XOP Ultra and XOP Black Ultra thread

[Lord Satori]

I just write a short batch file that kills explorer, runs the game, and restarts explorer when it quits. I can post a transcript if you want.

[Udderdude]

Re: The palette glitch problem, I went through the effort of writing a program that patches the Windows registry so the game will always run in compatibility mode. No more kludgey batch files. Just run it once, and it's fixed forever. Note that you need to re-download the game to get it, as it's specifically tagged to those game .exes.

It sounds like kevinmaccioly's problem is something else, as he's said everything is stuttering badly, not just XOP.

[BPzeBanshee]

Agreed. Could be anything. With the palettes, using the exe to fix the graphics worked well too but everything's inverted colours until I get to the main menu. Beautiful fix otherwise.

Speaking of new things I went to your download site and suddenly noticed you have a DOS port of this game! I might have to fix up my legacy PC and get a DOS partition in after all. :3

[Udderdude]

Yeah the DOS version was a fun side project I decided to do once I had DJGPP set up on my Virtual PC. Getting the whole game to fit in 16 MB of RAM was also a bit of a challenge .. lol

Keep in mind it's still not going to run on a 486 .. you're going to want at least a Pentium 2.

2018 Edit: Not worth making a new post and bumping the thread, but if anyone is wondering why fullscreen mode doesn't work in Windows 8.1 or 10, Microsoft changed something and again something broke. I think this has something to do with >100% DPI scaling, but I'm not 100% sure. You can get around this by setting compatibility mode for the .exe to Windows 7, or re-download the game and use the included fix .exe (Yeah, I made another fix .exe). You will probably also have to run the color fix .exe.

It's really surprising that even in 2018, the game is playable at all on modern Windows after just a few extra registry additions. This is probably the end of the line as far as attempts at fixing things go, though. Microsoft has made it pretty clear that older stuff is not going to be supported forever, and eventually the only way you'll be able to play the game is either in dosBOX, with a wrapper like DxWnd, or with virtualization software that boots into an older version of Windows. They've already completely turned DirectDraw into a compatibility layer.

[BPzeBanshee]

Yeah, mine's a 1Ghz Coppermine so I think with the correct setup it'd be fine, but the sound card finally died recently and I need to get a replacement for it that'd be compatible.

[Udderdude]

Didn't really want to have to do this, or have to bump this thread, but unfortunately the site I was using to host the online highscores seems to have gone down, and I can't get in contact with the site's owner. I'm updating the games to a new site to host the online highscores. Big thanks to rancor again for helping to host my game's downloads and now the online highscores.

Unfortunately, this also means the scoreboard has to be reset. Also, I decided to remove Maniac mode to help trim the amount of modes the games have, since it doesn't really play that well and it's a little boring, and was also shared by both XOP Ultra and XOP Black Ultra.

[BPzeBanshee]

I understand you probably didn't want to hear this, but I ran the new version of XOP Black and the music is garbled something shocking.

Seems to be a timing thing, the further back I try with the compatibility options, the slower the game gets and the slight improvement, up until I pick Windows 95 and lose all system stability. Thought maybe it was interference from other apps but the older XOP builds work fine aside from the fullscreen colour issue. Anyone else having this problem?

[Udderdude]

Don't know, all I did was change the URL for the online highscore and re-upload it. I could try updating the MOD music library I'm using and re-upload it using that, but not right now. I tested it on my own Windows 10 64-bit install, and it runs fine, even in fullscreen.

[Udderdude]

Alright, I fixed it. Turns out I made a change to the audio autodetection code back in early 2015, and never incorporated this into an actual release build .. oops.

It's amazing how something small like that can come back to bite me in the ass years later ..

[Udderdude]

Some good news. I've gotten a backup of the highscore files that were on the old server. I noticed a few people submitted scores on the new boards, so I've manually merged them into the old highscore files. So, all the old scores are back, as well as any new ones. Hooray!

[Rotu]

It's been four years since anyone has posted in this thread, but I do hope that Udderdude still checks this thread from time to time.
The thing is, the first time I heard of XOP was from a CD given with polish magazine called "Świat przygód z Hugo" back in, I don't know, 2004? 2005? Thanks to that, XOP was the first videogame installed on my PC (I was a wee lad back then).
I was googling the game from time to time to check if anyone else has played it, I have seen the official website with the Black and Ultra version but I only came across this forum today.
However, Udderdude, if you're still here- do you remember how was your game picked up by a small polish magazine? Did they contact you, or were they one of the publishers that you called? (I think that this publisher was called Play.pl or something, their logo is on the CD)

I still have that CD btw, however, it's in my parent's house right now- if anyone is curious, here is how it looks like (this photo is not mine):

[Udderdude]

It's been a long time, so I don't really remember, but I do remember making that "XOP Plus" version for someone at one point.