Anybody played Shadow Warrior for PC?

[finisher]

I remember back playing Shadow Warrior (3D Realms) on Windows 95. The game had music in it. Then switching to Windows 98 and so on, there isn't a trace of music to be found.

What's up with this game? How was music enabled in Windows 95 and not in 98 and so on? Some say there never was music in the game and others say that the music can be heard by a cheat while the game CD is in the drive.

Plus, modern day source ports for Windows XP (like Jonof's Shadow Warrior port and Playwang).

Anybody have a remote clue as to how music is activated or if there really is any music at all?

[Push Upstairs]

There is game music on the CD, but on two different computers I wasn't able to get the CD to play while the game was going.

Every time I'd run it the first time he'd say "What, you no like music?" and then the music would be turned off. No idea why.

The game is funny as hell, got most of his quotes memorized.

[Jorpho]

If you switched computers, you might be missing the internal connector from the CD drive to your sound card. (Or you might just have the CD volume muted in your audio mixer.)

Are you able to play an audio CD using the cdplayer application included with Windows 98? If your CD-ROM drive has a headphone jack on the front, can you hear anything if you plug your speakers into that jack?

If all else fails, I've heard very intriguing things about _inmm.dll, but that really shouldn't be necessary under Windows 98, I would think.

(By the way, don't forget that the long-lost expansion pack was released as freeware when it was unearthed a few years ago.)

[finisher]

If you switched computers, you might be missing the internal connector from the CD drive to your sound card. (Or you might just have the CD volume muted in your audio mixer.)

Are you able to play an audio CD using the cdplayer application included with Windows 98? If your CD-ROM drive has a headphone jack on the front, can you hear anything if you plug your speakers into that jack?

If all else fails, I've heard very intriguing things about _inmm.dll, but that really shouldn't be necessary under Windows 98, I would think.

(By the way, don't forget that the long-lost expansion pack was released as freeware when it was unearthed a few years ago.)

I no longer have 98. But it's only music that doesn't work. Even on XP, the game, even when using a source port, music is missing. And it's only to Shadow Warrior. It seems that there's nothing. All the other games I play have no problem with this. It's just Shadow Warrior: Windows 95, music works. Ever since then, Shadow Warrior's music is absent.

[Jorpho]

All the other games I play have no problem with this.

Well, all your other games might not use CD audio. It's not an especially common feature - it was only really useful for a short time in PC gaming.

If it is indeed a CD audio problem, maybe you should try _inmm.dll after all?

[Overbite]

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wanta some Wang!

[finisher]

Well, I managed to get the music up and running. However, since I'm using XP, there's no way the game will be running anywhere near playable. Well, to the least, I can hear it on a CD player.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey Finisher.

The difference is likely due to the way in which the CD-ROM is connected to the sound hardware. Some computers have a digital connection, some have an analog connection.

Of course, we'd have to see the insides of your machine to figure out which is necessary. I'm guessing that the Win95 machine is connected via analog output, while the newer box has digital out only.

Do you have other games like Hexen on CD? You should be able to hear CD music for those too.

[finisher]

Hexen music actually works without the CD.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hexen music actually works without the CD.

That's because it'll revert to MIDI.

Hexen's CD soundtrack is of a poor enough quality (mainly noise in the recording) that some people won't consider it much of a loss, but I do.

[Push Upstairs]

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wanta some Wang!

"You half a man you used to be!"

[Trevelyan]

Well I remember music & loved the game, mainly the soundbites! I have the UK release which I'm sure was cut in some aspect, I think a weapon got the, er, chop. Ma Britain does not acknowledge the existence of Shurikens, or Nunchaku while Im thinking ninja. It's at my Dads so if I visit I'll try to remember to pick it up & install it, see what happens.

[Push Upstairs]

I'll never understand England's anti-ninja weapons and headbutt stance.

[Garry Shandling]

Hexen music actually works without the CD.

Gary Shandling

[roushimsx]

Oh good, this topic was dug up.

I was strongly disappointed in Shadow Warrior. The difficulty is completely jacked thanks to enemies that can one hit kill you, cheap enemy placement throughout the levels and a fairly questionable arsenal.

