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Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut #1233975
11/20/20 11:20 PM
11/20/20 11:20 PM
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oldbroad Offline OP
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I am kicking myself right now!

Eight years ago I was playing this game and my computer broke down on me. I started replaying it again this year, 3 months ago. I don't usually take this long to play a game but it is on my XP and shares a monitor with my Win 10 so I am often lazy about turning the Win 10 off and the XP on (mostly because then I am without my internet which gives me anxiety attacks lol). Anyway, I went to play tonight and the save games will not load. The game opens fine and all the save slots appear to be there but just won't load. I tried several of them and I tried looking for the saves in the game folder and other areas of the computer. I tried taking the disc out and putting it back in, and I restarted my computer. Apparently I can play the game if I want to start at the beginning again, which I really don't. I am in Chapter 4 and have covered a lot of ground. Chapter 4 is also where I was when my old computer broke down.

I see that it has been close to 4 weeks since I last played. Would the save games have just disappeared due to lack of playing? Any other suggestions for where to look or what to try?

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1233978
11/21/20 12:00 AM
11/21/20 12:00 AM
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This post has been deleted because I was going off of guesswork, both about the affected computer and the nature of the bug.

Check Iurii's post #1234086 about this weird Arxel bug that effects XP and later but not Windows 98.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1233982
11/21/20 03:58 AM
11/21/20 03:58 AM
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Thank you Jenny. I know that 4 weeks is not a long time but I know that some save files are text files or something similar that do stop working over time, at least in my experience. These are ARS files. I haven't looked up yet what that means.

As for my old computer, I don't know what the problem was with it. One day it just would not work anymore. I was playing the game but not at the actual time when the computer stopped working. I just could not boot the computer up one day. That was just a weird point I was making I guess and was part of why I kept putting off going back to the game though. I was afraid something bad was going to happen.

As for the XP computer I'm playing the game in now, which is also OLD, all I can say is that I hope the hard drive is not going bad, but I suppose it will not last forever. The computer is not online so I don't see how it would get a virus and has no active antivirus running on it or updates being done on it.

I ended up replaying up to Chapter 2 using the walkthrough which took a couple of hours. I really didn't want to stop but the game is just too long to play straight through. I tried to copy the latest save to a CD-RW disc but was told (by the computer) that a.) I could not create a new folder and b.) this was a read only disc that I can not copy to. However, on this disc, I have downloaded some patches on Win 7 and copied them to the disc and used them in the XP so, not sure what that all means.

I'll just have to see what happens later today (Saturday) after I get some sleep. I hope that the new save will load. If not, I guess I will have to see what happens with a different game, and if I can sit one whole day and play the game start to finish, I MAY do that with the walkthrough in hand.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1233986
11/21/20 06:44 AM
11/21/20 06:44 AM
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This post has been deleted because I was going off of guesswork, both about the affected computer and the nature of the bug.

Check Iurii's post #1234086 about this weird Arxel bug that effects XP and later but not Windows 98.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1233994
11/21/20 10:21 AM
11/21/20 10:21 AM
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Just want to point out that there are a bunch of saved games for Final Cut here.

If you had an external drive, you could download some to your new computer and then move them over to the older computer, maybe?

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1233996
11/21/20 10:54 AM
11/21/20 10:54 AM
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Or as Jenny says, just use a USB flash drive???


Gardens put to bed for the winter. Time for some gaming!
Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234006
11/21/20 11:33 AM
11/21/20 11:33 AM
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Yes, that too. That is actually what I meant, but I misspoke.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234054
11/21/20 04:10 PM
11/21/20 04:10 PM
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I'll see what happens. Not ready to try the game out yet today.

Jenny, I haven't transferred anything over from the Win 7 to the XP in a long while so I don't believe there is any virus threat.

That disc I use to transfer the patches is formatted as a USB drive. I have some USB flash drives but never have any luck with them. For me, they are wasted money. I probably don't use them right and lose my files on them. I do have 2 external hard drives that I use for transferring files sometimes.

Thanks all! I'll update later.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234086
11/21/20 10:49 PM
11/21/20 10:49 PM
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That's an Arxel Tribe game! Just like in 'Pompei', 'Faust' and 'Ring', its saved games stop loading with time. It is a known game engine error that has nothing to do with hard disk etc. As far as I remember, everything was fine in Windows 95/98, but in XP there started to appear problems.

