The Reap (housemarque, pc)

auryn · Post by **auryn** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:03 pm

greetings shmuppers!

great site here. I discovered it only recently when I re-found my lost love for shmupping on the amiga, and I was thrilled to learn that the genre has really evolved and diversified a lot in the time I wasn't paying attention. Manics, 3d, Radiant Silvergun, Touhou... some really amazing stuff! (subsequently though, I became mildly worried about my skillz when I actually played some of these newer games)

I have a question for the tech experts here though. I recently got a copy of "the reap" by housemarque. I really want to play it, as it looks pretty cool and is made by the people who created Super Stardust (my old fave amiga shmup/asteriods clone), but I can't get it to work as it should.

I installed it, and it runs, but only in a tiny window (full screen mode seems to hang) and way too fast as well. Changing the compatibility mode doesn't really help. Does anyone know of a way to get it working properly?

thanks for any suggestions.

kong · Post by **kong** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:26 pm

Well I tried getting this game working in xp and I had all kinds of trouble. I eventually gave up and installed it on a win 98 pc and it ran fine. If you want to slow down the windowed version you could try an app like moslow I suppose. Good luck getting it working. It's an interesting shoot em up.

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:24 am

i remember tryin this game on WinXP about 2 yrs ago... i had to place the latest patch for the game and run it in compatibility mode in order for the game to work... i managed to run it in fullscreen mode and all...

so, google the latest updte and give it a try.

auryn · Post by **auryn** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:46 am

hey thnx for the tip, fullscreen is working now.

the game still seems pretty fast though, like as fast as dangun feveron...

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:45 am

Thanks for bringing this up; I bought The Reap two years ago after reading the review at shmups.com and have only played it once because I couldn't get it to run in full-screen mode...

I never even bothered to look for a patch because the game is from 1997; I didn't expect there to be one. With the patch it runs perfectly under Windows 2000. So I can finally play this now!

First impression: One of the best Euro-shmups out there, and certainly the most brutal one (and I don't mean the difficulty). I don't think I've ever played a shooter which includes more alien-butchering than this - xenocide is a very fitting word in this case.

Highly recommended!

Tigershark · Post by **Tigershark** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:12 pm

Excellent! Just done a Google and love the look of this game so bought a copy from e-bay. Bring it on!

Any other PC must haves?

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:55 pm

Yeah, you can get the "Sold Out Software"-label re-release for as little as EUR 2-3 on ebay; can't go wrong with that.

You really need a gamepad for this, btw. This game isn't made for keyboards.

Here's the patch you need to play this on modern PCs:
http://www.housemarque.com/thereap.htm

j^aws · Post by **j^aws** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:42 pm

Never heard of this... looks interesting and just bought a copy too!

Tigershark · Post by **Tigershark** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:17 pm

It's arrived

But I can't install it

Any ideas how I can do it? I'm getting an error message on installation that some 16bit dos thingy won't work on my system (XP).

auryn · Post by **auryn** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:35 pm

hmmm, I can't remember having this problem ... have you tried running the installer in win95 compatbility mode?

Tigershark · Post by **Tigershark** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:38 pm

How do I do that?

I'm getting:

"The system file is not suitable for running ms-dos & microsoft windows applications."

I've tried the compatibility thing but that doesn't work.

Tigershark · Post by **Tigershark** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:29 pm

Well it took me about 90 minutes to sort out but I've done it at last!

Solution was found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324767

Tigershark · Post by **Tigershark** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:48 pm

Spoke too soon!

Despite the patch I can only play it in window mode!!!

Bloody hell. Iy's too late to sort it out now. I'm off to bed. Please help!

auryn · Post by **auryn** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:43 am

strange is all I can say... ehh, you say you can play only in windowed mode... what happens if you select full screen? does the game freeze?
the patch is supposed to fix that (it did that for me)

I dl'ed a cd image off some abandonware site though, maybe a different version (though I can't really imagine this being the case)

j^aws · Post by **j^aws** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 6:48 pm

What gamepads do you guys/gals use? It doesn't recogize my USB pad (Saitek P2500)... probably needs those old serial pads?

I tried creating a profile using the Saitek software that mapped keyboard key-presses to my pad... the diagonals seem 'sticky' sometimes... was also thinking of mapping the 'shift' + '4-way'' key-presses to buttons for the weapon system... Any suggestions?

It seems like one of those tricky shmups to get those controls 'just right'... but I gotta say, I love the speed of this game!

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:00 pm

I'm using a cheap Thrustmaster USB joypad, it's working fine. My OS is Windows 2K (which I'm reluctantly using; among the procecessor-eating and memory muching Microsoft operating systems it's the best and most stable in my opinon).

