I've gotten Interstate '76 running on my Windows XP machine*. I'm running the basic, old, barebones version, to the best of my knowledge, which I've updated with the 80 MB Gold pack update (supposedly updates from v. 1.0 -> 1.2 if I do remember correctly). Anyway it does add Direct3D support to the game which works pretty much ok at first glance.

In Direct3D the resolution is stuck in 640x480 which looks horrible and the bi-linear filtering makes it nearly impossible to read road signs etc.... When I find the time, I'm going to try a Glide wrapper and see if I can get it to run looking pretty on a higher resolution and see what I can do about that bi-linear filtering...

Because of the ugly state of Direct3D, I'm now running the game successfully in software mode with a resolution of 1024x768. This looks fine for now with all the details maxed out. No problems with the sound and the game seem to be quite stable. I played through several missions in succession without a hitch. 😎

The installation went through without any extra action on my part. Just ran the install from the splash screen. However when at the games main menu, whenever I tried to start a melee or new trip (i.e. new game), the game would whine that I needed to insert the PLAY disk in the CD-drive. Quite infuriating to say the least, since I do have an original game that I just bought. The real problem wasn't a faulty copy protection, like I first thought, but just generally sloppy coding I guess**. After roaming the Net I found one post where a guy suggested trying different CD-drives. This worked. The PLAY CD has to be in the first (alphabetically) CD-ROM drive on a PC for the game to work past the main menus. 😕

Now onto my issue with the game:

In the in-game menus and Groove's notepad there is no text to be seen. This is quite annyoing since I can't look at what my mission objectives are (I really have to concentrate on that radio chatter... 😒 ). The font just seems to be invisible... it's not there. Just blank 'paper'. The in-game menus aren't that big of a problem since all the submenus have a bitmap title (picture) which the game renders correctly. When I'm in other menu screens I can see the text (like in the controls settings page or the car repair/upgrade page...).

Mind you this is not a deal-breaker, but it would be nice to get it working. Any ideas on this?

*) My comp specs:
Athlon XP +3200
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB***
1024MB 400MHz DDR (dc)
Windows XP (non-English localization) SP1

**) If a game relies on the fact that it's installed from the first CD-drive in a computer, I'd call that sloppy programming. The game should store and use the drive letter where it was installed from and I wouldn't mind an easy to modify config file where I could change it, if the need arises. 😠

***) I'm using the last batch of Catalyst drivers that don't have that accursed Catalyst Control Center. I'm trying to manage with the older ones. I'm under the impression the never drivers haven't brought anything new of interest (maybe a performance gain of 0,0001% 😵) to my aging 9800 Pro and I'm not playing the newest games.

Hmmm, try disabling D3D/DDraw acceleration in DXDiag. This has fixed text problems with games in the past for me. Since your running the game in software mode then you should be good.

I don't know what to tell you. This is kind of embarrasing... 😅

I don't know why, but yesterdey evening the text was suddenly visible! 😮 I have no clue as to why. I can't think of any settings that I would have changed... I had already tried disabling DirectDraw acceleration, but that had no effect. I did that monday evening.

The game did crash on me once though. So much for my claims to good stability. 😉 Maybe I should enable the Win95 or Win98 compatibility modes to see if that helps... I'll post back if I get a Glide wrapper running and it brings significant improvements to the gameplay. Otherwise, thank you DosFreak for your thoughts!

G'day all

I want to play this online. So i am posting this in like 4 threads...

I have it running perfectly.

Heres some things I followed... I hope they help.

Read me says:

You may have trouble getting the game to install, I think it will happen if you don't live in the UK.
This problem actually has nothing to do with your operating system, it also
occurs on Windows 98.
The problem is regional. What you need to do is open up control panel and go to
regional and language options. from there, You need to change Language for Non-Unicode Programs to United Kingdom. You will need to restart. It will install with this change. Afterwards you can probably reverse the changes if you want.
The patch is required for it to work well in XP. If it doesn't work well,
IE sound problems, try turning down your sound card hardware acceleration.
If you can't get it to find CD2, put CD2 in your first CD-rom drive,
the drive with the letter closest to c. If you are using a virtual drive,
you will need to change drive letters with computer management
(control panel> Administrative Tools>Computer Management). Use the Disk Management applet.
Trust me, it's all worth it.
Play the game in Direct3d, 800x600.

And lets play online!!!

Patches also:

The Ncdpatch name:
IN76-108.exe (with file_id.diz)

Upgrade pathch names:
i76v1081.exe
I'76 Gold Patch.exe

Install patches where u installed game.

