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Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate cover
Developers
Random Games Inc.
Publishers
Retail Strategic Simulations Inc.
Digital GOG.com
Release dates
Windows October 31, 1998
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Turn-based
Perspectives Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls Point and select
Genres Strategy
Themes Sci-fi
Series Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate on HowLongToBeat
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate on IGDB
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate on MobyGames
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate on Wikipedia
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate
Subseries of Warhammer 40,000
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate 1998
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters 2022

Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view and isometric strategy game in the Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate series.

On modern systems, the game has compatibility problems which require DirectPlay to be enabled and a custom DirectDraw renderer (alternative already included in GOG.com release) to be resolved. Additionally, several original bugs exist, such as a crash on Chaos turn, as well as music volume and animation stuttering.

General information

Lexicanum - A huge wiki for the Warhammer 40,000 series
GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Intentionally damaged sectors DRM
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Uses GOG's custom DirectDraw wrapper and IPX configuration tool as of 27 April 2022.
Windows
A free demo version is available from Archive.org.

Essential improvements

Patches

Official patches 1.1 and 1.2 can be downloaded here.

Running the game on modern systems

Install DirectPlay

Fix for crash to desktop on Chaos turn

Edit WeapDef.dat[citation needed]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\Data
  2. Open WeapDef.dat with a text editor.
  3. Go to line 201 and change PlazPistHit.wav to PlazpistHit.wav.
  4. Save changes.
If the crashing persists change the following lines as well
  1. Go to line 165 and change 4 #Animation to 5 #Animation.
  2. Go to line 200 and change 2 #Number of Sound Effects for Firing to 1 #Number of Sound Effects for Firing.
  3. Go to line 202 and add # to the beginning of the line.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

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

Save game data location

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

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Enabled on 27 April 2022.

Video

General settings menu
General settings menu

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
4:3 resolutions only. GOG's custom DirectDraw wrapper stretches the display.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Use GOG's custom DirectDraw wrapper.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Full rebinding in the options menu.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Sound effects and music.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
LAN play
IPX and TCP/IP protocols available; GOG.com version includes an IPX wrapper
Online play

Connection types

Issues unresolved

Tooltip performance issues

Hovering tooltips can slow down the game immensely.

Issues fixed

Game runs very slow on Windows 10 (retail)

Use Elisha's custom DirectDraw wrapper[citation needed]
  1. Download the modified DirectDraw wrapper by Elisha.
  2. Extract the files to <path-to-game>.

Music volume and animation stuttering fix for Windows 10 (retail)

Follow the procedure[citation needed]
  1. In the main menu, press "O" to get into the options menu
  2. Press "S" to disable music
  3. Press Enter to save and exit
  4. Quit the game
  5. Open the Registry Editor in Windows and go to the following address: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\VirtualStore\Machine\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\RandomGames\WH40K\1.0.
  6. Set the value for Music to Yes, value data for Music Volume to 50 (or whatever other desired value), and Unit Animation Speed to 88 (or whatever other desired value).
  7. Go to <path-to-game> and rename the WH40k.exe file to WH40.exe.
  8. Start the game and close it again.
  9. Re-open the Registry Editor, go to the following address: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers
  10. Change the Value data for the Wh40.exe entry to: $ DWM8And16BitMitigation 8And16BitTimedPriSync 8And16BitAggregateBlts Layer_ForceDirectDrawEmulation
  11. Start the game.

Game crashes on startup

Compatibility mode[citation needed]

Enable the following compatibility settings for WH40K.exe located in <path-to-game>.

  • Compatibility mode Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
  • Disable visual themes (Vista/7)
  • Disable desktop composition (Vista/7)
  • Disable display scaling on high DPI settings
  • Run this program as an administrator

Game crashes on mission start

Instructions[citation needed]
  • The installation path can only have 2 subfolders and 35 characters total. If the game crashes, place the installation folder closer to the root drive. (e.g. instead of installing to C:\GOG Games\WH40K Chaos Gate, try creating/installing to a location such as C:\Chaos Gate or C:\WH40K).

Graphical corruption

See DirectDraw troubleshooting for solutions.

Other information

API

Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Cutscenes Smacker
Multiplayer Winsock

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 133 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 80 MB
Video card (GPU) 2 MB of VRAM


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