The Official RCT "HELP" Topic: Hardware Only: Read

[Aero737]

After looking in this forum, it appears that most of the recent topics have been "HELP, I can't run RCT3". To save everyone some time, I decided to make this topic.

Please post any questions inside this thread to avoid cluttering the forum with help topics.

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A.)
1. The official Atari Roller Coaster Tycoon Website can be found Here
2. Officialy Listed System Requirements

●Operating System: Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP (Windows® XP recommended)
●Processor: Pentium® III 733 MHz or compatible (Pentium® 4 1.2 GHz or compatible recommended)
●Memory: 128 MB RAM; 256 MB for XP (256 MB; 384 MB for XP recommended)
●Hard Disk Space: 600 MB free
●CD-ROM Drive: 4X CD-ROM or faster (8X or faster recommended)
●Video:Any ATI Radeon™ or GeForce™ 2 with 32MB or higher; or other video card with 32MB and hardware T&L (ATI Radeon™ 64 MB SDR or GeForce™ 2 Pro or other video card with 64 MB or more memory and hardware T&L recommended)*
●Sound: Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP-compatible 16-bit sound card*
●DirectX®: DirectX® version 9 (included) or higher

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B. Official ATARI RollerCoaster Tycoon Patch ftp://ftp.infogrames.net/patches/rct3/RCT3_RETAIL-UPDATE1_USA.EXE
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C. HELP

1 Collect Information

To Update your drivers, you first need to know what Brand of video card you have. Most likely you have either an ATI card or a Nvidia 'GForce' card. Other lesser used (old) card are VooDoo, which RCT3 most likely will not run on.

In order to check what type of video card you have, you can run a program called 'Direct X Diagnostics'. This can be done by going to
Start->Run-> And typing in 'DXDIAG' (without single quotes) It will take a moment to run all the tests but this will show you quite a bit of information about your computer.


Yellow=Display Tab
Green= CPU Type
Red=Direct X Version

Click the yellow tab.


This is all the information about your video card. Hilighited in Purple is where you will find your manufacturer. I have an ATI card in my laptop so It says ATI Technologies Inc.

2. Download Divers

2a. Direct X. On the first tab of the page, it should say Direct X 9.0c which is the latest version. RCT Requires Direct X 9.0b but getting 9.0c is a good idea.

Direct X is a product by microsoft to run Direct 3D applications (as opposed to Open GL).
It can be downloaded at http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/0/d/80d7e79d-c0e4-415a-bcca-e229eafe2679/dxwebsetup.exe

2b ATI Drivers NOTE: This is only for people who have an ATI graphics card in their computer. Types of graphics cards include : Radeon 9xxx, Rage, Rage 128, Mobility Radeon.

The drivers can be downloaded at ATI's website http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html Follow the guide on the website. Your video card type should be displayed in your Direct X Diagnostics page.

2c NVidia Drivers Note: This is only for people who own a NVidia built card. Types of graphics cards include: GeForce Go, GeForce X, TNT2.

The drivers can be downloaded at NVidia's website http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

2d Check Your Manufacturer Check with your computer manufacturer's website. Often times they will have a quick online applet that will check your computer for latest BIOS versions, Chip Set drivers, Firmware upgrades, etc.
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3. Upgrading Your PC

There is FAR too much to go over to be pratical in this guide, but you need to know what type of video card your computer will handel. If you have a fairly new compute you will most likely run AGP 8x cards.

I will quote a post by SFGABob

the graphics card is what your moniter plugs into on the back of your computer. you can pick up a new vid card at any probably any electronics store. but you should check to see if what you have is good enough, first.

right click on your desktop and click Properties. go to the settings tab and look below the picture of a moniter. it should read:

Display:
[your monitor] on [your graphics card]

once you know what kind of card you have, check it against the min. req. if your card is good enough, but RCT 3 still doesn't work, try downloading a new driver. go to the manufacturer's website (probably ATI or nVidia). and click the download drivers button at the top. you'll have to input some info then download and install the drivers. don't worry if you get a message saying what you're about to install isn't certified by windows and could bring all sorts of doom and destruction upon you, your family, and all your future offspring...nothing like that will happen.

if RCT3 still doesn't work, call tech support. if you're going to buy a new card, the first thing you need to do is know what slot it goes in. go back to right-click desktop>properties>settings. click the advanced button. there should be a tab in the new window that describes your graphics card. somewhere in there it will tell you if your card is in an AGP or PCI slot. once you know that, you can go to the store and buy a new card that will fit in the same slot and matches or exceeds all of the requirements for graphics cards. check the name (Radeon or GeForce 2) and the memory (min. 32 MB for RCT3). make sure your new card matches or exceeds both of those.

if your graphics chip is on the motherboard and not a seperate card (you'd plug your monitor into the area where you plug in your mouse and keyboard instead of into one of the removable PCI/AGP slots) then good luck getting the computer to use a seperate graphics card.

