[Lord Nero]

I hate making new topics, mainly because I'm a lurker and have little to say, however, I've seen Sonic PC games get fan made patches to get them to run on current OS's, my question is if Sonic's Schoolhouse has gotten the same treatment, as I've yet to find a patch as such.

Is such a thing out there, or is the fanbase simply not willing to give this game a shot?
I'd love to LP this game, but my 64-bit system won't allow the install to run, can any of you help?

[RGamer2009]

I don't think a patch for that game exists yet.

Depending on how the game is packaged, it could be installed by simply exploring the CD and finding the installer and running it. That is how I got Sonic & Knuckles Collection to install on my Windows 7. Compatibility issues can usually be fixed after trying to run the game and seeing if any warnings come up regarding 256 Colors and whatnot.

If that doesn't work, you could try software like VirtualBox, which allows you to run another OS as a virtual machine within your computer. I installed 32-Bit Windows XP as a virtual machine to run 16-bit legacy programs that my 64-Bit Windows 7 couldn't run, and it usually runs them fine.

[Shadow Hog]

I recorded my old video of it on Windows XP 32-bit. Even then, there were issues; the game fails to initialize the sound subsystem, so the only thing that plays any audio are the various video files off of the CD. No music, no other sound effects, just videos. The music in the video was edited in in post.

That said, this guy got the sound working okay, so maybe a virtual machine is the trick. It's pretty much your only recourse with a 64-bit OS, anyway.

This post has been edited by Shadow Hog: 21 October 2013 - 10:29 PM

[Lord Nero]

Guess VirtualBox is the only solution I have then, wanted to avoid using it as I heard everything tends to run rather slowly on it (and I have a rather poor PC to begin with, at least in terms of gaming). Has anyone attempted a patch at any point, or is this just another game not cared for trying?

[MathUser]

It's a kids educational game so probably don't have much interest from adult modders unless they want their kids or nephews or something to play it. So I don't think there's a big chance of modders patching the game to work.

[GerbilSoft]

Works on Wine. (Gentoo Linux amd64, Linux 3.11.3, wine-1.7.4)

Caveats:
1. Game must be installed with the Z: symlink disabled, since the installer assumes the CD-ROM drive is the highest drive letter on the system. (Z: can be re-enabled after installation.)
2. MIDI won't work if using PulseAudio, since PulseAudio doesn't support MIDI. (Wine doesn't support the use of multiple audio backends at the same time. As a workaround, you can temporarily disable PulseAudio systemwide and use ALSA directly.)
3. The game is crap.

This post has been edited by GerbilSoft: 23 October 2013 - 01:19 PM
Reason for edit: Clarify why Z: needs to be disabled.

[Sploit]

I can't really get any of the old Sonic PC games working on my windows 8 machine.

Nearly all worked on my old XP one though.

[Shadow Hog]

Sploit, on 26 October 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

I can't really get any of the old Sonic PC games working on my windows 8 machine.

Nearly all worked on my old XP one though.

If you have a 64-bit OS now, that'd be a large part of the problem. 16-bit programs simply cannot run on the new architecture.

[Sploit]

It's a damn shame as I have almost got the full set of PC titles

[GerbilSoft]

Shadow Hog, on 26 October 2013 - 03:29 PM, said:

16-bit programs simply cannot run on the new architecture.

This isn't entirely true. Win64 allows a few specific Win16 installers to run, and Wine can run many Win16 programs on 64-bit Linux.

That having been said, most of Sega's Sonic PC titles *are* 32-bit, but Sonic CD (DirectX) requires a patch to run on NT, and Sonic CD (Dino) is actually Win16, and doesn't run on any NT (32- or 64-bit) as far as I know.