Exult Forum

Whenever I'm about to start Black Gate through Exult it briefly shows a red colored screen and exits back to the desktop. I tried looking for the problem in the faq and on other forums but couldnt find it. I'm using version 1.2, Windows XP, Sound Blaster Live 5.1, NVIDIA Geforce fx 5200 51.x driver. I have a bad craving to play this game so if anyone could help me out as soon as possible I would greatly appreciate it.

This usually indicates missing files or wrong directory settings. Take a look at your stdout.txt and stderr.txt to see if they give a hint. These files should indicate what exactly the problem is.

All it says is,

"Trailing slash in path: "data\"
...compensating, but go complain to Colourless anyway"

And my stdout.txt says,

"Exult version 1.2
Built at: Jun 12 2004 03:31:19
Compile-time options: NO_SDL_PARACHUTE, HAVE_ZIP_SUPPORT
Compiler: Microsoft C/C++ Compiler, version: 13.0.9466

Platform: Windows XP Service Pack 1 Version 5.1 Build 2600
Exult path settings:
Data : data\.
Digital music : data\\music

3 Midi Devices Detected
Listing midi devices:
-1: Microsoft MIDI Mapper
0: Creative SoundFont Synth
1: Creative SB Live! External MIDI
2: Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth
Using device -1: Microsoft MIDI Mapper
Music player: Internal Win32 Midiout Midi Player for Exult and Pentagram.
Black Gate : found
exult_bg.flx : found
Serpent Isle : found
exult_si.flx : found
Switching to fullscreen mode.
Couldn't create 8bit scaled surface
Couldn't set video mode (320, 200) at 8 bpp depth: DDraw created surface with wrong size"

I dont know how to set that video mode or what it exactly means.

You should enable scaling or disable fullscreen mode. Apparently DirectX refuses to setup a 320x200 fullscreen mode.

I never had it in fullscreen mode, it doesnt work and scaling is enabled.

> Switching to fullscreen mode.

and

> I never had it in fullscreen mode

don't match

Whenever I try it exits me out.

look closely at what wjp is saying.
Your Operating system refuses to run 320x200 in fullscreen. Either this is caused by your Monitor not supporting this mode or DirectX does not liket mode from the start.
So either set Exult to use a higher resolution or enable scaling which gives you the same view of the world but makes it 2 times bigger (640x400). Your system should be able to support that.

Well I fixed it so I can use the fullscreen, but I'm still having the problem with it crashing.

Please be more specific. When does it crash now? Please copy paste the stderr.txt stdout.txt again

For the sole reason that you said "a" red screen pops up (as apposed to "the", since it only happens once), I'm asuming that you haven't played this game in many years, or that you have pirated this game. I'm guessing it's the latter, because everybody that has a legal copy does not have these problems.

Arrrgh, matey!

Actually that red screen (a red moongate) was shown each time you loaded the game. That's where the original Black Gate hung a lot on my Pentium 60 Mhz

I saw a box with BG, SI and both expansions in an old computer store a few years back. Quite battered. I should have bought the thing, but that's not the point - there are still legal copies available out there.

Not saying he has one, though.

That wretched moon gate hung my machine a lot. Solutions involved starting the game in different ways, but I doubt any of that is relevant for Exult.

it actually sounds like trying to continue an original game... ( and we don't support that, so to start fresh, I'd say delete the gamedat dir)