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 5:18 pm

Although it is not announced yet, I can tip you that Housemarque is working on a new shmup after all these years! It will be for PS3, and you can buy it via streaming service (or whatever they call it, I don't own ps3..)

I've seen some early versions and I can say honestly that it looks absolutely fabulous.

Tigershark · Post by **Tigershark** » Tue May 01, 2007 8:41 am

Hmmmm.

I'm not sure whether it's my XP but I think the game runs too fast. For instance at the game's start you really don't have enough time to destroy those water crafts and so you just end up dodging them.

Not sure I like it.

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Tue May 01, 2007 10:19 am

Difficulty curve of that game was shot to hell, mainly due to take2 demanding them to suddenly switch order of levels at the end of development. For this reason they never worked with take2 again.

j^aws · Post by **j^aws** » Tue May 01, 2007 11:24 am

I gave up on this game on WIN XP because it kept randomly crashing during the first few levels...

gameoverDude · Post by **gameoverDude** » Thu May 12, 2011 4:00 am

The Reap runs well with Virtual PC 2007 in a Win98 virtual machine. Install Win98 from the original CD onto the VM's virtual hard drive, then install Reap. Unlike native XP, this puts the game at playable speed. Just like other emulators, Joy2Key can be ran from the XP host to control the game as it runs on the Win98 guest OS.

I almost considered forking over the $25 for Mo'slo before I tried this.

KoolKool993 · Post by **KoolKool993** » Sun Jul 17, 2016 9:50 am

sorry for revive this thread up......
there is solution, install vmware, and then run virutal xp, the game worked with normal speed!

The reap is a better alternative for the cancel-sequel of Viewpoint, offered much better gameplay and graphic visual
and then you have life bar (as many euro-shmup) yay! but it will not make game any easier, because the worst thing is enemy bullet projectile is fast, so require carefully dodging and memorize

we need to encourage housemarque to release better build of this classic, if they can enhance the resolution and make the game work at newer modern OS like 7,8,10

ZellSF · Post by **ZellSF** » Wed Jul 20, 2016 4:16 pm

Alternatively, on a modern computer just run the game in dgVoodoo2 which can vsync it (and also seems to reduce crashes by a lot).

You also need a older version of dsound.dll to make sound work right.

Not a fan of setting up a VM to play a game, especially since VMs are pretty bad for games in a few ways.

KoolKool993 · Post by **KoolKool993** » Thu Jul 21, 2016 11:34 am

ZellSF wrote:Alternatively, on a modern computer just run the game in dgVoodoo2 which can vsync it (and also seems to reduce crashes by a lot).

You also need a older version of dsound.dll to make sound work right.

Not a fan of setting up a VM to play a game, especially since VMs are pretty bad for games in a few ways.

VM solution work fine for me.....but only problem is the game not fullscreen

but dgVoodoo2,i tried it,but the game still run very fast

ZellSF · Post by **ZellSF** » Thu Jul 21, 2016 6:27 pm

KoolKool993 wrote:
ZellSF wrote:Alternatively, on a modern computer just run the game in dgVoodoo2 which can vsync it (and also seems to reduce crashes by a lot).

You also need a older version of dsound.dll to make sound work right.

Not a fan of setting up a VM to play a game, especially since VMs are pretty bad for games in a few ways.
VM solution work fine for me.....but only problem is the game not fullscreen

but dgVoodoo2,i tried it,but the game still run very fast

Well if you run it in dgVoodoo2 it's basically a D3D11 title. You can use any frame limiter that works on that, I prefer RivaTunerStatisticsServer which is included with MSI Afterburner.

No clue what framerate the game is supposed to run at though? Is it 35? That makes sense, but it feels sluggish. Then again, gameplay does seem too fast at 70.

Seems like the game sometimes have a problem with clearing it's special effects at the top of the screen, wonder if that happens natively too.

KoolKool993 · Post by **KoolKool993** » Fri Jul 22, 2016 12:06 pm

i hope our community can make a big vote so housemarque can hear us....

at least they can make a simple thing like release minor patch that make the game work on newer OS, not to mention about any other enhancement

ZellSF · Post by **ZellSF** » Wed Jul 27, 2016 2:24 pm

Pretty sure it's long forgotten by everyone, I wouldn't except Housemarque to touch it again. You can get it running pretty nicely though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCyc0AezYX4

KoolKool993 · Post by **KoolKool993** » Sat Aug 13, 2016 12:43 pm

i made fullplay here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWwfuwMvhtQ

not 1cc... i use cheat,sorry ...at least to show you guy all levels....

only 3 bosses, wish there are more....

shmups.system11.org

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