Windowed Aranock

Hello everyone - first post. I'm usually a lurker on most forums, but I believe I have stumbled upon something that many of you may find valuable. I recently was looking for a way to run Aranock in a window and I believe I have come across a solution that is simpler to set up and use than the previously considered method using virtual machines.

The utility is called DxWnd (search for it, and look for the Sourceforge link - I can't post external links due to my forum account's newness), and it appears that it was developed quite a while ago (early 2000's) with the main purpose being to run old fullscreen video games in windows.

The program seems pretty simple to use. You just start the DxWnd, add a configuration for Aranock to the list, set the options for how to handle input/output to the game through the window, and then run the program from DxWnd.

Initially, I was getting some garbled display to the window, but with a little fiddling, I have a configuration that seems to work perfectly. So, here's a little tutorial on getting this set up.

First, download and extract the DxWnd rar. When you run the DxWnd program, a small window will come up with a list of games whose proper configurations have already been determined. Personally, I don't have any of those games so I removed them from the list. Now, you need to add a configuration for Aranock - so select Add from the edit menu. Now, give the configuration a name (e.g. Aranock) and browse to the Aranock exe for the path field. Now check the following boxes:

Under "Surface handling":
Emulate Primary Surface
Reset PRIMARY surface

Under "Cursor handling":
Correct mouse position

Under "Windows handling":
Make child win transparent
Hook CHILD windows

I've also checked "Optimize CPU (DirectX1-7)" under "Generic," but this should be optional.

Anyway, this is what is working for me. YMMV, so feel free to try out your own configurations and feel free to post your results for others to see.

Now, hit 'OK' and run the game from DxWnd. Finally, log in to Aranock and enjoy your new-found freedom to enjoy browsing the web or watching a movie while penting!

P.S. - I feel obligated to leave a DISCLAIMER here. This program is not my work, it is something I stumbled across in a Google search. Furthermore, I can't be held accountable if something goes wrong and results in any issues for your computer or your game. In fact, I suggest making a backup copy of your entire Aranock folder before doing any of this, just in case. Also, I don't believe this program contains any malicious code (I used my AV to search it), but these things can happen.

This is fantastic! I was in the middle of downloading a windows xp iso so I could run an VM using virtual box when I came across your post. It absolutely 100% works, you MUST get it from the sourceforge website there is an updated version that (at the time of download) was placed there 23hrs ago.

Follow the exact settings thoreusc has given however! restart your pc afterwards or else it wont run the game or at least it didnt for me.

This needs to be up the top for everyone to see, and imho should be sticked because running AO @1080p (stretched not perfect 1080p) was so annoying at times.

Thanks so much for setting it out like that thor, really well done.

~Fazza

Edit: After about half an hours use I got an invalid error and now whenever I try to load AO via dxwnd it says it stopped working. Have no current fix for it.

Glad to hear it worked, well.. at least for a little while.

Let's see if we can get it working again. Is the error occurring in dxwnd or AO?

Here's a few things I can think of:

Try starting dxwnd in administrator mode - I have found the game will start fullscreen unless I do this. I also run AO in WinXP SP3 compatibility mode. I don't currently run dxwnd in compatibility mode, but maybe it will help you? You could also try tweaking other various parameters in dxwnd. Finally, you might enable the logs (under the 'Trace' heading) in dxwnd to see what is causing the issue.

I really hope we can get it working again for you - having the game windowed really makes a world of difference!

from what i saw before it crashed it was unexpected parameter or something, since then I have been unable to get it back into windowed mode. My character will login but as soon as dxwnd goes to 'draw' it in a window it crashed happens everytime

I figured out what this issue was, if you can no longer launch Aranock with Dxwnd go to your Aranock folder and delete the text document "dxwnd" and it should function correctly, this file is made every single time I log out of the game and I have to delete it manually for it to work.

Hopefully this fixes your issue,
Cody.

I can say that cody is right.

I deleted the dxwnd.txt file in the aranock directory and it worked a treat.

I might work on making a .bat launcher so it auto deletes the file everytime. =]

I actually am not going to use dxwnd anymore, that text document is 12GB in size by the time I log off of aranock and I don't even have logging enabled. The fact of the mater is VirtualBox or Parallels is the method of choice for windowing this effectively.

I would recommend virtual box over anything else, I have been using it for the last month almost and its certainly easy to use