Graphics Card Problems

Forsaken is an old game now and there is no longer any official support.
If you have a new video card and Forsaken does not load (e.g. black screen) please refer to the section: compatibility problems . If Forsaken runs with your card but the text within the game appears illegible or you cannot fully use the powers of the card (such as higher resolutions and filtering/aliasing) read the next section dealing with Renderer and opt files.

Renderer / opt-files

When you start the game, the launcher-dialog-box is presented. If your video card is new it will definitely not be listed there. Each entry in the list is based on an *.opt - file which you can find in the ...\Forsaken\opt\ folder. You can edit these files with any Text-Editor such as Notepad. Below is a sample-opt-file for a voodoo3-card:

MipMapPolyTextScreenMemory 8192pw 1024ph 768TriLinear

Check the download-section for a set of modern generic graphics card opt-files based on graphics card memory. Additionally, it is highly recommended that you use the enhanced texture files available for download (also found in the download section;) simply extract these higher resolution .bmp files and overwrite the current ones in ...\Forsaken\Data\Textures\

How to disable text scaling Finally, if the in-game text remains illegible (particularly at resolutions of 1024x768 and above) then you can disable text scaling. This is simply done by creating a short-cut to Forsaken.exe and setting the Target, as illustrated to the right, to: "...\Forsaken\Forsaken.exe" -NoBlitTextScaling   Then launch the game from the newly created short-cut.

Compatibility / black screen / direct X / Z Buffer Failed

If Forsaken fails to launch even if you select Software/Primary display device from the launcher dialogue the matter might still be not as serious as it seems to be.Firstly, if you are running Windows XP then please complete the steps outlined for enabling Windows 98 / ME compatibility mode.

Owners of a Voodoo3 card should check if they have set the desktop (!) colour-depth to 32bit (Start/properties/control panel/display/settings).Also you should check the version of DirectX you are running (at least v.5 and v.6 for patched versions).

Additionally, it is strongly recommended you download the most recent drivers for your graphic-card. Having installed a new graphics-card does not mean the drivers shipped with the card are the most current. However, in the case of certain Nvidia Graphics Cards , the newest version may have compatibility problems with Forsaken and in these situations it is therefore recommended to use an older version of the driver. In specific, version 78.01 is known to work, whereas the 91.X drivers are known to cause Z Buffer Failed errors.

 

Render scene failed / no video-audio stream / Intel indeo

The error "Render Scene Failed" usually appears if the drivers of your video card are causing a problem when Forsaken is trying to initialise the render-engine. At this point, we can only recommend downloading the latest drivers for your card.Note: this is probably the most common error found running Forsaken on Windows XP and frequently the game will crash several times in a row before working perfectly fine.

"99.9% of the time this error is due to a DirectX or Video driver issue." - Forsaken FAQ

The error message "Cannot read video / audio stream" on launching Forsaken is related to the avi-intro movie. It means that you do not have the appropriate version of the Intel Indeo (tm) Video-compression software. There are three ways to fix this:

• download the appropriate version of intel indeo player

• delete the intro movie avi

• disable loading of the intro avi-file

To disable the intro-movie follow the steps as outlined below.

 

How to disable loading of the intro Video [Quick overview] Create a shortcut to file Forsaken.exe if it does not already exist Open properties of the shortcut (right click on the file) Edit the command-line by adding the -NoAVI switch e x a c t l y as follows: " ...\Forsaken \Forsaken.exe" -NoAVI

Stuck on a Single Player level?

Read the walkthrough guide or check out the single player section of the site for more information.

78% installation error

During the installation, you receive an error at about 78% completion stating:

"An error occurred during the move data process -113, Component: Program Files, File Group: Program Files, File D:\ForsakenHW.exe"

This problem is due to Windows not recognising the CD-ROM as a Windows device, therefore, extended file names are truncated, or shortened. The install program thinks the CD is missing files. The problem is NOT the CD, but your actual CD-ROM Drive!!! Your PC is using the DOS CD-ROM drivers, instead of the WINDOWS 95 drivers. DOS only recognises 8 letter file names, Windows can read extended file names. During the install, a file called ForsakenHW.exe is copied from the CD to your hard-drive. When the CD-ROM looks for ForsakenHW.exe(10 characters) it cannot find it because the DOS CD-ROM drivers truncate, or shrink the file name to "forsa~26.exe"(8 characters).

You will need to contact your CD-ROM manufacturer or your PC's Tech Support to get your CD-ROM Drive working properly in Windows." - Forsaken FAQ

 

Green Screen lockup

While the volcano level is loading, the bar graph freezes then locks up. Try downloading & installing Intel Indeo (see the files section).

