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[klaymen]

Help for The Neverhood

This is a story about good -
This is a story about bad.

"good" is the creativity behind The Neverhood;
"bad" is the response from their tech support.

Fun Game, With the Occasional Glitch

The Neverhood is fun but finicky [1]. If you use an "ultra fancy" graphics card, it tends to crash when you go to the cannon. I've got a Matrox Millennium and have this problem. The Matrox Mystique has problems too.

What to do? I tried installing the latest beta and non-beta drivers. No luck. I re-installed DirectX 3.0. Nope. I turned down hardware acceleration as far as possible. No dice. I even re-installed Windows 95. Nope. Their tech support (Microsoft, apparently) suggested downloading the complete DirectX 3.0 package to be sure to get the correct driver for my card. That file was 28 MB. They also suggested returning the software.[2]

I had an idea, though. Since the game has "save game" and "load game" features, why not just load a game that was played on a machine that didn't crash and was saved immediately after the where problem occurs?

It was so brilliant, there had to be a flaw.

The problem was how the games are saved. Games are saved as keys in the Windows registry. But that's okay! The Registry editor (regedit.exe) can import and export keys, so you can move saved games between different machines.

So I suggested to tech support that they just send me the key of a game that was saved just after getting through the problem spot (the cannon). The person I was talking to told me he "can't comment" on the idea of modifying the Windows registry. They were useless.

So, as a public service to those who can't get Microsoft tech support to help you, I'm making the keys available here. Here's what you do:

  1. Download the key(s). There are two:

  2. Make a copy of the files \WINDOWS\USER.DAT and \WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DAT. These are the Windows Registry files. If you make a mistake in the following steps, you might need these. Critical stuff is stored in the Registry, so if you're not comfortable messing with system files, be careful. It'll be okay.

  3. Open the Windows Registry Editor. It's \WINDOWS\REGEDIT.EXE.

  4. Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Dreamworks Interactive, Neverhood, and finally Saved Games.

  5. Click the words Saved Games in the left pane. The words should be highlighted.

  6. Now execute the menu command Registry/Import Registry File...

  7. Choose the key(s) to import and click Okay.

  8. Close regedit and start The Neverhood. The new saved game(s) should appear in the list.

That's it. Happy playing, and say hi to Willie Trombone for me.

Thanks go to Glacier who provided a machine that didn't crash, at some cost to himself.

Notes

1. A search of the Microsoft Knowledge Base for "Neverhood" turns up about 50 articles.

2. Note the Microsoft Knowledge Base article isn't correct. I'm using Matrox 3.22 drivers, and have tried 3.30 beta drivers, and the problem still occurs.

Last updated 8 June 2000
http://www.rdrop.com/~half/General/GameTips/Neverhood/Neverhood.html
All contents ©1996-2002 Mark L. Irons except Klaymen image.

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