Patching to 2.21 on Win 7 64 bit

[piotrus]

So I decided to play TFTD, ~15 years after playing EU, and ~5 after APO. Figured time to finish the series.

 

Unfortunately, doing this on Win 7 64 bit was a bit problematic. First, I got my TFTD from Gamersgate (it comes with DOSBOX, which makes running it easy even for the DOSBOX-unitiated). Few days later, after reading various guides, I became pretty sure that what they are selling is v1 (because: Magnetic Navigation is not available to research, and finishing first stage of a two stage mission and retreating does not give me items from the first stage). Sigh one (but more reading does suggest that no vendor actually sells patched TFTD anyway...).

 

So, I tried installing patch 2.1. However, trying to execute either the terrorhd.exe or update.com from the Win 7 gives me the "error executing program". Ok, terrorhd.exe is just some old, old self-executable archive, that WinRar was able to extract easily, and I copied/overwrote files that were needed. But terror.com is another issue; a little bit of research (trying to execute it through command prompt) resulted in a longer error message, the gist of it is "this file cannot be run on 64 bit system". Sigh two.

 

Next step, launch my nearly dead Win XP laptop, copy TFTD there, patch it on the Win XP platform, copy the files back. All works - items transfer, MN is researchable.

 

One quirk I found: after the patch, items will transfer if you have savegames from the first part of the mission. But if you have savegames from the second part, they are "broken" - items from first half were not saved there (despite them properly showing on the point count in the mission summary, just like they did in v1). So make sure to patch the game before you start doing the second part of a two part mission.

 

I wonder if somebody could design the 2.1 patcher that would work with 64 bit platform? Because trust me, this problem is not going to go away...

 

Anyway, I am off to try to finish that second colony level. Putting the team in scattered positions is ANNOYING. Also, note to self: next time, bring more ammo. Much more ammo

[Bomb Bloke]

It's entirely possible to construct a patcher that'd run under 64bit, but... given that the old 16bit patcher can run under DOSBox, which is required to run the 16bit game under Windows these days anyway, I'm not entirely sure if it's worthwhile. The main benefit is simplicity.

 

I guess what would really be great is a script file that, when opened, launches DOSBox and follows the given instructions. I wonder if it already supports such a system? If not, I'm tempted to go over and introduce the idea to the devs.

[piotrus]

Hmmm, I haven't thought of running the patcher in doxbox, but I'll admit: I prefer windows to prompts. But if we could write a script that would cause dosbox to execute the patch upon activation, that would be nice.