Spinning bike

If your bike seems to be spinning out of control, or you are having problems configuring your joystick/keyboard buttons, follow the directions below. The problem is due to the default control settings in Forsaken: there are basically too many keys setup for each function:

From The MAIN menu:
Select "Setup Biker"
Select "Controls" or "Weapons" (depending on control problem)
Select "Configure Keys and Buttons"
Move to each function and press [Delete] a few times until the function is "undefined"
To reassign the function press [enter] and then press the key or button you want to use.

Installing the new levels

First download all of the levels you desire to a folder on your hard drive. Remember the location of that folder .

Keep in mind the maximum number of levels you can select from within the (unpatched) game is 16 . Note: this does not apply to patched versions of Forsaken.

Installing new levels manually:

Overview:

The majority of levels provided on this site are compressed with the .zip format, meaning you will have to unzip them with a tool like winzip . All of these zip-files have to be unzipped to your ..\Forsaken\Data\Levels folder. There is also a file called battle.dat located in your Levels-folder as well. It serves as a level-list, so the game knows what levels you have installed. This file must be altered in order to make the new levels appear in the game menu.

STEP 1: unzip

Once the download is complete, open that folder and double click on the individual *.zip-files to begin the unzip-process.
Next select Extract (or unzip depending on your version).

You will be prompted to provide the destination where the files will be moved after unzipping them.
You must enter the path to your . ..\Data\Levels folder located in your Forsaken home-directory.
So assuming Forsaken is installed in the default location , you would enter at "extract to:"
C:\Program Files\Acclaim Entertainment\Forsaken\Data\Levels
(Or select that folder by browsing the directory list).

Next click Extract .
After unzipping is complete you can exit winzip or whatever you are using.

STEP 2: updating battle.dat

Basically the battle.dat acts as a pointer to the folder where the files pertaining to the level reside. Therefore, this information must be added to the battle.dat file for Forsaken to recognise these new levels. If you do not have a battle.dat or simply wish to download the battle.dat which contains all 34 multiplayer levels available, you can do so from the files section. Remember that to use the level, the files must be extracted to its individual folder and it must be listed in the top 16 of the list. If you wish to add the individual levels yourself then please read on.

Open the battle.dat file located in your ..\Forsaken \Data\Levels folder with Notepad or any ASCII-text editor. You should see a list of the default multiplayer levels. Now simply add a line and write the name of the folder where the level is installed, preferably at the top of the file. For example, if you downloaded Astro and your battle.dat looked like this:

biodomealphaShipsewerNuke-mpnedwheeltubeoldtemple..

to make Astro appear as the first (default) level within the game you would simply add the name in the first line .

astrobiodomealphaShipsewerNuke-mpnedwheeltubeoldtemple..

Finally save the file and select the level when you host a multiplayer game.

Installing new levels via the Level Installer:

Firstly, install the Level Manager by extracting the contents to the Forsaken folder. (I.e. double click on levelm.exe and choose "Browse..." then locate the Forsaken folder which is probably at C:\Program Files\Acclaim Entertainment\Forsaken\ then click "OK", then "unzip", then "OK", then  "close")

Next, locate the Level Installer (leveler.exe) which should now be located at ..\Forsaken\Leveler\ and double click it. A warning will now appear asking you to update the battle.dat file click "OK".

Henceforth, when you wish to install a new level, run the Level Installer, choose "File" and then "Open" from the menu and then locate the .zip file of the level you wish to install and then click "OK". That's it, simple huh?

 

Windows XP Configuration

Firstly, you should disable the XP firewall if you have not already done so.

Before you can play Forsaken, you must locate the 3 executable files: Forsaken.exe ForsakenHW.exe and Forsaken.SW.exe (which can be found in the Forsaken folder usually in ...\Program Files\Acclaim Entertainment\

Once you have located the files you must enable Windows 98 / Windows Me compatibility mode as described below.

 

When the files have been located, in turn, right click on the executable file and select Properties from the menu. Click on the Compatibility tab and tick the box marked "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" Then select Windows 98 / Windows Me from the drop down menu and click Apply. (see screenshot to the right) Repeat for ALL 3 executables.

Firewall / Router Configuration The applications which must be granted communication access are ForsakenHW.exe and dplaysvr.exe . These are located in:  ...\Acclaim Entertinament\Forsaken\ and ...\WINDOWS\System32\ respectively. Furthermore, you must allow access to the following ports in order to play Forsaken online: 2300 - 2400 and 47624 (for DirectPlay 7 i.e. Forsaken) [ Example ] Should you encounter any problems, try enabling the machine you are using to play Forsaken to be a DMZ host. (WARNING: This will disable your router from functioning as a hardware firewall and may expose your computer to Internet attacks unless you have a software firewall.) It is strongly recommended that you install a software firewall such as ZoneAlarm . To configure ZoneAlarm to run with Forsaken follow the instructions located here If you have a router and you wish to play Internet games on more than one machine simultaneously, you will need to read the instructions and download DXport from www.puffinsoft.com . [ Example ]