The six shot shotgun takes 3 shots to down a standard enemy ninja and there's no indication when you're going to need to reload (oh, you want to manually reload? Too bad!), the sword is pretty much the best weapon in the game except for when you have to deal with kamikazes, and who the shit thought that having a needlessly drawn out boss fight against an enemy that can one hit kill you was a fun idea? Better yet, who's idea was it to recycle the same enemy multiple times throughout the game?

Don't even get me started on the enemy counts in each level. They got gratuitously padded up by having enemies respawn in areas you've previously cleared when you complete minor goals to artificially boost the difficulty. Great design decision there! Let's make the game more challenging not through clever enemy placement and level design but by further cheapness that complements the already questionable damage model!

There's some really neat things that they do throughout the game with the engine and some of the level designs are really nice (and pretty damn massive), but you can tell the game was in development hell. 3D Realms did a terribly job of polishing it off when they picked up the game and tried to finish it off themselves with a basically different cast of people than who had started work on it. It's funny that they had to choose between Shadow Warrior of Blood and chose Shadow Warrior as they felt it was the strongest of the two, only for it to turn out so poorly and then have QStudios bought out by Monolith and Blood to turn out so fucking well (except for that last episode and the questionable expansion Plasma Pak, but whatever).

JonoF's port was a nice gesture, but the userbase of Shadow Warrior isn't really big enough to motivate him to update it any further than where it's at now. It's a bit crash prone and fairly buggy; if you must play a modern port, ProAsm's is the only way to go (it's an updated version of JonoF's). Especially if you intend to play Wanton Destruction, which isn't compatible with JonoF's port. And you want to play Wanton Destruction.

If you want the best compatibility (CD audio, most stable, works with Twin Dragon and Wanton Destruction without a hitch, etc), play that sucker in DOSbox. Make sure you mount the disc image with the IMGMOUNT command as follows (add it to the autoexec section at the bottom of the dosbox.conf):

imgmount d "Shadow Warrior.cue" -t iso

This is assuming you ripped an image of Shadow Warrior as "Shadow Warrior.BIN/CUE" (I recall ISO doesn't properly support multisession discs, so the only other naively supported option is BIN/CUE). The above command mounts the disc image as virtual drive "d" in DOSbox, so install Shadow Warrior to your virtual "c" drive and go to town.

Then, when you finish getting your Shadow Warrior and Wanton Destruction fix, play Blood and Cryptic Passage for Blood. Or play Duke Nukem 3D, Duke it Out in DC and Duke Caribbean: Life's a Beach. For reals.

[Pen Island]

Oh good, this topic was dug up.

I was strongly disappointed in Shadow Warrior. The difficulty is completely jacked thanks to enemies that can one hit kill you, cheap enemy placement throughout the levels and a fairly questionable arsenal.

The six shot shotgun takes 3 shots to down a standard enemy ninja and there's no indication when you're going to need to reload (oh, you want to manually reload? Too bad!), the sword is pretty much the best weapon in the game except for when you have to deal with kamikazes, and who the shit thought that having a needlessly drawn out boss fight against an enemy that can one hit kill you was a fun idea? Better yet, who's idea was it to recycle the same enemy multiple times throughout the game?

Don't even get me started on the enemy counts in each level. They got gratuitously padded up by having enemies respawn in areas you've previously cleared when you complete minor goals to artificially boost the difficulty. Great design decision there! Let's make the game more challenging not through clever enemy placement and level design but by further cheapness that complements the already questionable damage model!

What the hell are you talking about? There aren't many 1-hit kill enemy attacks, other than bosses.

That "six" shotgun is a quad-barrelled shotgun. You know, 4 barrels. And your statistics are way off on how many shots it takes to down a simple Ninja. If you actually paid attention in the game, you'd know the gun reloads in groups of 4. What are you referring to by "kamikazes", did you even play the same game? By the way, that "boss" character only reappears twice; the other incarnations are much weaker.

As for your complaint on "enemy padding", I'm sorry, did you ever play Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D and pretty much several other FPS's that precede and succeed this game?

[Zing]

You no mess with lo wang.