Byzantine: The Betrayal

Set-Up Walkthrough 

Developer/Publisher: The Discovery Channel
Release Date: 1997

System Specifications:

Windows 95
Pentium 90 or higher
Quad speed CD-ROM drive
Hard Drive (up to 45MB)
Windows 95 compatible sound card
Mouse
SVGA Display 16-bit color (thousands of colors)
Local BUS (PCI or VL)
Intel MMX Technology (not required)


The General Drill

updated printable version




First let's take a look at the "General Drill"

Whenever I start a new game, especially an "older one"; I have always made it a habit to make sure my system is clean. (So let's clean house) Our cleaning products?? No, I'm not talking about special Orange Sprays or Pine smelly disinfectants! I'm referring to the "3 Musketeers" of WINTEL Systems. They are: "Disk Clean Up", Check Disc (the old Scan Disc in pre XP Windows based systems) and Defrag. 

First, Let's do a Disk Clean Up (Don't know how?) GO to-->Start-->All Programs--> Accessories--> System Tools-->Disk Clean Up. Empty out what you don't need ( you'll be surprised at what you can accumulate!) Shut down all extra programs. (for those of you who know how to do this part...just skip onto the next area of the "Setup".) For those of you who don't, the easiest way to terminate your TSRs (terminated but staying resident programs, also known as 
background applications") is to right click on each of the little icons in the lower right portion of your "Tool Bar" (located near your clock), As you right click on each of them you will get the option to either "exit", "close" or "unload". Do this for each of them. Then, if you have a Screensaver go ahead and disable it. 

If you haven't done the "Ole' Scan Disk"...(in XP it's called "Check Disk") and Defragged recently here is a good time to do it. Go to-->My Computer-->Local Disc "C" ("C" is mine but your Local Disc maybe assigned another letter)-->Right Click-->Properties-->Tools-->"Check Now..." ->Make sure that both boxes are checked--> 1.)Automatically fix file system errors and 2.)Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.-->Click Start. You can follow this same path to locate your Defrag program as well or use Start-->All Programs-->Accessories-->System Tools-->Defrag Hard Drive. 

Check your system by doing a "Ctrl, Alt & Delete", this will bring up "The Task Manager", If you have closed out all Windows Programs, the field under "Applications" will be blank. 

(Leave the field marked "Processes" alone. Yep, I know there are lots of interesting files in there...but your really better off not touching anything in there unless you really know just what you are doing.)


You might want to check on your Video and Audio Acceleration at this time, make sure you set the video at the 2nd notch from the right --> and audio should be set to the 2nd notch from the right as well (I find that this is the best setting for this adventure on MY system. Yours may be different, but this is always a good place to start and you can increase or lower them as you see fit after the game is installed.) 

I know this seems like a bother, but if you take the time to make sure your system is sparkling on the inside, you'll have less headaches later. Remember a healthy XP is a happy one. 






Byzantine: The Betrayal has two official support pages:

A. Interplay*** which will give you the basic spec for the game and then promptly tell you to forget about WinXP and check with The Discovery Channel for further information and support. 

B. The Discovery Channel *** will also provide you with the Specs and very little else.

 

Byzantine doesn't like auto insert notification to be enabled. So the first thing you have to do is to disable this function: 

 

Go to Control Panel -> Click on "Disc Detector" ->

 

 

 

 

 

Next make sure all "extra windows programs are closed out" that includes any screen savers, programmable keyboards, virus protection, etc.

I was able to load Byzantine on my XP with really no major tweaking. Here's what you do:

(after the installation begins , you'll see a box message which says that the installation was a success, however you may or may not  see another popup which will ask you to start the installation over again.. if you do cancel out of this and don't worry about the next popup which asks if you wish to abort ...go ahead, it will be ok. (see? I told you that installing games on XP can sometimes be an adventure in itself.)  LOL





 







 

Note*: You also may want to consider running a "slowdown" utility such as CPUkiller 
or Turbo for certain parts during the game. (especially when Carlos is around...he can be lightening quick with his knife.)  You can find out more information on these utilities on the My Computer Specs under the "utilities section"



 Note*I also set my files to 100 by calling up my Config.nt file and replacing "Files=40" which is WindowsXP default to Files=100 and then saving it and restarting my system. Also remember that "Byzantine" uses an early form of "Quick Time" so make sure that you remove all traces of later version which will conflict with the game and cause the program to freeze. 

 

 Byzantine runs very smoothly on my XP now. I'm finding it a very interesting game.




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