Hello - just received Welcome to the future. Have installed it in my Ausus Eee PC netbook under Windows 98SE via Virtual PC 2004. I let the installer install it's built-in quick time. VPC guest display settings: High Color (16-bit). Game installed successfully, blue sky logo played, game menu came onscreen successfully, but when I click on "start" I get a black screen and only the game's music is playing, no picture. How can I get the game's video to show up onscreen?

I'm not familiar with the game - but, if I can believe the excerpt from Moby Games -

The game features 16 bit stereo, surround music and sound effects, and graphic art (full screen 3D). You can even "explore" the CD as a music CD....

You won't be able to play it under Virtual PC (there's no 3D support). This assumes they're refering to 3D acceleration.

Edit -

I see Mr. Bill has a review for the game, and it sure doesn't look like a game that requires acceleration. Maybe you should try Virtual Box or VMware Player.

As an alternative you can install windows 3.x under DOSBox and probably play the game. I do this with several Windows 3.x games.

I installed the game under Win 98SE in my VMWare Player, w/ display settings for guest - 256 colors, 640 x 480, and I got a picture of the start of gameplay. But after a couple of clicks of the mouse to try the game out, I tried to turn around and the cursor disappeared.

So, 2 questions -

- why did my cursor disappear?
- is the display supposed to be like this (sort of streak/pixelated-like)?
wttf opening screen at gameplay start

Regarding Virtual Box - I never got this set up. I don't know how to do it. Is there anyone here at GB who knows where I can get complete instructions on how to set up Virtual Box with Win 98SE?

Inland,
They're lying about it being a 3D game.
This is a game I played on my old 486, which I assure you did not have a 3D video card. (It had a Diamond Speedstar video card that fit into an ISA slot. The emulated S3 Trio in Virtual PC is probably a step up from that). My review, which has some technical information, is ***here***. Mr. Bill liked the game quite a bit more than I did.


You should use 16-bit or 24-bit color for the game. It isn't made to run in 256 colors. That may be why it's crashing. It should look slightly better than your picture.

Jenny, I did say in my original post in this thread that I installed the game in Virtual PC under Win 98SE with the color display set to 16 bit color - but I got a black screen after the Blue Sky logo and the game's menu came onscreen, particularly after I clicked on the blue rotating "start new game" on the game's menu.

And I never said the the game crashed - it kept running, the music played, but I got a black screen instead of the gameplay's opening screen. So I had to ctrl + alt + del my Virtual PC to get out of this predicament. Am running Virtual PC 2004 SP1.

Without having access to the game we're just guessing (and worse, not all hardware behaves identically).

But - try this (from your VM).

From Start, Settings, Control Panel - Display. Click the Settings tab and press Advanced. Press the the Performance tab and adjust the slider control down a notch or two (you may even try setting to it's lowest position - No DX Acceleration).

Press Apply and restart your game.

I agree with Inland. Reducing video (hardware) acceleration in the Virtual Machine (on Win98) might help. There might also be a "fast computer" problem.

You could also try using 32-bit color instead of 16-bit color. 32-bit color is the same as 24-bit color with an extra 8 bits for non-color data. And 32-bit color is what your computer uses outside the Virtual Machine.


A crash doesn't necessarily have to be the game dropping to desktop. A freeze is also a type of crash. You could be having a crash that happens before the game is fully loaded. All kinds of misbehavior can result from a crash. A black screen at the start of the game could be because the game crashed before the video (and perhaps the interactive hot spots) in the game were loaded.

But if you're not getting a picture on a QuickTime game, it's often a QuickTime issue. Is this a fresh Virtual Machine you're using or have you used it for other games that use QuickTime? It might be worthwhile creating a new Virtual Machine if you've had later QuickTimes than version 2 installed on this Virtual Machine.

It could also be a crash that happens because the computer (even in a Virtual machine) is too fast for the game. As I said before, I played the game on a 486.

I was playing the game on my netbook that I bought brand new this past January (last week in Jan.) and I do have Turbo installed in Virtual PC, but I didn't think I'd be needing it to run WTTF in my VM - should I try running Turbo?

Maybe install WTTF in my Windows 3.11 VM that I also have in Virtual PC?

My netbook's processor is roughly about 1.6 GHz, so what % should I set Turbo to (in my Win 98SE VM)?

Will try reducing video acceleration.

I'd try it in Windows 3.11 first. At least you're not likely to have a newer version of QuickTime in Windows 3.11 that might be causing a conflict.

If that doesn't work, I'd try Turbo inside Windows 98. Start with 50% speed. If that doesn't work, try 30%. Then 10%. Turbo works best if you don't have to slow it too much. If you try it at something like 1% it will be jerky, though that may not matter so much with a slideshow-type game. But you have to experiment. The speed may not even be the problem. I'm still suspicious of QuickTime.