Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Running Blood 2 on Windows Vista x64

I would like to share my experiences running Blood 2 Chosen and Nightmare Levels on Windows Vista x64. First off the both game installers use 16-bit installer stubs because of which it does not allow you to install the game directly on 64-bit Windows (32-bit Windows should work fine). Anyways, I installed both games and the patches inside Microsoft Virtual PC on Windows XP 32-bit. Then I moved the full game folder out to Windows Vista x64. If you are using 32-bit Windows, you should not face the same problem. To my surprise mostly everything worked out of the box except the music. I cranked the game to it's highest settings and ran it a 1280x960. It looked good for it's standard. But I was missing the music. So I started examining the files. The game uses Microsoft IMA (Interactive Music Architecture - old form of DirectMusic). Then I loaded the game in Dependency Viewer and start profiling it. I found that the Music failed to work due to a missing function "DirectSoundCreate" in the DLL "dslite.dll". Having done some DirectX programming before, I quickly figured that this is a mini version of the DirectSound library. The file that depends on "dslite.dll" is "am18.dll" that you will find in the Blood2 directory. I quickly opened "am18.dll" in a binary editor ("edit.com /72 am18.dll" works good) and binary edited the string "dslite.dll" to "dsound.dll" and saved the file (always remember to be in overwrite mode - this will not change the DLL file size and structure; do not overwrite other parts of the DLL). Then I fired Bood 2 and voila! Everything worked... even the music. :)

Edit:
Find the hacked AM18.dll file here.

10 comments:

  1. Nice job man! Could You upload edit am18.dll somewhere and leave here your link? That would be helpful for many Blood 2 players.

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  2. Sure. Will do that. Will be uploaded in 24 hours.

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  3. Yure genius! I cant get blood 2 to work on my 64-bit vista

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  4. Hi man i got windows 7 and i tryed your havk but still got the same problem it says sorry not saported by windows nt

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  5. It sure works on Windows 7 too. Both 64-bit and 32-bit.

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  6. I have windows 7 x86 and it doesn't work.It said: Sorry not suported by windows NT. any answers?

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  7. THanks for the post and help getting Blood 2 to work on x64. Try playing with (if any) in game music off while playing the band "Pissing Razors" (same album name) in the background. Crank the gun & gore sound fx though. Great effect. Works well with Dooms & Quakes etc too.

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  8. I have windows 7 x64, I got it running by just copying the Game, Data and Movies folders from the Blood 2 CD onto a directory locally.

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  9. Ok. This works for Shogo Mobile Armor Division too. Thanks!

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  10. I meant the AM18.dll file. I got the music working finally. Sorry for the double post.

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