Hero Online fan site

Original made by http://hero.blogyx.com/

 
It seems a lot of people that already installed Windows Vista or got a new computer with Vista preinstalled are having problems running Hero Online. The problem is not that the game itself is not compatible with Vista, but because of the protection the game uses (X-TRAP) that doesn't recognize Windows Vista as a compatible OS and thus kicks you out of the game...



Being really mad at the fact that there is still no solution for the X-TRAP problems when you try to run Hero Online in Vista, I had to find an alternative way to make it possible. And I finally did it, although it is not the best possible solution, but this is the only possible way at the moment. The game runs just fine and is really playable for everyone with a more powerful PC (otherwise why would you install Vista on it?). The only problem, that I still haven't found a solution for is related to the mouse cursor that has some irritating issues redrawing and thus is showing some small artifacts, but that doesn't prevent you from playing the game normally. So lets get to the solution itself or the guide to run Hero Online in Vista ... :)


What you'll need:
- Windows Vista installed on your computer (regardless of the version)
- Windows XP (Home or Professional) install CD, you might be able to do the trick with older Windows versions too, if you have any (98, ME or 2000), but I haven't tried with anything older than XP
- The latest beta version of VMware Workstation 6.0 software (available for free), but have in mind we are talking about a beta software!
- Hero Online installation files with all the manual patches downloaded, so you won't have to wait to much for the automatic update


The guide on running in Vista

Step 1. If you haven't downloaded VMware Workstation 6.0 Beta yet, you can do so here. Download VMware Workstation 6.0 Beta (for Windows systems) which is about 273MB in size. Write out the serial number provided on the page, because you'll need it to use the full functionality of the software. I remind you that we are talking about a beta software product and the serial provided for it will expire after a few months. Only the beta version of VMware Workstation is available for free use, when the final product is finalized it will be available as commercial product. Meanwhile you can use it and hope that Hero Online will be made Vista compatible...

Step 2. Install VMware Workstation 6.0 beta on your computer and create a Virtual Machine. Select Windows XP as a guest OS when you are prompted to do so and give the virtual pc at least 512MB memory for use. If you are going to use the virtual machine only for playing Hero Online, you can choose 3GB space to be used for a virtual hard drive. If you plan to play other Vista incompatible games, than 15-20GB will be a better choice. For the network support you can select NAT, so you won't need to change anything in the network configuration in the virtual machine.

Step 3. When you are finished creating and configuring the virtual machine you need to start it and install Windows XP. Just click on the green play button to start the virtual machine. But before that you'll have to put the Windows XP install CD in the optical drive, so when the virtual machine boots it will find it and start the installation process. Just follow the wizard to finish the installation process.

Step 4. At this point you should have the virtual machine ready and running with Windows XP (or another version of Windows) installed and running. So if everything is ok at this point, you can continue with the installation of some additional VM drivers that you’ll need. To do so click in the "VM" option in the top menu part of the Virtual Machine's window and choose "Install VMware Tools" (to “free” the mouse cursor from the VM window press CTRL + ALT). The most important part of this installation package (follow the wizard to finish the installation process) is of course the better video driver that it provides.

Step 5. Instead of restarting the virtual machine, that is what you'll be requested to do after finishing the installation of "VMware Tools", just shutdown the Windows in the Virtual Machine and exit the VMware Workstation program.
At this point you have to go to the folder on your hard drive that you've selected to be used for the virtual machine (when you were creating it). There you should find the configuration file of VMware Workstation that is used for storing your VM settings. The file will be named the way your virtual machine is called and will have .VMX extension, inside it is just some plain text. So open this file with a text editor, Notepad for example and at the bottom of the file add the following 3 lines of text and save the file:
mks.enable3d = "TRUE"
svga.vramSize = "67108864"
vmmouse.present = "FALSE"

Step 6. Run VMware Workstation and start your virtual machine. Now it will have 64MB of virtual video memory and should be able to run games using DirectX 7 and 8 without serious problems. That of course includes Hero Online, but with this virtual machine you won't be limited to playing only Hero Online... but before that adjust the resolution of the Windows running in the virtual machine to at least 1024x768 ;)

Step 7. Now is the time to install Hero Online on your virtual machine. To do so you'll have to use the "Shared Folders" function of VMware Workstation, so you’ll get access the folder where the installation files are from inside the virtual machine. Alternative way is to burn the files on a CD/DVD, use an ISO image file containing all game files. VMware Workstation should also support drag and drop and copy and paste from the Host OS (Vista) to the Guest OS (Win XP), but that feature doesn't always work. As a last option you can just download the files directly inside the virtual machine and install them. After you install the main part of the game you need to apply the manual patches or just run the game and wait for them to be downloaded automatically.

Step 8. Run the Hero Online game for a first time and click on the "Option" button to configure the graphical settings of the game. Depending on the processor and videocard you have in your computer you may change the detail level, but even with everything set to High on a powerful PC you shouldn't have any problems.

Step 9. After finishing the configuration you are ready to play the game. Just click on the "Play game" button, enter your login information, choose your character and enjoy Hero Online running "with" Windows Vista...
The only thing, as I've already mentioned, that is not working very well is the display of the mouse cursor. It will probably blink a bit and display a rectangle showing some part of the Windows desktop, but that is something you can live with. :P


Update: As of patch 130 Hero Online works in Vista! There was no more need for VMware running an XP virtual machine in order to play the game, but in patch 131 they made the X-TRAP incompatible with Vista once again. So we are back to the old VMware trick in order to run the game under Vista...