How do I install Interstate 76 on Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista?
Go to Start, then Run, then type d:\setup.exe -lgntforce, where d:\ is your CDrom/DVDrom drive. (note: that's -lgntforce, lowercase "L". If you're unsure, copy and paste it from here.) This problem arises because Win2K, WinXP and Vista are based on the NT kernel, which had DirectX support which was flaky at best. Thief needs DirectX to run, so, when the installer sees the NT kernel, it assumes that the game isn't going to be able to run and quits the installation. The -lgntforce switch tells the installer to ignore the NT kernel and install anyway.

Just a heads up, the Direct3D version has much lower quality textures than the 3dfx port. Try running the game in Direct3D then in Glide through dgVoodoo (both at 640x480 for testings sake because the D3D version is locked at that) and you'll immediately notice that the "Restricted Area" sign in the opening cutscene of the first mission is of far higher quality under Glide. You can actually read the text. This isn't just dgVoodoo either, I had a Voodoo2 installed a few months ago and tried both D3D and Glide and noticed the same thing. I guess back in 1998 D3D wasn't very mature and to achieve the same performance as the native Glide port they had to lower the texture res.

All of the other textures are really sharp as well and you can actually read the speedometer dials in the car. Now all we need is for the crazy texture corruption issues to be addressed in dgVoodoo and it'll be perfect!.

For me, on my P4 2ghz, 512mb, integrated Intel 845 GFX PC, all I had to do was install the Arsenal Edition of the game (Gold final I believe) from CD and set all of the exe's in the installation folder to Win95 compatibility. I also lowered the DirectSound acceleration slider in the Sound tab in DXDIAG (Start > Run > DXDIAG).

Got I76 working good today on XtraPiss. I spent 6 freaking hours to get to this point and it took this forum to bring it home..many thanks. A note: when disabling the sound accel in xpiss...do so from DXDIAG ... NOT..from the Lack-of-Control-Panel.

I also ended up paying 3dlamer aka Gamespit aka FilePlannedIt to get the otherwise non-existent 80 mb d3d patch. NOTE: This file is now hosted on BitTorrent...search engines of thepiratebay and Demonoid, searching for Interstate 76. Don't pay the 5 bucks to those other lamers..it isn't worth it for a single 80mb download.

Grrr!

I really wanna play online! There must be an easier way to do all this server stuff. Maybe a proposal to gamespy... hmmm... might try that...

Well, I installed it okay, and I disabled sound acceleration, so it runs, but my problem is all the cars that are AI (including taurus) drive very slowly, because their front wheels are flipping back and forth. Also, all cars seem 'bouncier' than I remember... they don't feel very heavy, they feel kinda like go karts. Also, in mission 2, there is a jump that you and Taurus have to make it over, and he keeps on dying because he never gets up to speed. Any suggestions? I've tried setting everything I could find to windows 95 compatibility mode.... not that I've found all that much. Only 2 .exe files in the activision/i76 folder. Any suggestions would be awesome... I'm a long time Mac user, and musclecar fan, and I've waited over 10 years to play this game. Please help make it happen for me!!!

Also, the brakelights flash on and off.... this is for EVERY SINGLE AI car. They're all retarded and slow. And the cars are all bouncy. Even taurus's land yacht lincoln. 😀

Help....

Seriously.... this thing was getting good responses until I posted. WTF?

Your kidding right? The last response was 3 months ago.

Your issue sounds like a gameplay problem. I don't have the game and the last time I played it was when it first came out so I don't know if the behavior is supposed to be like that or not.

i76 on a fast machine is just asking for trouble. You can't use the flame or gas weapons and the mortars do not travel as far

So what is the fix?

play on a slow machine, around 166-233ish, for intended gameplay

or use a virtual machine, and hope it's as slow as mentioned.

What baffles me is about Gametap's inclusion of Interstate - they do NOTHING to fix these issues. though they did throw out network play completely because legacy ipx in xp = evil

Uh... I don't have a slow machine. This forum is about playing old games on NEW FAST systems, correct?

For those of you who hate lowering sound acceleration everytime you want to play I'76 I've found out that only two click sounds in menu cause the game to freeze, so by invalidating those two sounds you'll lose menu click sounds but the game should work fine with full sound acceleration.

Search for last to RIFF strings in Database.mw2 and change them to something else, ie. PIFF. 😎

As for problem with car speeds and game AI, I don' know solution. I don't have that problem on P6 @ 1.6GHz.

Thanks, I'll do that I guess. How did you find this out? What videocard do you have? I have a 7600GT. Core2Duo, 2.3ghz. I really wish I could figure this out.

Hmm, if you have Core2Duo you might try setting affinity to one core.