Can Play Normal Majesty But Not Majesty Expansion., Grrrrr

[Shria]

The title says it all...I can't get the Majesty Expansion to play properly. I've "hacked" the original programme a bit [actually I just patched it but I like using that word to make myself sound smart xD] so I can run it, but since I have the Gold version I'm not supposed to do that, also the game doesn't run as normal. It keeps playing CD tracks off my other CD albums on my CD drive.

What happens is that if I run the normal unpatched version, it just gives me a black screen for a long time and then says 'an error occured' and such. It's the message Windows XP always gives when a problem in a programme happens.

Now let me make a few points:

1. I checked out the official Majesty's FAQ, and from reading it the only possible reason to why I can't run the normal Majesty Expansion EXE file is because I need to update my graphics card, but...

2. I installed Majesty Gold ages ago, I think it's been a year since I bought it...it worked back then, so why not now? I haven't really changed my computer much.

3. Apparently I have the latest graphics card available, and apparently I don't. That confuses me quite a bit. When I try and install other drivers it says my computer isn't compatible. I have brought this issue up on another forum and have not managed to resolve it, so I hope this Majesty Expansion problem has nothing to do with my graphics card.

Also please don't turn into a graphics card thread, because I'll problably end up burning myself [and fail to solve the issue] like I did last time. If the problem does turn out to be a problem with the graphics card then...

[Spiderman]

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you "patched" it, but if you mean an official Majesty patch, Gold should already have all the patches needed.

Off-hand, I would say try running or installing Gold in one of the XP compatibility modes.

[Shria]

Yes, I used the official Majesty patches. I know Gold shouldn't be patched but I just played around with it since the Expansion wouldn't play.

I tried to run MajX.exe with different compability modes, but all it does is crash. How would I install it with a different compability mode though, since the files are on CD?

[Veneficus]

I just set up a new desktop and wasn't able to get the game running (I have the gold version). What happened was that as it opened, there was a black screen and the game crashed with the usual windows error report dialog. However, I was able to fix the problem by disable the videos which was somehow conficting with my graphics (Geforce 8600).

To disable the intro cinematics:

in Majesty/Data, remove or rename the file cinedata3.dat, then create a new, blank file and name it cinedata.dat. (make sure the file extension of the fake file is .dat and not something like .dat.txt, which can occur if you have hide file extensions enabled) The fake cinedata.dat file tricks the system into not playing the opening cinematic.

do the same for MajX/Data/mx_cinedata3.dat. remove/rename mx_cinedata.dat and add a fake blank file of the same name.

That fixed the problem for me so hopefully it'll work for you too.

[Dumble Dwarf]

Actually I think you can disable the cinematic by running majesty with a special parameter in the command-line. Spiderman knows the correct parameters.

[Klodin]

i have gold and it never ran the opening cinematic. unless you mean the one with the company logo?

[Grash]

Mine didn't work when I installed it with high-res cinematics, but did when I installed it with low-res cinematics.

[Spiderman]

Heh, you know, I haven't played Majesty in so long that I kinda forgot it, but I think it's -nointro

[Shria]

Ahh, I remember it was almost a year since this problem began...

Majesty Expansion seems to like refusing to run between the January and May months!

What I don't understand is - WHY doesn't it work today even though it was running totally fine the day before? The cinematics used to open up fine, and I've done nothing to change my computer settings. Well, I installed Toontown, but I'm not sure if it changed anything...

Compatibility mode is not the problem. I've tried running MajX.exe under all possible compatible modes but they still give the same problem.

The Atari website says that it might be to do with the video hardware acceleration. But I'm on Windows Vista and I have no idea how to access the video hardware acceleration and turn it down.

Veneficus, unfortunately your solution didn't work. But thanks for letting me know anyway...
Bear in mind that on the original Majesty (just Maj.exe), the opening cinematics work completely fine. That goes for the rest of the cinematics in the whole game.

Dumble and Spiderman...Hey, your solution worked! The problem seems to be the cinematics inside MajX. I have no idea why Veneficus' solution didn't work though. And why can't my computer run cinematics in the Northern Expansion, when it can play them fine on Majesty itself? And why does it suddenly refuse to run, when I've made no changes to my computer at all?

Maybe I'll try out Grash's solution later...

EDIT: Screw that. It doesn't work at all.
As soon as I select a quest the game exits itself.

*sigh* I'm going to try and get someone to guide me how to use Windows Vista. I think the Hardware Acceleration thing is the problem, but as I said, I have no clue how to turn it down on Vista. Nowadays nothing is as simple as right-clicking on your desktop and clicking on "Properties"...

By the way, I'm sorry this took so long to say, but thank you all for your help. It's really appreciated.

[Grash]

Vista stinks, end of story.

Majesty's old, you may never manage to make it work on Vista. Some old games didn't work on XP until their makers created newer versions that worked on XP. And some games that weren't supported any longer simply didn't work. Vista is even less backwards compatible than XP and a lot more annoying, plus the old company gave Majesty up and I'm sure Paradox doesn't care enough. Good luck, but I wouldn't be hopeful.

[Shria]

But I still don't understand why it worked before and why it suddenly doesn't work...
It was working perfectly, literally two days ago.

[Grash]

Any possibility Windows keeps downloading updates for itself and you aren't paying it much attention?

[Shria]

It's Windows Vista.

EVERYTHING you do, it will notify you.

Ie.

"You're about to rename a file! We need to know if you give permission to rename this file. Are you sure? Really really sure?"

It won't let you download or change *anything* without giving you an annoying confirmation message.

-.- Looks like I'll stick with the original Majesty with its old quests.

[Spiderman]

If the only change you made between the two days was installing ToonTown, I'd say that was the culprit. Maybe it overwrote something, maybe it installed a newer version of something, who knows. If you can restore your computer to before that point and try to run NE again, that would help to see if ToonTown is the problem.

If you can't... maybe just uninstalling ToonTown might work, who knows.

[Klodin]

Well Vista hates me too. Even when I disabled cinematics.