Blair Witch III crashes to desktop after starting from menu

[HerbertWest 1]

And another strange bug with another obscure game from the late 90ies.

 

Whereas Blair Witch 1 and 2 are still quite playable on my WIN1064 system with win98 compatibility settings I don't get the third game in that series to work.

 

As written in the title, the game will load up the menu (no music in it, though), but as soon as you try to start a game, it will crash to the desktop.

 

Error Message:

 

CDemonMission::load - Unable to open file

File:Mission.cpp

Line:163

 

Compatibility settings don't help, Win98 mode worked fine on the other two games, but not in this case.

I guess this isn't even a compatibilty problem at all. I tried to make the game work within VMWare in

bare-bones Win98 and WinXP, but it still crashes with the same error message.

 

I got the idea my files are corrupted and got another version from the internet, still the same.

 

I encountered one single internet thread about the very same problem from as early as 2006. Doesn't seem like the poor guy has ever solved it.

 

Did anyone ever get this game to work? Does anyone know this problem and has a solution for it?

 

[HerbertWest 1]

Ok, solved it myself.

 

This had to do with the US version of BW3 I installed on my non-english OS system. Somehow that version of the game seems to mess up its own install because of differently named path and system files in non-english Windows versions. It's the first time I encountered anything like this, actually, never had problems with regional differences on PC games before.

 

The version I used is the only version still floating around for this game, so other non-english language OS users might get into similar troubles like me.

For retail Euro versions of this game, I think those should work fine out of the box on WIN10 (with win98 setttings, maybe).

 

I just copied the game folder from the install of my english virtual XP machine that actually worked without error message to my host computer. Now it works fine from any path, the music gets played in the menus (crackling, but that seems to be a common problem also mentioned at the game's wiki entry on this site) and the game starts without crashing.

 

For other people reading this thread that have similar problems like me but don't want to fiddle around with virtual PCs:

 

They should try to set the language and regional settings of their Windows system once for installing that version of the game and then rechange it. That might work

[Vetle 19]

As an alternative to changing the system region, you could give Locale Emulator a shot. This application was mainly intended for Japanese games, so an English profile needs to be created. Microsoft's AppLocale might also work, but I have no personal experience with it.

[HerbertWest 1]

Yeah, thanks for that. I'm not so sure my suggested method of changing regional settings once really will really work for people having the same troubles like me.