NOTE: This is a work in progress, pleast post follow up questions in here. I will be adding to this list as I discover more new info. http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/fo ... orumid=315 Is a great source of info outside of this website.

[sixflagsguy5]

Thank you, it will make it easier to look through now.

Does this meen that you're locking all the old topics?

[SFGA Bob]

so now we can just link instead of typing new posts...that's a time saver and a half!

[DejaVuGurl1203]

Thank you. I've been playing RCT3 on my brother's computer since this computer needs a new RAM chip and probably a new graphics card as well.

[SFGA Bob]

oh, speaking of RAM, if you need to upgrade, you can't just go to the store and pick up any old RAM. you need to know what type of RAM your computer uses. SDRAM, RDRAM, DDR, DDR2 these are some recent types of RAM.

if you don't know what type of RAM your computer uses, go here. actually, probably any of the major RAM manufacturers will have something like this, but this is the one I know. choose your brand and model of computer right in the middle of the page and the site will let you know what type of RAM you need. you don't have to buy from them. take the type of RAM and go to you local store or search online for it.

buy branded (a known brand name, not a bargain bin or house type) RAM and you should be okay. if you have RDRAM, though, you're outta luck. they don't make that type of RAM anymore.

[ttd rox]

Thank You for making this topic! I think I need a RAM card as well.

[DejaVuGurl1203]

Does RCT3 work with Vista?

Edit: So far, it is working well. What a surprise. Too bad my other game doesn't work.

[Goku1910]

Does RCT3 work with Vista?

Edit: So far, it is working well. What a surprise. Too bad my other game doesn't work.

RCT3 has no compatibility issues with Vista/7

The same cannot be said for RCT1/2

[Goku1910]

for anyone have issues running RCT1 and RCT2 on Vista/7 I have made a discovery that might help....

This is dependent on hardware so it will not work for everyone; this also works for other games.

There is a service that runs within windows Vista/7 called DEP (Data Execution Prevention) This service provides higher security be preventing untrusted software from making changes to your hard drive. You have two options:

1) you can turn off DEP for all programs excluding windows services (slightly less secure, if you have viruses this will increase the chances of corruption to game files!!!)
2) Add exception to the service.

I personally use option one so I don't need to constantly update this list...But I do use firewalls and ant-virus more often.

Here are the specific instructions to turn off DEP for RCT2.

1) Go to Start>Computer (RIGHT CLICK!)>Properties>Advanced Tab
2) Under the Advanced tab there are three "Settings" buttons, click the one under the "Performance" category.
3) Now another window appears withe more tabs, the last tab should be "Data Execution Prevention" Go there.
4) Here is where options one and two come in and make your decision....You can either turn off DEP for all software excluding Windows Services, or you can add an exception. If you choose to add an exception, click the second circle.
5) Now go down to "add" and navigate to the RCT2 folder, if you're not sure it will be something like this: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Infogrames Interactive\RollerCoaster Tycoon 2"
Mine is "Program Files (x86)" because I have a 64-bit system. 32-bit systems will just be "Program Files"
6) Navigate to the Executable File (RCT2.exe) and then click open. It should now add it to the list.
7) RUN GAME!!! ENJOY!

This fixed my issue with the game shutting off abruptly after 20 minutes with no error message at all. I recommend that you do this for ALL games on your system, to do that follow steps 1-5 with another games .exe file, if you're not sure where it is located, it can be found by right clicking the shortcut on your desktop (if you created one) and selecting properties.

If anyone is having a small annoying issue with the game not running full screen on vista/7, simply DO NOT run the game in compatibility mode, this works for me, so instead of the game being surrounded by black bars, the game runs in 1280*720 upscaled on my 1600*900 monitor....as long as the aspect ratio is the same, it won't have a "stretched" appearance.

I hope this is helpful!