I’ve heard that Critical Point and Snow Drop use the same engine, so I guess it’s not a coincidence I’m unable to run either game.
Whenever I try running one of these games, it immediately bombs out with an error that says “Initializing DirectSound failed”. No intro, no title screen/menu, just immediate shutdown. I have purchased the download editions of these two games. (if that makes a difference)
Does anybody have any clue how to solve this?
It would be really useful if you could give a little more information. For instance, what version of Windows are you using? If you aren’t running Windows 7, what version of DirectX do you have installed? What hardware/software do you have that handles sound? Using my desktop as an example:
Windows 7 x64
DirectX 11
Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio sound card
Apologies:
Here are my specs.
Windows XP (32-bit)
DirectX 9.0c
Intel Duo Core 2,13Ghz
3 Gb RAM
SigmaTel audio soundcard
I had some trouble running these games, too. You can check these two threads and see if the solution that worked for me also works for you.
The first thread you linked to wasn’t relevant for me because the download versions of Snow Drop and Critical Point don’t contain an installer-file, but simply a zip with all the game files “post-installation”.
I did try the solution in the second thread you linked to with slightly older versions of the files mentioned there, but unfortunately it didn’t make a difference. (though if someone has versions of those files that worked for them, I could always try it again)
Just letting people know I’ve solved the issue and got both games to run.
As stated before, I got the download versions of both games which don’t have a single installer exe, but rather a zip-file with all the game files that you extract into a folder and then start without further installation-stuff. Also included in both zips was a whole slew of DirectX-related files…a DXSetup file, a DXMedia file and a bunch of DX-related DLL-files. Anyway, I moved all those files to a different folder, leaving only the game’s exe-files, the game’s data-files (with an ARC-extension) and the documentation files in the game folder and suddenly the game stopped doing the “can’t initialize DirectSound”-thing and executed as it should. (only to choke on Snow Drop’s brand.avi file, but if you remove that file too, the game complains with an error but still proceeds to intro and main menu afterwards…I can live with that)
To Jast…I do kinda wonder, is there a particular reason for distributing these two games in a normal zip, rather than an installer and is there a reason for including all those old DirectX-files, which the game apparantly tries to adress as long as they’re in the same folder even though those dll-files are really outdated? I believe they’re all DirectX 6-files, so it’s unlikely anyone’s gonna install them…you might just want to leave them out.
I don’t know what your barking about with the no installation required stuff as I bought the download version and it did contain the setup file (the download versions basically contain all the data from the CD releases) and I didn’t have any of the problems you had since I installed the game first (you have to as the setup creates all the registry data and without that the game won’t run).
Sorry, you’re right. I had previously attempted to install the game, something froze up that forced me to kill the process with the task manager and since the game did not show up in the list of installed software in the control panel, I assumed the installation simply didn’t succeed and simply deleted all the files manually. (I’m not used to uninstalling software through its own setup file) Turned out some registry entries were made, so the next time I tried to play the game there was no install option anymore so I tried to run the main exe right after extracting it from the zip. My bad. The installation/uninstallation-thing worked again after I removed the game’s entries from my registry and did a fresh install.
So I take that last post back.
They won’t show up in the control panel since installation and removal is done through the games setup program (out of all the peach princess games I own only Yume miru kusuri and tokimeki check in show in the add and remove programs section of the control panel).