Privateer 2 Dos to Windows Alt Button

W

Wyrmslayer

Spaceman
Hi guys, first off I want to express my amazement at the strength of the hidden WC community around here. I had no idea it was still going strong until I decided to get nostalgic and blow the dust off of Privateer 2. I got the Dos to Windows patch and it installs and runs great. I've got one problem, though. When I try and bring up the options menu or Nav menu, nothing happens. I press Alt O or Alt N and the game just beeps but no menu pops up. Alt X will work, though, so I can exit and self-destruct without any problem, but that does somewhat defeat the purpose of the game. :rolleyes:

I've searched the forums for the last hour or so trying to find someone else who had a similar problem, but have been unable to find anything. Uninstalling and reinstalling had no effect, I don't see anything in dark.cfg that would explain the problem, so any thoughts on the problem? Any help would be tremendously appreciated. After Freelancer disappointed in not being open-ended like it should have been, I basically gave up hope of ever playing anything close to Priv 2 again, so if you could help me with this I'd be extremely grateful. Thanks in advance.:)
 
hm, don't I feel a bit silly. :eek:

Figured out my problem. The right Alt key won't work, but using the Alt key on the left side of the keyboard poses no problems at all. Always the simple things that give us the hardest time. Anyway, keep up the good work here guys. I'm off to go make a fortune and figure out who the heck I am.........again. :D
 
Hey, thanks for replying with the solution in case someone encounters this in the future (maybe it's just your keyboard?). Welcome to the Forums.
 
Sorry about the bump, but I'm having a problem with the ALT button as well. Like Wyrmslayer, only the left ALT key does anything, but it also makes a BONK sound and makes the game behave strangely. Is there any way to disable the ALT key in Windows?
 
It sounds pretty tough to do. Might be possible with some sort of remapper. Might be easier to just pull the key off your board.
 
ChrisReid said:
It sounds pretty tough to do. Might be possible with some sort of remapper. Might be easier to just pull the key off your board.
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Well, I need the ALT key to bring up the nav screen, I was just wondering if it was possible to make it so windows wouldn't react to it, switching out of the program or going BONK.
 
Really ? A Windows Patch ?

The Privateer games were among several I didn't get around to buying when they were current. I visited eBay last week, bought a new copy of WC-IV, WC-Prophecy, and Privateer II, with the first to arrive being Privateer. Looking through the threads' subject lines, I paused here.

Exactly how I may revisit these oldies isn't decided yet. I have a fairly good stock of old salvage hardware from the earliest Pentium period, as well as a complete, running DX4-100 system with Windows95 in good shape installed. But I've begun thinking that the original hardware probably won't be as good, in fact, as running DOSbox probably is.

Nevertheless, this mention of a "Windows Patch" caught my eye. I do have one patch already, I believe it was from GameSpot, it's merely called "P2patch.Zip", and I suspect this thing here is a different patch!
 
My copy of Privateer II came with no box. There is a CD container and three CDs, with a 30 page mini-manual that seems to match to the pdf file here on this site.

It is, however, marked on the inserts in the front and back of the CD container, as well as on the spine, as a "DeLuxe" version, with a 1997 copyright date. From reading one of the stickied threads here, a very long one, it would appear that I already may have some of what is included in an unofficial DOS to Windows patch (which I found on this site after no one answered the query above), by OriginalTHQ.

Do I need DOSbox for the DeLuxe Privateer II? What were the original System Requirements for it? I have Windows 98 SE on a Duron 900 PC (384 MBs of RAM), and Windows 95, the "C" version, on a DX4-100 (486) PC, but I don't know how compatible that old thing is with the standards of its time (Soyo mainboard, 32 MBs of RAM).

Any advice welcome. I am totally new to both Privateer and to DOSbox (don't even have a copy of that yet). I planned to run DOSbox on a single core A64 3200+ system with an NF4 Chipset, 512 MBs of RAM, and whatever Windows version DOSbox likes best (I personally prefer Win2000 over WinXP, and have an aversion to Vista).
 
Kiwi said:
My copy of Privateer II came with no box. There is a CD container and three CDs, with a 30 page mini-manual that seems to match to the pdf file here on this site.

It is, however, marked on the inserts in the front and back of the CD container, as well as on the spine, as a "DeLuxe" version, with a 1997 copyright date. From reading one of the stickied threads here, a very long one, it would appear that I already may have some of what is included in an unofficial DOS to Windows patch (which I found on this site after no one answered the query above), by OriginalTHQ.

Do I need DOSbox for the DeLuxe Privateer II? What were the original System Requirements for it? I have Windows 98 SE on a Duron 900 PC (384 MBs of RAM), and Windows 95, the "C" version, on a DX4-100 (486) PC, but I don't know how compatible that old thing is with the standards of its time (Soyo mainboard, 32 MBs of RAM).

Any advice welcome. I am totally new to both Privateer and to DOSbox (don't even have a copy of that yet). I planned to run DOSbox on a single core A64 3200+ system with an NF4 Chipset, 512 MBs of RAM, and whatever Windows version DOSbox likes best (I personally prefer Win2000 over WinXP, and have an aversion to Vista).
Click to expand...

I think the Deluxe version may already be the Win95 version so you won't need dosbox. THere's a patch for that version to restore the frame limiter that you will need to apply here: http://download.wcnews.com/files/p2/priv2_slowdownpatch.zip

And you will want to make sure you try to apply compatability mode to the executable.
 
That's Great. It's been so long since I tried making Win98 run a Win95 game, I guess that I had forgotten there might be differences among the W9X versions when playing games. I'll have to dig up a reference to Win98 to see how it was implemented in that version.
 
Kiwi said:
That's Great. It's been so long since I tried making Win98 run a Win95 game, I guess that I had forgotten there might be differences among the W9X versions when playing games. I'll have to dig up a reference to Win98 to see how it was implemented in that version.
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P2 should run just fine on your win98 machine with just the frame limiter patch I linked to. Compatability modes are only for winxp, win2000 sp4 and vista. Though the game might actually run better on the win98 machine than the XP ones
 
Vinman said:
Well, I need the ALT key to bring up the nav screen, I was just wondering if it was possible to make it so windows wouldn't react to it, switching out of the program or going BONK.
Click to expand...

Maybe too late for you but may help others I had the same problem with the ALT key not working (left and right) If you hold the combo (such as Alt-O) down longer (a bit of annoying beeping I know) then that worked for me.
 
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