tool store is a) a known bug, b) a rare bug, and c) an undocumented bug (I shall fix the latter).

 

LRR, because old games are... odd, like to play the audio from any CD in the drive, so yep that'd explain where the Christmas music came from :D

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The_Wanderer_HTL

The startup menu I get is a box for "Mode Selection." The only driver option is "dgVoodoo DirectX Wrapper [display]" and the default device is "Direct3D HAL [dgVoodoo Hardware Accelerated Device]" (which is the bottom option) and I would get black screens. I changed to "RGB Emulation [dgVoodoo Emulated RGB Device]" (the top option) and the game runs perfectly.

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15 hours ago, The_Wanderer_HTL said:

The startup menu I get is a box for "Mode Selection." The only driver option is "dgVoodoo DirectX Wrapper [display]" and the default device is "Direct3D HAL [dgVoodoo Hardware Accelerated Device]" (which is the bottom option) and I would get black screens. I changed to "RGB Emulation [dgVoodoo Emulated RGB Device]" (the top option) and the game runs perfectly.

 

Huh. I've literally never heard of RGB Emulation doing anything good: it'll usually run, but crash three seconds into the main menu / on the rockfall anim / four seconds into the main menu / five seconds into the main menu / six seconds.... okay you get my point. :P I'm surprised that it works for you, but if it does, then, go ahead! Maybe it's something to do with running dgVoodoo on top of it...

 

But if you get a ton more crashes than usual then that's probably why.

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The_Wanderer_HTL

You had to jinx it; the game kept crashing last night. I switched to my third (and final) option on the mode selection; "MMX Emulation [dgVoodoo Emulated MMX Device]." It works well, but now I am on the level "Water Works" and the game keeps randomly crashing for no apparent reason. It is such a large level (made worse by the game's stupid AI) and I have tried it nearly a dozen times now because right about the time I start going for the lost Rock Raiders, the game crashes.

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On 8/15/2020 at 4:17 AM, The_Wanderer_HTL said:

You had to jinx it; the game kept crashing last night. I switched to my third (and final) option on the mode selection; "MMX Emulation [dgVoodoo Emulated MMX Device]." It works well, but now I am on the level "Water Works" and the game keeps randomly crashing for no apparent reason. It is such a large level (made worse by the game's stupid AI) and I have tried it nearly a dozen times now because right about the time I start going for the lost Rock Raiders, the game crashes.

 

Aha! I was right. RBG emulation still stands as never having worked for anyone :P Random crashes are part of ~ the LRR experience ~ , but deliberate crashes are a bit weirder.

Given that you're now past the tutorials and Driller Night, you should be able to go back to the first option, Direct 3D HAL. Water Works never calls any camera functions (I think?) so you should have generally improved stability. Don't equate that with perfect stability, though.

 

I would be really surprised if anything performed better than Direct 3D HAL.

 

Oh, and Community Edition contains some crash fixes which causes some people to report a lot of stability, yet others to report even increased crashing. I guess you could give it a whirl.

Lastly, my Improvements Pack contains some modifications to the levels - like removing that one rubble tile on the far edge of the map and changing the default priorities to actually make sense. You'll need to run it through Cafeteria though, which if you can't get working, keep asking here.

 

 

BTW, if one level is causing you crashing, problem #7 here details how you can enable debug keys to skip a level. Good for crashy levels, glitchy levels, or just bad levels :P

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The_Wanderer_HTL

I do appreciate all of the help. Another question I have though; is there any way to get your Rock Raiders to stop standing around shoving dirt up their butts and actually build the support buildings before they run out of breathable air!? I am now stuck on "Hot Stuff" because over half the Rock Raiders at any given time are just standing around; even manually giving them jobs does not help. They just... stand there.

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4 hours ago, The_Wanderer_HTL said:

I do appreciate all of the help. Another question I have though; is there any way to get your Rock Raiders to stop standing around shoving dirt up their butts and actually build the support buildings before they run out of breathable air!? I am now stuck on "Hot Stuff" because over half the Rock Raiders at any given time are just standing around; even manually giving them jobs does not help. They just... stand there.

 

On the plus side, you've made it all the way to Hot Stuff!

