Rayman 2: The Great Escape refuses to work on Windows 98 Second Edition [SOLVED, see main post]

[RaypersonNikol]

UPDATE: Thanks to Fifo, Rayman 2 now works as intended, as Windows 98 now has the proper drivers (though it had trouble, so Fifo reinstalled them and adjusted the colors to 16-bit instead of 32, which I think caused it to have a fit there as well lol). Thank you genuinely, Fifo! My nostalgic adventure begins now!

To clarify: I am not running Windows 98 Second Edition on physical hardware. I would not be on here if I were doing that, as I don't have a dial-up modem. I am running Windows 98 Second Edition on a virtual machine, 86Box.

When installing, it said that the best component for my computer to have was DirectX 6.1, but the problem with that is that WIndows 98 SE has DirectX 7.0 so pressing Install did nothing as all it did was annoy me, really. DirectX 7.0 was higher than the one it wanted, so it should work, right?

When the game installed, I then clicked the shortcut that made the game boot up.

I waited for something to happen, only for this error to show up.

At first, I thought it was because I needed to upgrade to DirectX 9.0c (which I really shouldn't have to since 7.0 is higher than what Rayman 2 requires), and I ended up doing that.

Unfortunately all that effort went to waste and the same error still popped up.

What am I missing and what does it mean by "please run install"? What install is it referring to? The Rayman 2 installer? Or something else entirely?[/s]

[deton24]

This looks more for a driver incompatibility, although probably the enumaration mechanism had some bug, maybe the same which also lead to broken white textures occasionally on some drivers. The game is fussy, anyways.

Maybe 86Box has some settings of video backend which you could change like different versions of dxvk in winlator, although here it won't use dxvk because it's DX8 at minimum.

As a last resort, you could launch GXSetup.exe in the root game directory and check whether changing there anything is possible, or maybe you'll get the same error.

I think VirtualBox might handle it just fine instead, although some newer versions deprecated some good performing GPU driver for some older APIs like 8.1.

You should be able to run the GOG version of the game with Ray2Fix on modern systems just fine.

Or one last chance, the new OGL 3.3 renderer
viewtopic.php?t=76013
with https://github.com/JHRobotics/mesa9x because OGL 3.3 is not supported on Win 9.x.

Or use the last supported dgVoodoo 1.50 Beta (or 1.40+) on 9.x. it will allow you to wrap DX6 or Glide to DX9.

[RaypersonNikol]

This looks more for a driver incompatibility, although probably the enumaration mechanism had some bug, maybe the same which also lead to broken white textures occasionally on some drivers. The game is fussy, anyways.

Maybe 86Box has some settings of video backend which you could change like different versions of dxvk in winlator, although here it won't use dxvk because it's DX8 at minimum.

As a last resort, you could launch GXSetup.exe in the root game directory and check whether changing there anything is possible, or maybe you'll get the same error.

I think VirtualBox might handle it just fine instead, although some newer versions deprecated some good performing GPU driver for some older APIs like 8.1.

You should be able to run the GOG version of the game with Ray2Fix on modern systems just fine.

I guess I can fiddle with settings and see if it'll make anything better. I knew it was fussy, but I didn't think it was THIS fussy. GXSetup doesn't really show anything, it's all blank and the pirate head has a question mark. I'll still try to fiddle with things anyway when I'm not worried about messing up anything.

Thank you!

(Also yes, I know about the GOG version but that's not the one I'm trying to get to run.)

[deton24]

IDK if maybe your installation lacks some files which makes GXSetup not functional
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Rayma ... ersions.29

Also, I added some new stuff in the message above.

[RaypersonNikol]

IDK if maybe your installation lacks some files which makes GXSetup not functional
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Rayma ... ersions.29

Also, I added some new stuff in the message above.

Thank you genuinely, will 100% give these a try and let you know if they worked or not.