Circle of Blood (Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars)

[Jay Smith]

I'm trying to install Circle of Blood on a new computer with Windows
98 and an Ensoniq sound card from Creative (maker of SoundBlaster,
etc.). I'm having trouble getting the game to recognize my sound
card. In fact the game won't install in either Windows or DOS.

I have DirectX vers. 6.1 installed which says the Ensoniq driver is
not Microsoft certified, and in fact there is one glitch if I run
diagnostics, but the sound seems fine in other programs.

This game ran fine under Windows 95, the same version of DirectX
(6.1), and a pretty old SoundBlaster card.

Does anyone have any suggestions? The Website for Virgin Interactive
is not much help, and the company has essentially disappeared so there
are not likely to be too many updates to that site.

Jay
kal...@well.com

[Murphy]

Try to chase down that sound driver glitch; that's almost certainly where
the problem lies. One thing to check in Control Panel | System | is to hit
'refresh driver' on the sound card tab. That will often help; even though a
driver is listed it doesn't always seem to work right. (Don't forget to back
up the registry first!) You could also check with Creative to make sure you
have the most up to date driver.

--
-----
Murph
*****

[Jay Smith]

I was trying to get Circle of Blood to install, but there was some
problem in it recognizing my new sound card.

Well, I went back into the Multimedia icon on the Control Panel and
found that one item--to Use AudioPCI Playback--had gotten deselected.
The alternative selection was "Use any available device," which
apparently confuses some programs and not others. So, the tests under
DirectX now work correctly and Circle of Blood installed without any
trouble.

And I added new batteries to my rather pedestrian speakers to boost
the low volume a bit--apparently with the change in sound cards you
need more amplification?

On Tue, 31 Aug 1999 03:13:44 -0500, Murphy <bad...@mythirdage.com>
wrote:

[Jay Smith]

Actually, I've gotten the Ensoniq sound card to work successfully
now. The problem was a tiny little setting in the Win 98 Control
Panel under Multimedia. I didn't have it set to Use PCI-Audio in
Playback (the alternative setting is to use any sound card, which
apparently upsets DirectX--logically, though, you'd expect "any"
soundcard to work if you have only one to choose from).

I do in fact have the latest available drivers for the Creative
Ensoniq card. There is a whole raft of them, including some for
SoundBlaster compatibility. The main one, however, is meant to be for
Windows 95 rather than Windows 98. I assume that Creative will
release an update eventually, unless this is an orphan device. I had
no idea the Ensoniq did not originate with Creative. Does this mean
Creative bought out a competitor before they had developed their own
advanced sound card?

On 2 Sep 1999 21:00:09 -0500, no_mail@this_adress.com (P12) wrote:

>I ran it with an Ensoniq sound card that was made by Ensoniq though.
>The guy I bought my computer from said the creative labs ones where
>cheaper. I still don't know why Sound Blaster is selling a
>competitor card. Anyway mine wasn't certified and it ran o.k. Mine
>had something in the card that simulated a soundblaster card when
>running in dos. This helped alot when running older games. If a
>game couldn't recognize the Ensonic part it could usually find the
>soundblaster part. Not sure if yours has that. In any case you
>probably should head over to the creative labs web sights and download
>some drivers for it. I just bought a computer and the system kept
>hanging until I got some updated drivers for my video. If your
>running 98 second edition chances are your drivers are outdated that
>came with the card.