System specs: Dual GeForce 6800 GTs (SLI) 1 GB RAM Athlon 64 3200 250 GB HD Win XP Professional Service Pack 2 I'll click on the executable, and the first two cinematics will play (the Sierra and Troika logos), and then the Loading screen will flicker on for a brief moment, disappear, and I find myself back at the Arcanum directory. I tried messing around with Compatibility under Properties, but those efforts were fruitless. (Curiously, if I run it under Windows 95 or Windows 98 compatibility, it won't run at all, saying: "ERROR! Unable to load function: FT_Thunk (KERNEL32.dll)"). It is patched to 1074, and is also a fresh install on this computer. Is there any way to get it to run? Thank you in advance for any help. (Also, my apologies if this is the wrong forum; there is no tech help forum for Arcanum).
That's odd. You have well beyond ANY required specs to run Arcanum. It should be going without a hitch. I'm not sure what to say, so....just uninstall it, then reinstall it. Hopefully, then it'll be ok for some reason. I'm on the same XP service pack as you, so, I don't know what's going on with your computer.
I had the same problem when I installed the patch from this site, cause its got some extra's added into it. Simple solution, go into the arcanum directory, right click on the executable and create a shortcut. Put the shortcut on the desktop and use that to launch the game. It works for me, anyways.
Ofcourse if you use a pirated game things like this can happen. Then there is no fixing it. But, if not then look up arcanums page and try matching your problem with their troubleshooting guide, and download a patch if necessary.
This probably won't help at all I suffered a similar problem when my Arcanum3.dat file got messed up, try reinstalling because when Arcanum3 fails, thats what happens, you get to the loading screen and the game crashes.
Or someone could upload correctly installed arcanum.dats somewhere. Then we could all just download them when ours get corrupeted.
On the contrary, I've got the old school game that came with the manual and all that. I've tried both patches, one from Sierra.com and the other from here and they're quite different. The one here has Sinbad's Ship mod or something added to it. That mod's got something buggy that doesn't overwrite the original exe in the startup menu, hence the shortcut workaround.
I downloaded the patch from this site, and I have a legal copy of the game, however, I've never had a single session of Arcanum crash on me.
Hey, I have comparable performance computer (intel instead of AMD and ATI instead of nVidia), once you do get it working please let me know of the performance. I have extreme slow down when there are things like 4 party members etc - the sound gets all choppy as does the video. Note I can run Battlefield 2 on high video quality fine I was also quite unimpressed with the performance of bloodlines, much much slower than the later source engine games (HL2 and its mods) which had much larger areas and greater detail Trolkia makes a good story ... haven't been impressed with the performance
My copy is legitimate (purchased like a thousand years ago when it launched). Creating a shortcut on the desktop does not work (I already attempted launching directly from the Arcanum directory anyway). I don't remember what site I got the patch from, but when I have the time, I will download from both Sierra's site and this site, and do a reinstall with each and see what happens. My Play disc is quite scuffed up; the next time I'm at the mall, I shall pick up some de-scuffer device or whatnot. Perhaps that will help.
I could help. I washed my disc clean. Turned out my brother'd spilled soup on it. The green litle bastard.
Mmmmm....soup....although, I think it's kind of odd that you didn't notice the soup before you put it in your computer. Speaking of de-scuffing gunk, you can actually use toothpaste as a kind of disk-buffer. It acts like a mild abrasive and takes out most of the scratches. Just make sure you use a lot of water; you don't want dried toothpaste on your CDs.
On mine, I did a clean uninstall/install from scratch and then patched it with the update from this site. When I tried launching from from the start menu, I got the THUNK_whatever error, but went into the arcanum dir and created a desktop shortcut to the exe in there. Works everytime now, but I cant launch from the disk or start menu. Sorta works like my car... Tell me about it, when I 'upgraded' to XP, all my old school games dont want to work anymore. The worst loss was the fallout series though! Its an evil software developer conspiracy I tell ya! What? Man, your hardcore! Does it really work? I might have to try it on my XP disk, its scratched all to heck. Wouldn't be a loss if it didnt work anyways.
It works on most everything. There is a limit, though. I've only gotten a few CDs to work that were so scratchy they were unuseable before the treatment, but, coincidentally, they also happened to be CDs I either didn't need, or already had backed up.