A few years ago I have asked one my friend to make an utility that makes the saves working in Arxel Tribe games. I have shared that utility on Gameboomers, but - unfortunately it is no longer usable as it does not launch in Windows 10, and the save games stopped working for me even in Windows 7. And that friend is no longer active online.

However, there is another friend currently working on this problem smile Up to now he has managed to solve the problems for 'Pompei' and 'Faust', but I have tested only their Russian versions.

Still, you can try to solve the problem by yourself! As far as I understand, the problem relates to extra slashes in the EXE file: '%s\data\Save\' should be changed there to '%sdata\Save\' - and make sure that 'CHECKLOADSAVE' is 0, not 1 in the fl.ini file!

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234093
11/22/20 01:25 AM
11/22/20 01:25 AM
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Thank you Iurii! Hopefully, I will not be needing to do any fiddling of that nature. I am happy to hear this is a game engine error and nothing to do with my computer!

I was able to progress today using the save I made yesterday. The older saves still would not load. I again used the walkthrough to get me up to Chapter 4 but I did not start Chapter 4. When I do, I hope to play right through it rather than take any chances saving in it (just in case). Well, I may save but not get out of the game. I will use the walkthrough to get back to where I was and then try to put it off to the side and play on my own again.

wave

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: Iurii] #1234097
11/22/20 05:29 AM
11/22/20 05:29 AM
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Originally Posted by Iurii
That's an Arxel Tribe game! Just like in 'Pompei', 'Faust' and 'Ring', its saved games stop loading with time. It is a known game engine error that has nothing to do with hard disk etc. As far as I remember, everything was fine in Windows 95/98, but in XP there started to appear problems.

Thanks, Iurii.
I don't remember anything about this issue with Arxel games at all.
Maybe because I didn't play any Arxel Tribe games in anything other than Windows 98, so never encountered any bug related to XP.

Originally Posted by Iurii
Still, you can try to solve the problem by yourself! As far as I understand, the problem relates to extra slashes in the EXE file: '%s\data\Save\' should be changed there to '%sdata\Save\' - and make sure that 'CHECKLOADSAVE' is 0, not 1 in the fl.ini file!

Strange that that would affect XP and later but not 98.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234114
11/22/20 10:29 AM
11/22/20 10:29 AM
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What a weird bug, Iurii. I have made a note of your fix.

You have been a great help here with a lot of games. Much appreciated! urock

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: Jenny100] #1234229
11/23/20 11:54 AM
11/23/20 11:54 AM
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Marian, I'm glad to be of help smile

Originally Posted by oldbroad
I will use the walkthrough to get back to where I was and then try to put it off to the side and play on my own again.

I hope you would be able to play it! Or maybe try a virtual Windows 98?


Originally Posted by Jenny100

I don't remember anything about this issue with Arxel games at all.

We used to talk about it here and here smile
Unfortunately I have missed 'The Final Cut' when asking to create that utility, so it won't even support this game...

Originally Posted by Jenny100

Strange that that would affect XP and later but not 98.

Actually, that's quite a common thing. I know several games that worked fine in 98 but not in XP due to some, well, 'bug', which is not exactly a bug but some usage of undocumented features of Windows 98. Such bugs reveal themselves only later in XP (which has some other ways of handling the file system, DLL calls etc. etc. - and which makes the errors of game programmers more evident and unforgivable), and the testers could not even notice it in their time.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234245
11/23/20 05:00 PM
11/23/20 05:00 PM
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The game is getting buggier and buggier. I almost could not make it out of Chapter 4. In the library, if I looked at a document in close up, I could not close it, and then could not access drawers that needed to be opened. The walkthrough did not help because it had me opening a document up right away (which I had somehow already opened when I tried to play the section on my own). I finally was able to work around it and I think/hope I picked up everything I need and saw everything I needed to see.

Then in the pool, the game seemed to freeze up on me and I couldn't open the box for a good while. I played a small portion of Chapter 5 before saving and exiting. I hope that was good enough as there is a note in the walkthrough about finishing the chapter or possibly hitting a dead end. I think it means Chapter 4 but I'm not really sure. Anyway, it was late and the game was acting up too much to continue to play last night, so I had to get out.

