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Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain cover
Developers
Silicon Knights
Windows Semi Logic Entertainment
Publishers
Crystal Dynamics
Windows Activision
Release dates
Windows August 31, 1997
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain on Wikipedia
Legacy of Kain
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain 1997
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1999
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 2001
Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 2002
Legacy of Kain: Defiance 2003
Nosgoth Cancelled

Key points

Some crashes and other issues on modern operating systems, though modded exes fix this.
Unofficial patches eliminate loading times.
40 FPS lock (slightly slower animations than PSX), 15 and 18 FPS FMVs. Fixed in OpenGL wrapper.
FMVs have inferior video quality compared to the PSX and have mono audio, though there are patches that replace the videos.
Some sounds are inferior in quality to the PSX i.e. voices of the spirit forges and blood fountains lacking reverb and vocal distortion, though a patch can be used to fix this.

General information

Square Enix Legacy of Kain series forums

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Physical copy protection: bad sectors.
Windows
New copies and digital distribution unavailable due to legal issues with past developers and publishers.

Essential improvements

Verok's GL wrapper & patch

Windowed mode support, FMVs plays without interlacing, optional unfiltered scaler, WinXP/7/10 compatibility fix, removed CD check, 60 fps support like in PS1 version, optional PS1 fmv support, HQ cutscenes with stereo sound, subtitles and more.

CubanRaul's modded exe

Fixes a host of crashes, fixes credits, fixes speed bugs, removes the CD check, and offers its own installation method that allows for modern path characters such as parentheses. Replaces and supersedes Raistlin633's modded exe.

Peixoto's patch

Fixes the color bug and the artifacts on the mouse cursor on Windows Vista and 7, adds full compatibility with XInput controllers with working triggers and dpad and can force the game to run in 'HD' using a simple unfiltered scaler (the game will be less blurry but more pixelated)

HQ Sound Patch

Replaces some of the lower quality audio files in the Windows port with those from the original PlayStation release.
HQ Sound Patch[citation needed]
  1. Download HQ Sound Patch and extract the files.
  2. Follow the instructions in the readme.txt file.

Bink Video Support Pack

A compilation with every Bink video support patch from NosGothica.org, which has shut down.
Includes Bink files of the FMVs from the PSX version, which have better video quality and stereo sound.
Install Bink Video Support Pack[citation needed]
  1. Download Bink Video Support Pack and extract the files.
  2. Follow the instructions in the readme.txt file.

HQ Video Patch

Replaces every video in the Windows port with Bink conversions of the FMVs from the original PlayStation release.
The PSX videos have better image quality compared to the NosGothica patch.
HQ Video Patch[citation needed]
  1. Download HQ Video Patch and extract the files.
  2. Follow the instructions in the readme.txt file.

Skip intro videos

Instructions[citation needed]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\kain
  2. Delete/Rename actl001.jam LOGO001.JAM SK.JAM
If you've converted the videos to Bink video, then the files you have to delete are the same, but now have the .bik extension.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\SAVED\[Note 1]
Config files are not in plain text format.

Save game data location

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

Video settings

Template:Video settings

Input settings

Control options.
Control options.
XInput - Verok's GL wrapper & patch
XInput - Verok's GL wrapper & patch

Template:Input settings

Audio settings

Audio options.
Audio options.

Template:Audio settings

Localizations settings

English subtitles.
English subtitles.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Subs possible with Verok's GL wrapper & patch
French
German
Japanese
Italian
Subs possible with Verok's GL wrapper & patch
Hungarian
Subs possible with Verok's GL wrapper & patch

Issues fixed

System Locale/Language Check Failed

Error message for an "invalid locale".
Error message for an "invalid locale".
This error occurs on game startup with modern Windows when your language for non-Unicode programs is set to something the game doesn't "support" (note that in practice the vast majority of games run fine on different locales from their own).
Change the language for non-Unicode programs[citation needed]
  1. Go to the "Region" Control Panel.
  2. Go to the "Administrative" tab, then press "Change system locale..." under "Language for non-Unicode programs".
  3. Set the system locale to one the game supports, such as "English (United States)" for the US release.

Notes

Exact steps vary slightly depending on your Windows version. The above is for Windows 8.1.

Game Crashes When Loading a Save or After Playing the Introduction Cutscene

Disable Data Execution Prevention for KAIN.exe[citation needed]
  1. Go to the "System" Control Panel.
  2. Press "Advanced system settings" tab, then press "Settings.." under "Performance".
  3. Go to the "Data Execution Prevention" tab, check "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select:", then press "Add...", then go to the game's path and add KAIN.exe to the list.

Notes

Exact steps vary slightly depending on your Windows version. The above is for Windows 7.

Other information

API

Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 100 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 12 MB
Video card (GPU) SVGA
1 MB of VRAM
Sound (audio device) Sound Blaster compatible
Other 4x CD-ROM

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 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