Next Life

I am attempting to play this game in Windows XP.

I am at the Ball Puzzle (the first timed actiony puzzle) and have found and downloaded some saves from Mystery Manor. I found the game folder and I also found the save folder. I have extracted the save in both folders (first I couldn't find the save folder and just put it in the game folder, then I found the save folder and put it there) and have tried renaming and not renaming it but it does not show up in the game for me to load it.

I found this old thread https://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/printthread/Board/1/main/17982/type/thread but it does not really tell me anything helpful. Ana had posted about installing it in the game folder. That's all I can see.

Any help?

It sounds like you have done all the right things, so I'm not sure what to suggest.

Does the game have a limited number of save slots? If you have more saves in the Save folder that it allows, you may need to delete one. I'm leaving shortly, so won't be able to spend any time checking for you. Hopefully by the time I get home later this afternoon, you will have sorted it out!

Not sure what is going on with this, but interesting to note that I am reading that this game works on Windows 10.

Thanks. I haven't been back to it yet today. Spent a lot of time trying to get through this first mini game but have not succeeded. You can save during it but it doesn't really load where you left off and you have to repeat a bit of it and with the timer going, it's just not happening. I think I MIGHT be able to get it at some point if I keep trying but then there are more like this so I do hope I can figure out the save issue.

It is weird (but good) that a lot of games seem to work on Windows 10. I haven't been trying any of these older games on 7 or 10.

I'm curious if you were able to sort it out yet?

Okay, are you ready for this??

I figured out how to get the save to replace the save I had of the same number. On the "path" where I wanted to extract the save to, I had to take some of the name of the saved game off. Like, it said something like Yellow Ball Puzzle Save after the game path name so I had to get rid of that.

HOWEVER ---

Ready??

The save is at the BEGINNING of the puzzle, not at the END!!! So, no help to me. I tried it twice and I was looking at a walkthrough, clicking around on the screen to see if it just looked like the beginning, but no go.

I tried again another 15 or 20 times but didn't progress at all.

EDIT: So I managed to start the puzzle over and ended up getting a save that was within 3 holes away with a bit of time, then I managed to complete it but was leery of saving right away in case I lost something while it took it's time saving. I was following the walkthrough and I had to use my belt. Then a bit later it said to use my belt but I didn't realize that I had picked the belt back up after using it the first time and I kept dying (which just brought me back to right before I died, so no problem). I decided it was time to save though and the game crashed and I had to replay those 3 holes again. This time I went to save a bit earlier but still not right after the ball puzzle and it crashed again so that's where I'm at right now. I think I'm going to try one more time and then I'll update this again. (I would have just waited but I needed to "talk" this through with myself.

UPDATE: This time I did save right away after the scene changed from the ball puzzle to the beam. Then I tried to go a little bit further and save again but it crashed again. The game has crashed prior to tonight, I think only when I've been trying to save, but this section seems to be worse. I am using both a written walkthrough and a video walkthrough.

I hope that the other "game saves" I downloaded are really (AFTER the puzzle) saves because I'm quite sure I'll need them, providing I can even get to where those puzzles are.

Whew! Good luck with the rest of this. Nothing like playing a nice adventure game for fun and relaxation...

Whew indeed! Got a chuckle with my coffee there, Marian! Yup... nice relaxing gaming!

I'm assuming neither of you played this game? It seems quite different and I am rather enjoying it but I do wish I could save without crashing. Then, every time I open the game I have to remember to go into the Options to turn Shadows off and Captions on otherwise the mouse is real laggy. Load times are very long too. I'll see how it goes. If I keep crashing while trying to save short distances, I guess I will have to try to get out of this "dream sequence" altogether before saving but it is a long, lot of stuff according to the walkthroughs. If not for these problems, I would ditch the walkthrough for now (and may try to since I already watched a good part of it anyway) but it is so iffy... Usually when a game crashes a lot, I save a lot and start using the walkthrough more, but since this one crashes while trying to save, I'm not sure how to handle it.

Nope... never played it. Crashing while saving is never a good thing. Could there be something in this Steam forum that will help? It seems to have something to do with the game being from Steam and I'm assuming you have the original disks?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/50/discussions/0/619573787488333959/

That's HALF Life, not NEXT Life

No, I have not played this game. After it was released, reading about the arcade sequences made me lose interest in it. It's possible that someday I might still give it a try, though.