Throughout the game I have been having some audio issues and text issues. When that would get too bad, I would get out. Getting to the inventory is also an issue sometimes as it won't always stay open. I can deal with both of these problems but I hope I won't have any more problems like I did in the library. I'm almost at the end. It would be a shame if I can't make it through the game after all this yes.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234246
11/23/20 05:18 PM
11/23/20 05:18 PM
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Originally Posted by Iurii
Originally Posted by Jenny100
Strange that that would affect XP and later but not 98.

Actually, that's quite a common thing. I know several games that worked fine in 98 but not in XP due to some, well, 'bug', which is not exactly a bug but some usage of undocumented features of Windows 98.

What's strange is this bit...

Originally Posted by Iurii
Still, you can try to solve the problem by yourself! As far as I understand, the problem relates to extra slashes in the EXE file: '%s\data\Save\' should be changed there to '%sdata\Save\' - and make sure that 'CHECKLOADSAVE' is 0, not 1 in the fl.ini file!

Why would that extra backslash in the path mean XP would "forget" saves while 98 would not?
Why would there be an extra backslash when installed in XP and not when installed in 98?

Sure some games work better in 98 (or in XP) because of different drivers or because of different DirectX. But a problem caused by an extra backslash in the path?

Originally Posted by oldbroad
The game is getting buggier and buggier. I almost could not make it out of Chapter 4...

...Then in the pool, the game seemed to freeze up on me and I couldn't open the box for a good while. I played a small portion of Chapter 5 before saving and exiting. I hope that was good enough as there is a note in the walkthrough about finishing the chapter or possibly hitting a dead end. I think it means Chapter 4 but I'm not really sure. Anyway, it was late and the game was acting up too much to continue to play last night, so I had.

At the time the game came out one Gameboomers member said there were 4 or 5 possible dead ends in Hitchcock. It was definitely buggy. I managed to avoid the dead ends by using a walkthrough, but I certainly had issues with the game not letting me do what I wanted it to.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234329
11/24/20 06:46 PM
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Was able to finish the game. Yay! I did end up using the walkthrough though, rather than wander aimlessly and run into trouble. Besides, I probably would have been stuck on the gravestone puzzle forever.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1234331
11/24/20 07:52 PM
11/24/20 07:52 PM
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Congratulations on finishing it.
Hope your next game is more satisfying.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: Jenny100] #1234605
11/28/20 09:22 PM
11/28/20 09:22 PM
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Originally Posted by Jenny100

Why would that extra backslash in the path mean XP would "forget" saves while 98 would not?
Why would there be an extra backslash when installed in XP and not when installed in 98?

Sure some games work better in 98 (or in XP) because of different drivers or because of different DirectX. But a problem caused by an extra backslash in the path?

Well, I am not a programmer to explain it in details smile
But that's what my programmer friends told me: a small thing like an extra slash could go unnoticed in one OS and become a critical bug in another one...

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1235175
12/05/20 11:43 PM
12/05/20 11:43 PM
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Not about 'Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut' - but in case anyone would be interested in some other Arxel Tribe games with the similar problem, I have uploaded the fixes made by my friend for 'Ring' and 'Jerusalem': http://www.mediafire.com/file/j8w92rw5qjsgrmw/Arxel_Fixes.rar/file

The new EXE for 'Ring' is for the English DVD version, and the new EXE for 'Jerusalem' is for the English CD version (this game did not have a DVD version). I have not yet checked the other versions (French, German etc.), but maybe the fixes could work for them as well.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1235180
12/06/20 12:34 AM
12/06/20 12:34 AM
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Thanks Iurii!

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1235183
12/06/20 01:08 AM
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Oh, the patch for 'Ring' also makes the English subtitles a little bit larger smile
The original Arxel Tribe font is too tiny for my taste.

Re: Alfred Hitchcock - The Final Cut [Re: oldbroad] #1235201
12/06/20 10:58 AM
12/06/20 10:58 AM
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Thanks so much, Iurii! I will download those fixes. thumbsup12

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