Mage Knight: Apocalypse

How to Play

The game was designed for Windows XP, so the best way to play - to use Virtual Machine with Windows XP. Installation and launch of this game on modern systems is a bit tricky, here's the way how we made it working on Windows 7 64-bit, it should work on Windows 10 too.

Install & play guide:

• Mount the disc image. You will need the utility for mounting disc image files, like WinCDEmu, UltraISO, Alcohol 52%/Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools Lite
• Launch the installation. Make sure that installation path is only on English, it shouldn't have any symbols on other languages (i.e. it should look like C:/Games/Mage Knight Apocalypse)
• When the installation will ask for Disc 2 - mount the disc image of CD2. Do the same for next discs (this step is only for CD version, DVD version has all content on one disc)
• Install the game
• Install the patch 1.02
• Install NoCD
• Open the directory with the game and find MageKnight.exe. Right click on MageKnight.exe - Properties - Compatibility - Set "Run this app in compatibility mode with Windows XP".
• Now open the Control Panel of your videocard (find that item in Windows Control Panel or click with right mouse button on empty space on desktop and choose it from pop-up menu, it can be called nVidia Control Panel, AMD Catalyst Center, Radeon Setting, etc.). Turn on forced vertical sync for Mage Knight Apocalypse
• After that - download RTSS Rivatuner Statistics Server, install that app, launch it, add MageKnight.exe in the list and select next options: Application detection level: Medium, Custom Direct3D Support ON, Framerate limit 30. The game was designed to work on 30 fps max, it must be locked to 30 fps for correct work
• Minimize RTSS to the tray and launch the game from MageKnight.exe (launch the game strictly from the exe file, and not from the shortcut on the desktop).
• If you complete all the steps right - the game should work now. The game launches after 2-3 minutes of waiting because it tries to connect to Namco's shut down servers. To avoid that waiting time - make simple register edit, read instructions above
• If the game doesn't work anyway - try to launch the game, then open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del by default) and check for processes MageKnight.exe and rundll32.exe. Close MageKnight.exe but don't touch rundll32.exe (it's a Windows app for running old apps from 32-bit operational systems, most old games running through rundll32.exe). Now try to launch the game again, it must work. Don't forget to close rundll32.exe process in Task Manager after finishing playing.
• The game with patch and NoCD has been tested on Windows 7 64-bit, it works but still has a lot of bugs. The game supports widescreen.

Troubleshooting:

• If you have nVidia video card you can try to enable forced 3D Hardware Acceleration in nVidia Control Panel, it worked for some players
• Fix for a long startup due to an attempt to connect to a non-existent server. Save the text with the .reg extension, then run this file for code execution.
• The code for 32-bit OS:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NAMCO BANDAI Games\Mage Knight]
"URL"="127.0.0.1"

• The code for 64-bit OS:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\NAMCO BANDAI Games\Mage Knight]
"URL"="127.0.0.1"

• Reboot the system after register edit. Now the game will be starting without trying to connect the servers for update downloads

In general, the game is very buggy and can crash in a random moments, so make savegames often. As an example, the game will crash if you play for some time, then exit to the menu and try to start a "New Game", it crashes in 90% of cases. Sometimes the game may freeze when you try to exit to desktop, in that case close the process MageKnight.exe in Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del by default).

During tests we noticed that choosing the default character (a knight with a cloak who stands in the middle of the group) often leads to crash. So first click on another character, a dark elf, for example, then by pressing the arrows switch to this knight and edit him (choose a different hairstyle, hair color, eyes, etc.), and only after that start the game with this character. This happens only with the knight and doesn't happen with other characters, like a dark elf or a dragon, you can select them and start playing immediately.