Dual Drive stopped working

[jkmcmillan]

I've been running Dual Drive from Alive for several years without problems on the same computer -- I switched over to Windows 10 which my computer definitely despises, but all features of Alive have been unaffected. Just within the last week I have been unable to get Dual Drive to work. I'll click on the link from Alive (which otherwise works normally), and it will bring up the Dual Drive loading screen with "Connecting to server..." and a progress bar at the bottom. The task will complete and get me to the normal game screen, but it takes several times longer than usual... and then on the first game screen it plays two seconds of the theme music, then stops and restarts every two seconds, ad infinitum. When I try to move the cursor it won't respond until the next two second music restart. If I manage to click on Start Mission it brings up the usual loading screen, and the progress bar will complete after about 15 minutes but then the window freezes. Anybody else having issues? I know it was still working perfectly within the last three weeks. Thanks!

[Ryan Deluz]

Hi,

Dual Drive is a 3D game, and like much of Alive requires a video card designed for 3d graphics (such as an nVidia or ATI card) as well as correct video drivers for your video card.

When you upgraded to Windows 10 you probably did not install new video drivers for your video card. Windows tends to install a generic driver which works fine when displaying simple 2D content, but doesn't always allow proper 3D rendering.

Go to your video card manufacturer's website, for example nVidia or ATI, and search for your video card model. Install the Windows 10 compatible version of the drivers for your video card. If there are no Windows 10 drivers for your video card, your video card is unfortunately not compatible with Windows 10.

If this does not help, or no drivers are found, you can try opening Dual Drive options and changing between OpenGL and DirectX rendering, this may help.

Best,

Ryan Deluz
Somatic Vision Inc.

[jkmcmillan]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for your recommendations. As you may have suspected there are no Windows 10 drivers for my video card. So I tried your second suggestion, switching from OpenGL to DirectX, and apart from being a bit choppier and frequently giving me a "DualDriveEngine.exe quit unexpectedly" error message after completing races, it's a pretty workable solution, and it should tide me over until I can upgrade my equipment later this year. Thanks for sorting this out for me, and I really appreciate the way you've stood by your product all these years!

John