The Nations Gold Edition by JoWood game fully functional with dxwrapper!

[axtox]

Intro

I really love this game so I decided to make it work with Windows 10 no matter what. I've tried different PC's, different GPU's and even Virtual Machines. And finally I was able to run it.

In my case the game was pretty much functional, thanks to root folder installation, but the mouse cursor was blinking as well as screen during the game - so I solved that using dxwrapper.

Setup

• Windows 10 x64
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 ti
• LG with 3440x1440 px
• Game installed on root "C:" drive folder (C:\ZM4 in my case)
• Latest (v1.1.6900.22) dxwrapper unpacked into /bin folder (C:\ZM4\bin in my case)

How To:

Game Installation

First of all the game should be installed on the root drive which is C:\ in my case. During the installation you have to change the installation folder to any folder exactly at C:\ drive - I guess this is due to unhandled spaces or symbols in the Windows 10 paths that occurs on x64 when installing x32 apps (they goes into C:\Program Files (x32)\ folder).

Warning

If you skip this step you'll see the black screen every time trying start new game. In some cases you'll hear the sea sounds but that's all

Game Settings

Once installed locate the installation folder - there will be a \tools folder which contains setRegTrouble.exe, sometimes it is called little bit different, just try to find some kind of a settings executable. It looks somewhat like this:

Set all the settings just like in the screenshot:

1. Choose custom option from dropdown
2. Disable the AGP-texturing using dropdown
3. Set "Texture Restriction" to 4000
4. Click on Resolution checkbox and allow to choose in-game resolution

DxWrapper Installation

There's no installation actually, just download dxwrapper.zip file from the latest release from Release Assets and unpack it right inside the \bin folder in game installation folder (C:\ZM4\bin in my case)

DxWrapper Settings

Note

There is a lot of settings in the dxwrapper, so if I did not mention some of them, this means that you should leave this setting as is with no changes!

I noticed that this game works best with ddrawcompact, so the settings are mostly related to this technology.
This is the most important step - it wont run without these settings, there will be a lot of artifacts if you leave it as it is, so here's the correct settings for dxwrapper:

1. Open dxwrapper.ini file with any text editor
2. Search for Compatibility setting group and set this settings to 1:

DDrawCompat                = 1
Dinputto8                  = 1
EnableDdrawWrapper         = 1
EnableD3d9Wrapper          = 1
EnableDinput8Wrapper       = 1
DisableHighDPIScaling      = 1

3. Search for DDrawCompat setting group and set this settings to 1:

DDrawCompat31              = 1

4. Search for ddraw setting group and set this settings to 1:

ConvertToDirectDraw7       = 1
ConvertToDirect3D7         = 1

5. Search for d3d9 setting group and set this settings to 1:

ForceDirect3D9On12         = 1
GraphicsHybridAdapter      = 1

All other settings should be set to default values

Enjoy!

You now can just open the game and play! The resolution settings should work fine - but stick to 16:9 ratio, on my 21:9 the maximum possible resolution was 1260x920.

Good luck!

[Dralon98]

Hello :) i have the original game in spanish, do you think you can make it work if i give you the ISO image of the game?

[elishacloud]

I am using the GOG version of the game, but I tested it and it works with the latest version of dxwrapper. Just unzip the dx7 binary files into the "bin" folder of the game.

Edit: the only option you need to enable is Dd7to9. You can get the latest dx7 binary files from the Releases page.

[elishacloud]

If it is not creating any log file then it means dxwrapper is not running.

1. What is the full path to the game?
2. What kind of system do you have? OS? CPU?

[Dralon98]

OS: Windows 10
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz

The path to the .exe file: C:\Program Files (x86)\JoWooD\TheNations\bin

[elishacloud]

Can you give me a copy of your game.exe file?

[Dralon98]

Yeah, just the game.exe :
game.zip

[elishacloud]

The crash happens before the game even loads ddraw.dll. I was able to get it to load dxwrapper by renaming ddraw.dll to winmm.dll. However, it still crashes before loading ddraw. This is an issue with the game and would need someone to create a specific patch for this game.

You could try with my version. Make sure to backup your version and then you can download this and unzip it to the "bin" folder: game.zip