How I got Gruntz working on Windows 10 64-bit (dgVoodoo 2)

[GooRoo]

May 26, 2018 4:24:45 GMT -8 swietymiki said:

You have 625 entries placed in your "Custom" folder? All Custom Questz?

If so, I really suggest to put most of them (ones that you don't have to use at the moment) to a different location. It is very understandable that an old game will crash when trying to even partly load 625 files at once!

Not being the web site administrator for this Forum, with over 14 years of its existence, so you may not be aware that one of the things I have done is to create a distribution system for Gruntz that includes a "Gruntz Extraz" DVD containing (essentially) the contents of the entire Forum. True Gruntzerz know that puzzlez are stored in a 'cUstOm' (case insignificant) folder under Gruntz. Without documenting where else I may have stored thingz, a neophyte would have a tough time finding that old Trouble In The Tropicz puzzle by Bjarni with 2 planes! (I once tried to figure out how he did it, but other things in life got in the way, and I never finished that task.) So I keep everything pristine, in case someone (probably new to Gruntz) want to acquire all of the puzzlez possible without having to download them one at a time. Also, every puzzle has its own folder (under the Designer's folder) containing as much supporting information as I have available: walk-through (if such exists); Statz Page image; map image(s), etc. I also try to have a copy of the original (kept up-to-date) Announcement when it was released. In other words, I have tried to save everything required to completely recreate the utility of this Forum. I am in my 10 year "bonus period" ... "three score and ten, and by virtue of strength, ten more", so realize I am mortal,and someone else may need to take over to continue supporting this great (largely non-violent) puzzle gaem.

[swietymiki]

There was no need for such a long explanation; I know about the Gruntz Extras CD and I only wanted to suggest that if all your .WWDs are in a location where game has to load them up for the selection list (and thus happen to freeze), then it would be a good idea to move them to another place - a differently named folder in the "Gruntz" game directory would be enough.

[steeloid]

It's been 2 years since this topic was started, has anyone been able to get gruntz working smoothly at all?
Is the source code available?If so then maybe someone should make a new version of gruntz for windows 10 they could even put it on steam so everyone could play it.If not is there any other way? Just curious to know.

[swietymiki]

It would be the easiest if you joined our Discord server, there are multiple people who in one or another way managed to make the game work. Some fixes are in sticky threads on the forum.

The developers of the game unfortunately don't care about it anymore. People tried to recreate it but all projects stalled.

[GooRoo]

Jul 8, 2018 23:20:18 GMT -8 steeloid said:

It's been 2 years since this topic was started, has anyone been able to get gruntz working smoothly at all?
Is the source code available?If so then maybe someone should make a new version of gruntz for windows 10 they could even put it on steam so everyone could play it.If not is there any other way? Just curious to know.

I have a Windows 10 64-bit laptop, and I use Vista compatibility option with a freeware program system named dgVoodoo (version 2). That combination works very well (but not perfectly) to play Gruntz. Minor annoyance is leaving the Gruntz screen in order to SAVE/RESTORE and select Custom Levelz to play. Also, I have found that Gruntz sometimes freezes up, requiring the "three finger salute" to invoke task Manager to remove Gruntz in order to restart. And the puzzle opens as if it were in default screen resolution (2o tiles wide by 15 tiles tall) until you do a SAVE via either F2 or F5.

Try it1 I think you will be pleased at the results, considering what you can do with Gruntz without the assists. There is no noticeable slowdown in the frame rate, so play is much as you may remember it on a Windows 98 system.

[steeloid]

First, could you link me to that server, second why did those projects stall? And finally third,I've read the whole topic and know about using dgvoodoo2,I was wondering if anyone fixed the "Minor Annoyance's" you mentioned by now by fiddling with the dgvoodoo 2 settings or otherwise.

[swietymiki]

1. There is a link to it on the main forum page, so I'll only save you a minute of searching: discordapp.com/invite/TUpMYb9
2. I don't really have time to answer this here, ask people on Discord.
3. Basically everyone has a different problem with the game and there are multiple general workarounds. You might be more or less lucky at getting the game to work, usually there are things that just no one knows how to fix.

[Beata]

Hello
I did everything according to the instructions. The game runs smoothly, but unfortunately the first thing I noticed - I started the first level and does not have the letter "W" where the red teleport should be and does not work. Does anyone know what's going on?

[Zu]

Have you checked if you have Easy Mode turned on? That's what causes secrets to be inaccessible.

[Beata]

MASSACRE
I played it 100,000 times and I didn't think about it.
Thank you very much

[FriedGruntzaholic]

Hello, all! Been awhile since I've posted anything in here, although I've been popping in here and there recently. I'm interested again in trying to get Gruntz to run on my Win10 64-bit laptop and this thread drew my attention, especially since my last attempt did not end in happiness. HOWEVER, I DO NOT recommend downloading ANYTHING from dgvoodoo. His site is infested with malware to the point that both Google and Firefox issue warnings about the site. Against my better judgment, I downloaded his latest release (1/17/2020 from the looks of it) and two files in the download had been corrupted by malware, trojans specifically, including one file that would be necessary to running Gruntz. Unfortunately, the developer/site owner seems to be too obtuse to understand that his download files have been corrupted by malware. He seems to be under the impression that Google thinks his otherwise perfectly fine proffered downloads themselves are attempts at malware infection. I should think that if he were to clean up his site and his download files and invest in better site security, he would find that Google (and Firefox) might be persuaded to remove their warnings.

