Getting Heretic II to run on a relatively modern PC

[Grim Monk]

Getting Heretic II to run on a relatively modern PC

I recently got my hands on a copy of Heretic 2, and spent yesterday afternoon getting it run properly on my Windows 7 PC.
There are no source ports, so I had to dig up and try bunch of different tweaks.

Decided to post a write-up to help out others...



Installation

First problem is that the CD auto-installer does not work on a modern (non 16-bit) PC.

Luckily there is a work around:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/WorldDesigner/discussions/12/540731691106739272/

1. place your original Heretic II cd in your drive;

2. when auto-run opens, close it;

3. explore the folder "bin" on the cd and run Demo32.exe;

4. It will ask for a file to open, select bin/H2_Setup.dbd;

5. continue installation as normal.

Warning!
The game has to be installed near C:\
When I first installed clicking the Heretic2.exe had no effect, no matter how I patched/tweaked it.

Finally stumbled up on this thread:
http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=26954
Simply copying the game folder to C:\ solved it.

I currently have it as C:\Heretic II



Patching

Download and unzip the v1.07 patch into your game directory, allowing it overwrite as requested.
Link: http://hexenmod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=650

v1.07 is basically all official patches plus a bunch of community fixes and compatibility tweaks.

[Its cool to check out the 'Ht2 EP Readme' (patch notes for v1.06) as well.]
[Raven basically overhauled the game and added a bunch of cool new stuff!]



Now just set the Heretic2.exe to 'Windows 98 Compatibility/256 colors/run as administrator' and it should run fine.



Warning!
Be careful with the graphic options menu in-game.

Messing with the 'Renderer Software' caused the game to crash and stop working permanently!

Since it wouldn't even start, I had to do a reinstall.

Patch 1.07 seems to do a bunch of tweaking under the hood, so the graphics already seemed pretty satisfactory after I increased the resolution.

Now for the music...



The Music
Out of the box you are presented with a couple of inconveniences.

You have to keep the CD inserted for the music to play.

More importantly the music does not loop on modern PC's so you will stuck playing in silence after a couple of minutes.



But there is a solution:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tnl/threads/58926-Fix-CD-audio-looping-in-Windows-7-with-certain-games

Fix CD audio looping in Windows 7 with certain games.

With certain games that use MCI for CD audio (i.e. Quake I/II, Heretic II), the BGM tracks won't loop if you're using Win 7. The exe and Win7's MCI don't play nice with each other. But there's a workaround.
Head here and get the _inmm.dll Ver 2.38 (287 KB).
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Domino/8282/
[UPDATE]
Geocities Japan was shut down.
Download from Website Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160828093850/http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Domino/8282/

Install.

Rip the soundtrack from your game CD to MP3 files (or maybe even Ogg Vorbis, which I hadn't tried).

Drag and drop your Quake client exe (or Quake2.dll for Heretic II) onto the _inmmcnf.exe file to have it patched. A backup of your patched exe or dll will be made as an .org file. Next, run _inmmcnf.exe itself to configure it. On the Method tab, set Default to DirectShow. Use the _inmm.ini tab to add your ripped BGM tracks to the configuration. There is no need to use a dummy "Track01".

Save your _inmm.ini to the game's folder. Next time you play, the game should play its BGM from the MP3s and properly loop them.

I tried it with H2 and the BGM no longer cuts out during a level. Thanks to Dragonsbrethren for the fix.

For ripping I used CDex Portable:
http://cdex.mu/download
Help:
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/cdex-rip-audio-cd-to-mp3-or-wav-format/

Extracted the 14 tracks as MP3s to My Music, and pasted them into a new 'music' folder I'd created in C:\Heretic II.

All else exactly as in above quoted instructions.



The music now plays without CD and loops correctly...
After rebinding the controls I played the first level and everything mostly seems to work fine.