Original Majesty on Windows 7

[Sololop]

Hey! Sorry if this is pointless or if the post is not in the correct spot.

I have Majesty on original CD. Not the HD game, expansion, or the second game. It's old as heck but the CD is in good shape. I haven't played the game in many many years, and found the CD a few months ago, and I had the game running on my Windows 7 machine by using compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3, 640x480 resolution, 256 colours, and a few command line codes such as -nointro and --nothreadedcursor.

Recently I had the game uninstalled, and tried to reinstall it. I can no longer run the game. I don't know why not. When attempting to launch, the resolution changes, the colours change, but then the game will not boot, and windows after a few moments will return to its regular state. I've tried many different resolutions and every compatibility mode option. Searching the internet, it seems most issues I can find are not quite like I have and they are for the HD version of the game or Majesty 2.

I think a more modern windows update or something caused the issues but there is no way I'd be able to find out how. Am I out of luck? I know I can buy the remade HD version but seeing as I have the original CD i was hoping not to spend any money on it.

Thanks for any help!

Edited for clarification

 

[Zsar1]

Mmh. Majesty Gold (original + expansion; from 2002) runs fine here on a current Windows 7.
The intros also work fine.

Majesty.exe 1.41 runs out of the box, no parameters, no compatibility mode.
MajX.exe 1.1.0.12 has to be run in compatibility mode "Windows 98 / Windows Me".

Of course, for plenty of other old games, I have installed a couple of non-standard additions to Windows 7, such as the Intel Indeo 5 video codec (preinstalled up to WinXP, has to be manually installed in Win7) - I am fairly sure this codec is used for the intros, but beyond that I have no idea what you could be missing.

 

[Sololop]

Ah I see. Well I don't have Majesty Gold, and MajX.exe is not what I have either. However I don't know what version it is (From CD so probably original version) and as for the Codec I can try and find that and see if it helps.

 

[Zsar1]

Another obvious (thence unmentioned) thing to keep in mind is that Majesty predates UAC and therefore should be installed outside of any system governed directory (e.g. not in a variant of "C:\Program Files" or any subfolder thereof).

 

[Sololop]

I haven't installed the codec yet but that should just be for the videos like you mentioned.

Hmm okay. I just completely removed the old Majesty install and re-installed it from the CD. I installed it to a custom folder on my C drive. Results are the same. If I have task manager open, I can see the process Majesty pop up in the list for a few seconds before it just goes away. I don't get any error messages or anything else. Is there a way to check what version of the game I have, and if it's out of date, are there patches floating around anywhere that might help?

This may be futile but the fact I had this running on this PC earlier this year has me determined to find out why suddenly it has decided against it.

 

[Zsar1]

Right-click Majesty.exe in the Explorer, select "Properties/Details". There should be an entry "Product Version".
The correct version should be 1.4 or 1.41 - it might be that 1.41 is Gold only, I would not know that.

I found a download for patch 1.4 here. I think it should be all-inclusive, but if not the same site offers 1.3 as well.

 

[Sololop]

The version installed from the CD is version 1.0. I downloaded those patches at the site, I installed version 1.3 first then the 1.4 patch in case. Now my product reads version 1.4. Looks like 1.41 is for Gold only as you said.

The game has the same issues launching with the patches installed. Strange, I will try more troubleshooting tomorrow. Thanks for your help so far.

 

[Spiderman]

Just to be clear, in your original post, you said

I had the game running on my Windows 7 machine by using compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3, 640x480 resolution, 256 colours, and a few command line codes such as -nointro and --nothreadedcursor.

So when you uninstalled and reinstalled, are you stil using the same command line codes when you're trying to run? The -nointro should bypass the intro video. I see the compatibility and resolution thing doesn't seem to work for you though. I think there's a .TXT file that's created that contains the startup values for the game, you may have to change these manually if it exists. Should be in the main folder where you installed to (again, I think).

Majesty Gold is slightly different from the original (namely because it includes the Northern Expansion) and thus already includes the patches that were applied to the original PLUS some more patches. So frankly, trying to compare the two games is apples to maybe crabapples at best, oranges at worst.

I actually have the original CD also but no Win7, just Win10 at this point, so I can't install to try to duplicate and see what to do.

It actually may be worth it to look out for sales for Majesty Gold HD on Steam. It will allow you to play on your OS, has some additional bug fixes, and has a beta option which allows you to access user mods.

 

[Zsar1]

Does it not also have some additional bugs? I think I read about some, but as I was not planning to pick it up myself, I did not pay attention to whether they were resolved later.

 

[Alfryd]

I haven't noticed any significant bugs in the HD version myself.

 

[Spiderman]

Yes, you need to be more specific. If you're just reading about them and not experiencing them firsthand, most likely those who are having problems are mis-attributing them to HD.