[swietymiki]

It's a moot point. Lots of people on the internet are saying that this is a false positive, never being harmed by this software, and it's been like this with dgVoodoo for years.

I just downloaded and unzipped the package and uploaded the files separately to VirusTotal. The "dgVoodooCpl.exe" is the only one that really stands out as suspicious (See Results Here), though still many AntiVirus programs just returned "Riskware" or "Unsafe", which means that nothing specifically dangerous was found but it "resembles" a virus. To be specific, this file is a settings change utility and it's not required for you to run Gruntz.

I managed to get it to work with just the "DDraw.dll" file, which was in one of the subfolders, and the "dgVoodoo.conf" file, which is the actual settings file I edited manually in Notepad. If you're interested in my package, here's the download for it: Link (just extract the files to the game directory).

If not, then of course we also have other solutions to make Gruntz run on Windows 10, such as the VirtualBox solution (the most reliable one from my experience).

[Harvey]

i am very bad with computers and am going to try attempt this wish me goodluck lol, played this game when i was very young

[powerfulmind]

You should consider creating an account on this forum - you'll find a lot of Gruntzers like you, many of them also started young! I do wish you luck, this game is indeed worth coming back to!

[kamiledi15]

Hello,
I have original Gruntz CD. The game won't install on Windows 10 (the Setup.exe file says that it is incompatible with my system - Windows 10), so I just copied all files to folder on my disk, opened Game folder and there is Gruntz.exe file, which starts game without installation. Hovewer, the game is laggy, even the mouse pointer doesn't run smooth. Links for resolution fixes on your page doesn't work anymore, I also don't know how to get this dgVoodoo to work - I downloaded 2,75 version, I am starting the dgVoodoo exe file and configuration window appears. But, nothing changes in the game - I probably should have Voodoo splash screen, but I don't. So, where can I find resolution fixes now if the links are dead? And what am I doing wrong with this Voodoo?

[swietymiki]

Jul 18, 2021 1:20:42 GMT -8 kamiledi15 said:

Hello,
I have original Gruntz CD. The game won't install on Windows 10 (the Setup.exe file says that it is incompatible with my system - Windows 10), so I just copied all files to folder on my disk, opened Game folder and there is Gruntz.exe file, which starts game without installation.

Right, this is the start of the instruction from this thread.

Hovewer, the game is laggy, even the mouse pointer doesn't run smooth. ...I also don't know how to get this dgVoodoo to work - I downloaded 2,75 version, I am starting the dgVoodoo exe file and configuration window appears. But, nothing changes in the game - I probably should have Voodoo splash screen, but I don't.

You need to place the downloaded files (most importatntly dgVoodoo.conf and DDraw.dll) in the game installation folder.

So, where can I find resolution fixes now if the links are dead?

You should do what the author of this tutorial did:

I ran a search on my system registry using RegEdit to find every occurrence of the "Monolith Productions/Gruntz/1.0" registry folder, setting the "Resolution" value to "3" each time I found it (to get the maximum possible game resolution of 1024x768)

This is the most reliable way to set the screen resolution for Gruntz. What the resolution patches (which somehow disappeared from the forum's web host) did was setting the resolution value in one predefined registry location, which on modern computers often turned out to be incorrect and resulted in the resolution of the game being unchanged. So their use was quite limited anyway.

[kamiledi15]

You need to place the downloaded files (most importatntly dgVoodoo.conf and DDraw.dll) in the game installation folder.

Okay - the DDraw.dll file was in some subfolder, I didn't know that I have to extract it directly to game folder. Now the game works smoothly with DgVoodoo logo in the corner.
But, I still can't change resolution - I opened Regedit, found "Monolith Productions/Gruntz/1.0" path, there was an entry called Resolution and I changed its value to 3. But, the resolution in the game is still 640x480. You wrote "setting the "Resolution" value to "3" each time I found it" - what do you mean by "each time"? I found only one resolution entry.

[GooRoo]

Jul 18, 2021 14:41:11 GMT -8 kamiledi15 said:

You need to place the downloaded files (most importatntly dgVoodoo.conf and DDraw.dll) in the game installation folder.

Okay - the DDraw.dll file was in some subfolder, I didn't know that I have to extract it directly to game folder. Now the game works smoothly with DgVoodoo logo in the corner.
But, I still can't change resolution - I opened Regedit, found "Monolith Productions/Gruntz/1.0" path, there was an entry called Resolution and I changed its value to 3. But, the resolution in the game is still 640x480. You wrote "setting the "Resolution" value to "3" each time I found it" - what do you mean by "each time"? I found only one resolution entry.

What wasn't explained is that after you make the regedit changes you must NOT ever use the Gruntz "Options" menu for anything ... that will reset things to the default 640X480. Make Options changes BEFORE you do the regedit for things such as sound level, background music level, etc.

[swietymiki]

Jul 18, 2021 14:41:11 GMT -8 kamiledi15 said:

You wrote "setting the "Resolution" value to "3" each time I found it" - what do you mean by "each time"? I found only one resolution entry.

Usually there is more than one location where the settings data for Gruntz is stored. For example launching the game with admin rights might cause the data to be taken from a different folder. Changing resolution in all the locations is better than guessing which one is currently used by the game.

What is the path to the location you found?

[kamiledi15]

"What wasn't explained is that after you make the regedit changes you must NOT ever use the Gruntz "Options" menu for anything"
I didn't at first. When I noticed no any changes, I used "options", but it was later. In regedit the "resolution" value is still set to 3.

"What is the path to the location you found?"
It's here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Monolith Productions\Gruntz\1.0
This is the only location where I found it.