Troubleshooting I ’76

My name is Joshua and I’m seeking help in restoring a piece of my childhood (like many others who try to revive this old, trophy game)! I’m using the original Interstate ’76 CD.

What I’ve been able to do:

– I’ve able to install the game with ease onto my Windows XP.
– I’ve been able to load the game with relative ease
– I’ve been able to play with sound
– I’ve been able to bypass any “rainbow” like textures
– Blow up enemies
– Roam around for a sustained amount of time

However my problem lies here; my game crashes every time I:

– Crash into a wall
– Get shot at
– Jump off a cliff and explode
– Force explode
– (Pretty much anything that has to do with damage to myself)

The harder thing to do would be to not get shot at, but even with “God mode” enabled, my game still crashes (This is when I thought of my sound being an option so I tried to turn off my Hardware Accelerator but to no avail did it work)

Though my analysis may be below par to that of a tech savvy person, I think it may have to do with the graphics and frame rate – the game seems to be running well above 30 fps (the wheels of A.I’s jump about, and “Taurus can’t drive to save his life”) in fact, many of the AI seem to be driving at a very slow speed. My computer uses an AMD graphics card so “V-Sync” is out of the question. I tried your DATABASE code rewrite and was considering to update the patch, but your link is broken so I can’t do much about that.

For AMD cards, there’s the MSI Afterburner software that’ll let you control various graphics-related items. It’s been a while since I’ve had an ATI/AMD card, but I think framerate is an option that can be set. I’d try playing with that and see if it’s a framerate issue. That’s definitely the cause of the wonky tires and bad AI.

I can’t say for certain what’s causing the crash when you get hit. That may very well be related to the frame rate issues, although I haven’t heard of a correlation between the two.

Personally, I’ve had corrupted textures appear when objects explode in the game. That’s not quite as common as just taking a hit, though. Just thinking off the top of my head, I wonder if the problem is sound related. If you run the game without sound, does the crash still occur?

Sorry for not having a definitive answer, but maybe those will give you a couple of starting spots to work with.

Yes, the site will stay alive. I tend to revisit I ’76 every few years — that’s when the site gets its share of updates. Then it usually goes slightly dormant after that.

(Update: Check the Interstate ’76 Install Guide & FAQ for other things to try.)