MirageIIIEA
Spaceman
Hey everyone
Managed to run WC3 (original, not KS) by using Abandon Loader. Works very smoothly, although the audio tends to 'hiccup' from time to time a bit. Mildly annoying but acceptable considering the game runs normally and it doesn't crash at all. I did experiment with the "slowdown tweak" setting in Abandon Loader trying to fix the audio problem, 8 seems to work best for me (system specs at the bottom)
The catch: for some reason Abandon Loader will not detect your CD drive when you run the game from your hard drive. I tried installing the game first, then just copying all the contents from CD#1 to the install directory in my hard drive. Setting up Abandon Loader to run it from the HD did the trick.
I just completed enough missions so I have to change to CD2, and as I suspected I had to copy the contents from CD#2 to my hard drive as well in order to continue. Apparently only a file or two are needed, the rest appear to be all duplicates. I haven't had time to test it thoroughly, but at least the data from CD2 is working. I can't remember if WC3 changes music soundtracks with different CDs, if that's the case then you have to overwrite the music file when you copy each CD.
Finally, concerning joystick sensitivity issues that some have experienced, I found the patch wc3joy.exe to take care of the problem. When you start up the game you'll find the pointer stuck in the upper left corner, just hit Alt-J, calibrate and it should center just fine.
Finally, my system specs
Win XP SP2
P4 2.6
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon X800
Hope this can be of use to someone. If anybody knows how to get Abandon Loader to detect the CD drive, feel free to let me know
Managed to run WC3 (original, not KS) by using Abandon Loader. Works very smoothly, although the audio tends to 'hiccup' from time to time a bit. Mildly annoying but acceptable considering the game runs normally and it doesn't crash at all. I did experiment with the "slowdown tweak" setting in Abandon Loader trying to fix the audio problem, 8 seems to work best for me (system specs at the bottom)
The catch: for some reason Abandon Loader will not detect your CD drive when you run the game from your hard drive. I tried installing the game first, then just copying all the contents from CD#1 to the install directory in my hard drive. Setting up Abandon Loader to run it from the HD did the trick.
I just completed enough missions so I have to change to CD2, and as I suspected I had to copy the contents from CD#2 to my hard drive as well in order to continue. Apparently only a file or two are needed, the rest appear to be all duplicates. I haven't had time to test it thoroughly, but at least the data from CD2 is working. I can't remember if WC3 changes music soundtracks with different CDs, if that's the case then you have to overwrite the music file when you copy each CD.
Finally, concerning joystick sensitivity issues that some have experienced, I found the patch wc3joy.exe to take care of the problem. When you start up the game you'll find the pointer stuck in the upper left corner, just hit Alt-J, calibrate and it should center just fine.
Finally, my system specs
Win XP SP2
P4 2.6
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon X800
Hope this can be of use to someone. If anybody knows how to get Abandon Loader to detect the CD drive, feel free to let me know