Ucyborg has made a patch that fixes the LOD (Level of Detail) with the game so it is optimised for widescreen resolutions rather than the 4:3 aspect ratio of the original game. Forum topic here The patch also fixes the ‘session creation failed’ error when hosting a multiplayer game. The patch is compatible with all versions of the game official or not including the 10th Anniversary patch so it won’t affect your saves or the ability to only play on certain patched servers.
Upon testing with the standard 445 build + patch the bugs were fixed but the dedicated server wouldn’t register with the master server. Ucyborg’s did however as I could see his server. I also kept getting disconnected from the server even a local LAN game every 30 seconds. The 10th Anniversary patch is required to fix these problems however you must follow Ucyborg’s instructions exactly – pay attention to the part where you have to back up the original drakan.exe and dragon.rfl files! This is where I messed up.
Finally it appears this game’s multiplyer works fine on modern operating systems after all this time.
Note that you will have to run Drakan normally – do not use the 10th Anniversary launcher. Use this only for single player.
In short to get multiplayer working you need the 10th Anniversary patch and Ucyborg’s patch and copy / paste some game files + registry entries. The above forum post will help you and will be kept open for discussion if anyone needs any help installing. So, to sum up; the patch in conjunction with the 10th Anniversary mod fixes the following problems and more:-
1) Fixes ‘Session creation failed, check your network settings and try again’ error.
2) Fixes game crashing after selecting difficulty when starting a new game. No longer required to use developer mode.
3) Fixes the problem where players get disconnected from servers after 30 seconds.
4) Fixes the crash when exiting Alwarren
6) Adds Direct X 9 rendering features.
7) Offers proper support for widescreen monitors.
8) Fixes engine.exe stopped working crashes in most cases in single player.
Thanks to both Shelim and Ucyborg for their hard work!
Ill be writing a complete article on this later and it will appear in the order of the flame menu as a permanent feature. Direct link to the mod here.
There is now an update to this and also the latest update fixes the bug where Drakan crashes after you select the difficulty when starting a new game. The previous workaround was to start the game in developer mode and edit the .cfg file to set the difficulty.
With this unofficial patch the game should work as normal. The problem was traced to an obsolete direct x call which is not used on more recent versions of Direct X causing the game to crash.
If anyone comes to this thread via a search engine who is experiencing Drakan crashing at start a new game it is suggested you first install the 445 patch then the 10th Anniversary mod then finally this bug fix. See the forum post for more information or just ask a question on the forums if you get stuck. All files can be found on our downloads page.
Bugs with sound / music remain but are being worked on and hopefully will be fixed in future updates. Some people have experienced graphical glitches with the patch applied. This is also being looked into but seem as it does not occur on any of our test machines this may be difficult to resolve at this time.