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Having trouble with Windows 8 and LAW? Read this!

I've heard from more then one person over Windows 8 causing problems with running Love and War (which is of course a RM2K game). A kind poster named CoolWind has shared a potential solution that worked for him. In his own words:


OK, I managed to solve this problem.
I'll try to explain so other people won't have the same issue I had.

Windows 8 seems to have two inherent problems with rm2k.

(a) The first problem is going to full screen mode, which causes the game to crash with the error: "DIRECTDRAW ERROR (DDERR_UNSUPPORTED)".
You can find the solution to this problem here: http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/10204/
The little program by "Cherry" works wonders.

(b) The second problem (which was what caused LaW to crash for me) is quite simple and annoying- windwos 8 seems to have no ability to play midi. In some games there won't be any music (sound effects will be present since they don't use the midi format). In windows XP there was a program that dealt with midi, so the RM2K games are trying to call for this program, which does not exist.

The solution to this requires two things:
1) A program that can run midi: http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth
Be aware that you need to download a soundfont as well (you can find a list of those in the link I put above).
2) A program that sets your system to open midi files via the new program you just downloaded: http://www.benryves.com/products/vistamidi
I know it's called vista midi control, but it works perfectley fine for win8.

After you download both of those programs, you should open virtual midi synth and choose the sound font you wanted, than open vista midi control and choose virtual midi synth as your main program for midi files.

credit to this site (and an explanation that is more accurate than mine, but a bit technical): http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/blog/2013/03/what-happened-midi-mapper-windows-8

This solved my problem.

Edit: Here is a nice tutorial for virtual midi synth:https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/midkar/conversations/messages/34524

Edit2: It seems you need to lower down the music a bit so you can hear the sfx and the voice actors. You can do it easily- after you open the game, look for a new systray icon called "CoolSoft VirtualMidiSynth - 1.9.0 (x86)", double click it and it will open a midi mixer, you can lower all music under master (or just certain parts of the music). Lower the "master" one untill you can her sfx.


Many thanks for the info, CoolWind!