 

On the negative side.... no, there's no cure. This is known as Idleness Syndrome, and there's been no conclusive cause nor no conclusive cure, nor no conclusive preventative measures.

 

That said, it is generally rare to have your raiders all go into that mindless trance before you've even got your Support Station up - though with Bats on Hot Stuff, I can see how that happens, as if bats camp your tool store both you and the raider AI are kinda stuffed.

 

There are a handful of gameplay and modding related elements that can at least make this less enraging. On the modding side, I did most (all?) of them in Improvements Pack, which should be straightforward to run with Cafeteria. In brief, this includes:
- Jacking up the phantom value TextureUsage

- Removing bat ability to scare, which is more a gameplay adjustment but also does prevent RR HQ from being bricked as bats camping the Tool Store are now merely scenery

- Enabling the unused Path priority, which is also used for repairing erosion (the Construction priority does nothing). This doesn't explicitly help but makes construction better behave itself and, if Paths are above Ore, will mean that raiders will shovel the path to completion then pick up any ore on the tile, not the other way round

- Removing the rubble on the other side of the map in Hot Stuff and Water Works.

 

Gameplay:

- Always keep your raiders on the same piece of land. Raiders split over multiple islands will almost never behave themselves. Not so relevant for Hot Stuff, but at least make sure your raiders don't get cut off.

- < 20 raiders is a good idea. More than that and you almost lose productivity by idle ones. 30+ is inviting a crash.

- As many vehicles as possible. For some reason, vehicles aren't affected by Idleness Syndrome and can keep chugging resources. Worst case scenario, you still have a Small Digger and Small Transport Truck, which is enough to mine the remaining map and get the crystals back home.

 

 

So, uh, no, there's not much you can do aside from download the in-progress remake Manic Miners,  which has an actually functional AI that doesn't break horribly. :P

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The_Wanderer_HTL

Thanks again for the in-depth replies. I have since finished "Rocky Horror" and am taking a break, as I probably prioritized finishing this game over some things it should not have taken priority over. I plan on playing again for fun sometime and since I have finished the vanilla game, I may try out some of the mods.

 

I have seen some information on mods, but am not sure how to install them. I downloaded RR from MyAbandonware and just "plug and played." It did not come with music or cut-scenes, and while I remember reading about how to restore them, I never really bothered.

 

I have seen the trailers for Manic Miners and I really want to try it. Waiting until the game is a little more complete, though. Looks really nice, I look forward to it.

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Nice work! The terrible AI really is the final boss, nice work on finishing it.

 

17 hours ago, The_Wanderer_HTL said:

I downloaded RR from MyAbandonware and just "plug and played." It did not come with music or cut-scenes, and while I remember reading about how to restore them, I never really bothered.

Problems #2 and #4 over here have all the links you'll need :old_wink:

 

Quote

I have seen some information on mods, but am not sure how to install them.

A lot of the mods buried in the history of RRU are quite old, but nearly all the actually good ones have been ported to Cafeteria: which means it's as simple as either putting the file in your Mods directory or just downloading it through Cafeteria, hitting Enable, Re-Build Game, and voila your mods are done!

 

 

17 hours ago, The_Wanderer_HTL said:

I have seen the trailers for Manic Miners and I really want to try it. Waiting until the game is a little more complete, though. Looks really nice, I look forward to it.

Minus monsters and some assorted bits of odd vehicle jank it's totally functional and very good fun, can reccommend. It's like LRR except it doesn't crash midway through a level :P Come to think of it, that's not very LRR-like at all... which is why Baraklava mimicked everything you could want from an LRR remake with the Random Crashes option (no, I'm not kidding, there is a setting for Random Crashes)

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The_Wanderer_HTL

I actually did download Manic Miners after I posted that and played "Driller Night." It looks gorgeous and it was fun. A feature I would like to see is being able to increase mouse sensitivity, the cursor was too sluggish for me. I look forward to the completed game, I want to upgrade, train, and name my Rock Raiders and I want to use my favorite vehicle, the mighty Chrome Crusher. I usually teleport one in, find the Rock Raider named after myself, and drill out the entire map. Then wait for my two Loader Dozers (driven by my sibling and best friend respectively) and four Small Transport Trucks to clear and process all of the materials.

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