Oopsie, oldbroad! I did enter Next Life in my search string, but I didn't pay any attention after that!

Eleven days later...

I finally felt like I could cope with this game again but still hadn't decided how I wanted to try the saving. I ended up playing the whole rest of the dream sequence without saving. I used the walkthrough and only clicked on extra stuff a few times. It took me 55 minutes! Thankfully, the game saved fine. I played for another hour, making several saves, before it crashed on a save and I gave up for the night. I'm soon going to be at the next dream sequence which I'm assuming is some arcade puzzle again along with a long sequence of stuff. I don't know. We'll see.

I'm sure persistence will pay off, oldbroad!

I'm back with a couple of questions.

Marian - where did you read that this game works on Windows 10 and did it need tweaking? (I do see a reviewer on Amazon posted it plays on Win 10.)

If I were to be able to install this game in Win 10 or Win 7, would I be able to just move one save over to that computer and play from there or would I need to move all of the saves over or how does that work? I would not want to restart the game as I am about half way through it but it is becoming increasingly difficult to play. I don't know if it is the game or the XP computer I'm playing in, but now the cursor keeps lagging and I can barely move it as well as it keeps crashing when I try to save. It's getting quite frustrating now.

I think it was that review on Amazon that I saw, oldbroad.

If you can find the save game folder, I think you could probably just move over one saved game if that was all that you wanted to do. Or maybe just move your last two or three most recent saves, or something like that.

If it were me, I would probably try installing Next Life on Windows 10/Windows 7 somewhere other than Program Files x86. It can't hurt anything, and sometimes installing older games in Program Files x86 in newer operating systems can cause issues. This may not be the case with Next Life, but I often find myself installing these older games somewhere else on the hard drive and have never had any trouble after having done so. You may find, though, that it is just fine using the default installation destination.

Thanks Marian! I am seeing one review on Ebay that says it did not install on Win 10 but did on Win 7.

Where would you suggest other than Program Files x86?

I know where the save game file is on the XP; not sure if I will be able to find it in Win 7 or Win 10. Can't decide where to try it, probably Win 7.

If you install elsewhere, My Documents is what is normally recommended.

Okay, thank you Drac!

I can't find My Documents in the list when I browse where to install. Is it Users/Computer/Documents?

Well, since everybody was off-line for the night I took a guess that this was the correct path to use and installed the game and one save and I'm back in business!

I think my XP is having issues. I have been running into that slow as molasses cursor and crashing with several games now. Could a failing video card cause these issues? I ask that because sometimes the computer comes on but doesn't seem to boot up fully or something. I thought it was my monitor (which would come on but then go black) but I think it is something in the computer - video card, hard drive, or power supply maybe? Or maybe I just need to uninstall some stuff, though I do show 41.2 GB of free space out of 107 GB. ?

Anyway, hopefully I can finish this game in Windows 7.

Sounds more like a failing hard drive, but it could also be power supply.

Don't you have the file explorer icon in your task bar? The little Manilla folder looking thing? It should tell you the path there.

My Documents is where I usually install such games. Sorry I failed to mention it.

Now that you bring it up, you have mentioned other games having these symptoms on your XP. I don't think you will run into any issues with the game on Windows 7, assuming it's in good shape - and I believe that it is.

But I couldn't find a "my documents" while trying to figure out where to install the game. I used "users\computer\documents". Is that the same? At any rate, it seems to work there.

Yes, that's it. It's just worded differently.

Thanks!

I just want to say that I liked this game quite a bit with the exception of the 3 timed mini games. I managed to get the first one but ended up using the saved games from Mystery Manor for the other two. Maybe if I had kept at them longer I would have gotten them. With one of them there was something you had to do 3 times in a row during the timed session. I managed to do the thing 2 times a couple of times but could not get the 3rd one. The third mini game would have worked better with the arrow keys IMO but it would not let me use them.

There was another timed section but it was not a mini game or puzzle. You had to do a series of things in a certain time and order. It really wasn't bad though I admit to using the walkthrough for guidance because of the trouble I was having earlier in the game in my XP computer. After that section though, I did pretty well on my own.

Once I did something that caused me to lose an inventory item though and I had to replay a small portion. I had been saving a whole lot though.