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Last updated on 09 May 2009 20:05 +0100
Game help and tech stuff
Game crash after exiting Alwarren Getting Drakan to work on Win 2K SoundBlaster Live / XP no music fix
Update April 07 - The replacement master server is no longer working and hasn't for some time unlikely to return to online status as it was generously run by an ex Drakan player who no longer seems to be around. The instructions below are for modifying your Drakan game config file to work with only the Gamespy master server as that is the only one that remains. Setting an invalid master server in the config file seems to make the server crash after a few minutes. The only way you can play online now is to use Gamespy Arcade or manually enter the IP numbers into Drakan. I have listed the common server addresses below if you want to use them.
SDS 68.47.92.248 (another regular server) S-PB2 194.58.105.38 (another, good reliable server) BladeRun 128.104.184.11 (full time server T3 connection) Arokh's Lair 212.169.37.181 (up most weekends during the day GMT times) Axe's server 24.244.203.243 (normal games, used for private games Wednesday and Saturday) Drakan Server Latvia 84.245.196.99 Address may change check http://drakan.from.lv for details. Atimar's
Server 80.60.95.67 Not
sure if this is full time or not - check gamespy arcacde. As with almost all custom add on levels you will need the 445 patch of which the English version can be downloaded here. For some levels you may also need the sky common add on which can be found here.
If anyone else runs a dedicated server which has a fixed IP address, please let me know.
Many of you new players have probably realised that you cannot play the game on line. This is because Mplayer who owned the master server has been bought by Gamespy and the server was taken off line. However, there is a new master server available which you can use by following the instructions below:-
To use the new master server, simply copy the following into your Drakan.cfg file overwriting the existing line set MasterServerList "master.gamespy.com:27900"
You now have to use Gamespy3D / Arcade to search for and join servers but once you connect to a server, the game remembers them and you can use the in game browser to join the same server again unless the server IP address changes in which case you will have to go back to Gamespy Arcade. Furthermore, there is a cool Drakan game browser available that extracts the server list from Gamespy so you don't have to use their awful software! You can download it here.
Multiplayer levels can be downloaded from PlanetDrakan or here instead.
Game crash and lockup fixes
These are common problems that I have come across (I build PC's for people and I always put the Drakan demo on them). More problems and fixes will be added as I come across them.
If you have encountered a weird tech thingy and want to tell people how you fixed it, email me here atw@arokhslair.net
Game crashes to desktop after exiting Alwarren This is a serious, well known bug in the game that only appears to happen after applying the 445 patch. There are a few fixes you can try to get around this problem, but in some cases they do not work. One tip that has been confirmed to work by a few people is to disable the freelook for Rynn (thanks to 'Revenger' for this one) prior to going through the exit. However, if this fails to work for you, I have a save game you can download which starts with you outside Rimril's tower with the Amulet and Bell Hammer. You can find the list of fixes to try on the Planet Drakan forums here and you can download my save game here. Getting Drakan to work on Windows 2000 Drakan does not work on windows 2000 straight out of the box but however it is possible to get it working relatively easy enough. First of all, you need to apply the latest windows 2000 service pack which is available from Microsoft. You may also need the windows 2000 games compatibility update - this may be incorporated into later service packs (it isn't in SP1), if this is the case, then you don't need it. The next thing to do is to make sure all your system's drivers are up to date; especially graphics card drivers. The final thing to do is update Drakan to version 445 and the download for this can be found on Planet Drakan or Surreal-news. I have tried Drakan on win2K myself and it works fine for single player but unfortunately I cannot get multiplayer to work - it crashes to the desktop randomly. Others say that it works fine on Windows 2000 but the problem seems to be with a combination of certain hardware (AMD based machines seem particularly fussy) The other alternative is to use Windows 98 / ME if at all possible. 1) Some video cards have problems switching video modes (notably ATI and 3DFX banshee) so try setting your desktop colour depth to 16bit colour before running the game. Some 3D cards don't support 24 and 32 bit colour (3DFX cards and I740 chipset cards for example) 2) Machines based on the ALI chipset (some AMD, Cyrix based systems) - this is a troublesome chipset and causes all sorts of problems with AGP graphics cards, Periodically check for the latest motherboard chipset drivers, but most of the problems with this chipset are still unresolved. Game crashes / hangs / locks up intermittently 1) If you have a sound blaster live card, disable A3d support in Drakan engine options, leave EAX and 3D sound enabled. This was a problem encountered on my system. 2) If you are using a system based on the VIA MVP3 chipset, have a SB live and voodoo2 SLI installed, you may experience crashing with the latest voodoo2 DX7 drivers. The cure is to re-install the DX6 drivers. 3DFX are currently working on the problem. Please note that I mean the voodoo2 DX7 drivers and not DX7 itself. 3) This can be caused by some old ISA sound cards. Usually you get sound problems too, the best recommendation is to upgrade your sound card to a PCI one. 4) Machines based on the ALI chipset (some AMD, cyrix based systems) - this is a troublesome chipset and causes all sorts of problems with AGP graphics cards, Periodically check for the latest motherboard chipset drivers, but most of the problems with this chipset are still unresolved. 5) On Windows XP, the game can crash on some machines when loading particularly systems that have Nvidia 6 series video cards. Drakan runs fine on both my XP machines which are up to date with recent service packs (currently SP2) and updates. The workaround is to start the game in developer mode which bypasses the game intro cutscene & difficulty level selection believed to cause the game to crash. Start the game by double clicking on the "Ruined Village" level after selecting a new game. You can set the difficulty level by editing the drakan.cfg file if you look. Default difficulty is Normal. As for Windows Vista - I don't think anyone has got the game working on this OS yet. If anyone has the game and it works on their vista system, let me know along with your system specs. Sound breaking up / other sound problems 1) This can be caused by some old ISA sound cards, the best recommendation is to upgrade your sound card to a PCI one. 2) Try increasing the sound buffers and cache sizes in the Drakan config file. Users of Windows XP who have a SoundBlaster card will probably suffer from the problem of no music but sound effects working OK. This can be sorted by running dxdiag from the command prompt or start>run then going to the music tab then clicking on disable default port acceleration. Credits to doom_2er for this one. Drakan single player has been confirmed to be working under Windows Vista albeit with frequent crashing but however multiplayer has not yet been tried. The specs used to play the game was an Athlon X2 4600, ATI X1950XTX video and 2Gb RAM on an ASUS M2N32-SLI motherboard. Thanks to 'Rvenger' for help on this.
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