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Talk:Area 51 (2005)

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1
Mazewaliztli47 (talkcontribs)
Deathcoldua (talkcontribs)

So, I decided to play this game after, maybe 10 years of not playing it or more. Got it from moddb, where it was as a free game with free installer and stuff. I installed it and... well, the game itself runs badly. It has some stutters and lags during the gameplay, and video cutscenes lag so much that it is impossible to watch them.

I tried to install that fan made patch that should help to play the game on modern OS without lag and stutters, but after I install that patch, it gives me error that says that, it can't launch because my system does not support Vulkan. And so yeah, I had to re-install the game, install official patches and play with lags, and there is no other way around for me.

But, as I remember, this wasn't the case back in the days in Windows XP era. I played this game last time before this maybe in 2013 or so, when I still had Windows XP, and it worked fine. But now it lags like hell on Windows 10. And sucks that the solution for it works only for those who has modern systems.

Patrxgt (talkcontribs)

Try Project Dreamland. If it doesn't work, then play around with DgVoodoo2.

Deathcoldua (talkcontribs)

So, I tried project dreamland and it didn't worked for me. It works, but performance is not improved at all. And then again, after the first cutscene, after you take down that one soldier, FOV returns back to standard one and transparent textures became none transparent. And then there is many glitches like flickering and low textures. So yeah, I'm not gonna mess with it around. I wanted to play the game, and not to dance with the drums around campfire.

Deathcoldua (talkcontribs)

Maybe I will. But then again, I would have to download another 1 GB game. With Wifi internet limited to 6 GB per months, and after I waste it, my speed gets reduced to 0.08 MB. Anyway, thanks for the advice. I will try it out tomorrow.

Area-51 wineD3D is not working

2
Zeek-bro (talkcontribs)

Hey, I need help with my game, I tried moving the wined3d files to the game area 51 folder, and when I launch the game it just won't start. it's just a blank screen. what did I do wrong?

2601:CA:C202:A3C0:55AF:8928:4A43:D879 (talkcontribs)

ive currently got the same issue

Patches don't work.

6
2605:6000:160C:216B:ACC3:E6E8:31E9:E973 (talkcontribs)

Tried installing the 1.2 patch from both Fileplanet and Patches Scrolls & neither of them let you bypass the Starforce internet check on launch. The patch was extracted to the proper folder with the game files & game .exe.

Antrad (talkcontribs)

I just tested it and it works for me. I downloaded the free version from Fileplanet and installed it, it didn't want to start, said something about "required Internet connection". Then I downloaded the 1.2 patch from Patches Scrolls, extracted it, then I launched the "a51_us_patch_1_2.exe" and UnZip-ed it to the game install directory where the original "A51.exe" is.

2605:6000:160C:216B:2935:80A2:2B9F:8F7D (talkcontribs)

i'll try again through fileplanet; used the moddb dl when i first tried

2605:6000:160C:216B:2935:80A2:2B9F:8F7D (talkcontribs)

So uh, turns out the default filepath the 1.2 patch extracts to starts at "program files" instead of "program files(x86)", but looks correct because it's scrolled past that & the rest of the filepath is right. It tricked me & i was able to get the game to run after setting the correct filepath.

2605:6000:160C:216B:2935:80A2:2B9F:8F7D (talkcontribs)

Getting black textures I can't find any info on though. when looking in most directions at the start of the game everything except lights goes full black.

Antrad (talkcontribs)

What GPU and OS are you usingĀ ? I played the game with an AMD card (R9 270x) and yesterday when I was testing it I was using an integrated Intel card on Windows 7 and had no issues.

Game uses DirectX 9, so make sure you have installed the latest DirectX 9 version. Even if you have newest Windows this is not included, unless it was installed with some other game. Before you download, be sure to uncheck anything else Microsoft recommends to install.

It seems I can't post direct links here, so search for "DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010)", it is on Microsoft.com website.

If that doesn't fix it, you could try using WineD3D for Windows. The game uses DirectX 9, so you will have to copy d3d9.dll and two other dll files into the game directory where the Area51.exe is. Read the included README file for instructions.

Search for "WineD3D For Windows", the website is fdossena.com.

Summary by ExtremeJen

nevermind

ExtremeJen (talkcontribs)

Does the free version of this game still have Starforce on it? On the page it says to download the patch right after the link to the game but I'm not sure if this is meant to imply that the free version still has Starforce. Maybe I'm just being stupid. I'm also a little nervous about clicking some of the links on this website as my browser has recently started behaving funny after clicking some links.

Antrad (talkcontribs)

The free version had ads in it, so it had to connect to the servers with the ads before you could play the game.

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