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Jane's Longbow Gold

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Jane's Longbow Gold
Jane's Longbow Gold cover
Developers
Origin Systems
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Release dates
DOS June 30, 1997
Windows June 30, 1997
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person, Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, Vehicle combat
Vehicles Helicopter
Art styles Realistic
Themes Asia, Europe, Middle East, North America, Contemporary
Series Jane's Combat Simulations
Jane's Longbow Gold on MobyGames
Jane's Longbow Gold on Wikipedia
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Jane's AH-64D Longbow 1996
Jane's US Navy Fighters '97 1996
Jane's Longbow Gold 1997
688(I) Hunter/Killer 1997
Jane's Fighters Anthology 1997
Jane's Longbow 2 1997
Jane's WWII Fighters 1998
Jane's F-15 1998
Jane's Israeli Air Force 1998
Jane's Fleet Command 1999
Jane's USAF 1999
Jane's F/A-18 2000
Jane's Attack Squadron 2002
Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters 2011

Jane's Longbow Gold is the Windows-native port of the 1996 flight simulation game Jane's Longbow with its Flash Point Korea expansion pack.

The Windows version of game requires a specific installation procedure.

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Original Longbow Gold 3-CD set. Includes unpatched DOS and Windows.
DOS
Windows
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Longbow Anthology 2-CD version. Includes patched Windows and no DOS executable.
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

Version 1.04F

The latest official patch 1.04F is available at soggi.org. It fixes skipping and garbled in-flight speech, and fixes the movies in the game locking up, skipping, or crashing to the desktop in both Windows and DOS versions of the game. Longbow Anthology versions of Longbow Gold do not need this patch, as they have it included.

GoldFX / 3dfx-patch

The GoldFX patch adds 3DFX Voodoo support to Windows versions of Longbow Gold and is available at soggi.org. This renders the DOS version unplayable but enhances the graphics under Windows and allows the game to be playable on modern Windows with nGlide. This patch does not work with Longbow Anthology versions of Longbow Gold and requires a special version included on the first CD-ROM called GoldFXA.

Applying the GoldFX(A) patch will disable the AH-64A variant of the Longbow, making only the AH-64D usable.

Patching for Windows

Both of these methods are similar, but have different installation methods. GoldFXA and GoldFX are not interchangeable and are exclusive to their separate versions.

Installing the Anthology version[citation needed]
  1. During the installation of Longbow Anthology, do a Custom installation and check only Longbow Gold when prompted. When asked to install GoldFX select No.
  2. Open the Longbow Anthology CD 1 and copy goldfxa.exe to anywhere on the computer.
Installing the regular Gold version[citation needed]
  1. Install Longbow Gold to C:\JANES\LBGOLD using the Windows installer.[citation needed]
  2. Get the V1.04F patch and extract it to <path-to-game>.
  3. Download DOSBox and install it.
  4. Open DOSBox and use these commands:
mount c C:\JANES\LBGOLD
c:
PATCH.EXE
  1. Download the GoldFX patch.
Apply the patch, fixes, and nGlide[citation needed]
  1. Open GoldFX(A) and extract the files to an easily accessible folder.
  2. Set compatibility mode for Windows 98/ME and running as administrator on all of the applications inside that folder.
  3. Run FXPatch.exe. Click Continue in the window that pops up and point it to the Longbow Gold installation directory to continue installation.
  4. When it finishes, go to where <path-to-game> and open CA.INI with a text editor.
  5. Append these two lines to the file at the top:
[Backdoors]
HEAP_PERCENT=0
  1. Set lbwin.exe to run in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2, as administrator and in 640x480 mode.
  2. Download and install nGlide.
  3. Start the game. Press Alt+O and set all the graphical options to the maximum.

Patching for DOS

Running the game in DOSBox will look worse and possibly perform worse[citation needed], but works on all operating systems.

Install and play in DOSBox[citation needed]
  1. Install Longbow Gold in the Windows installer. When prompted to select a directory, point it to C:\DOS\LBGOLD and say Yes to creating it if it does not exist.
  2. Use software like ImgBurn to rip your Longbow Gold CDs to ISO format. Name them LBGx, where x is the CD number. Put the ISOs in C:\LBGISO for easy reference.
  3. Install and start up DOSBox 0.74
  4. Use these commands in DOSBox:
mount c c:\DOS
c:
cd LBGOLD
SETSOUND.EXE
  1. The sound setup will start. Press Enter on Select and configure digital audio driver
  2. Select Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32 and Attempt to configure device automatically. Press OK and then DONE. Do not close DOSBox.
  3. Get the V1.04F patch and open it in 7-Zip. Extract the contents to where Longbow Gold is installed.
  4. Type PATCH.EXE into DOSBox and press Enter. Wait for the patch to finish. When it does, the game will be fully playable.
  5. To skip mounting the ISOs manually every time and to start the game when DOSBox starts, put this in your DOSBox configuration file after [autoexec] at the end:
imgmount d "c:\LBGISO\LBG1.ISO" "c:\LBGISO\LBG2.ISO" "c:\LBGISO\LBG3.ISO" -t iso
mount c c:\DOS\
c:
cd JANES\LBGOLD\
LB.exe
exit

Notes

Ctrl+F4 toggles what disc/ISO is currently active. Disc 1 is used for the main campaign, Disc 2 is used for the historical missions, and Disc 3 is used for the Korea campaign.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
DOS
Windows

Video

Graphics settings during flight.
Graphics settings during flight.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
320x240 or 640x480 only.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Automatically scales with resolution. Does not support custom values.
Windowed
For DOSBox toggle with Alt+ Enter (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
nGlide has some antialiasing by default, but there are no in-game settings.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS
120+ FPS
Locked to 62 frames per second no matter the refresh rate.

Input

Control settings during flight.
Control settings during flight.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
The mouse is only used for buttons on the cockpit and the main menu. No acceleration.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
All menus are navigable with a mouse. nGlide causes left mouse clicking for selection to be broken, use Enter in place of a left click.
Mouse Y-axis inversion
The mouse is only used for cockpit buttons, so an inverted y-axis is never needed.
Controller
Controller support
Longbow Gold is much harder to play on Expert flight settings without a full HOTAS setup, using a keyboard for anything but the Casual flight settings is not recommended.
Full controller support
Controller remapping
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion
Controller types
XInput-compatible controllers
PlayStation controllers
Generic/other controllers
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Audio

Sound settings during flight.
Sound settings during flight.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Engine sounds, sound effects, and speech volume all have separate sliders.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Subtitles are only available in training. Copilot and helicopter voices are not subtitled.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
French is not available in any version but the French version of the game.
German
German is not available in any version but the German version of the game.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS)
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 66
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 70 MB


Notes

  1. When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References