Running RAGS games on Windows 10

Given that I imagine a lot of people have dropped their tumblr logins I thought it would be a good idea to have the help page here too. 

If you've not tried 2.6.1.0 you may see some improvements by changing to that version like I have to have a working version of the Designer. There's also other suggestions listed here that can improve RAGS performance. 

While this is primarily for Windows 10 it may well help with other versions of Windows. Not going to be helpful for those on Macs, which I don’t have any experience with myself, I have however heard from people who have got it working using Parallels Desktop running Windows 7 so it is technically possible to do.

If you can’t get the link on the RAGS game site to work for 2.4.16.0 I’ve rehosted a download link on mediafire here. You may have an improved experience using the more recent version 2.6.1.0 which I’ve also rehosted.

Make sure you’re using the right RAGS version for the game you’re trying to run. As of No Haven 0.803 I believe I’ve worked out enough of the kinks so that 3.0.60. should also work and may well be more compatible with your device if everything else suggested on here fails. 

To avoid formatting issues, you will need to update the text to html using the in game tools along with right clicking on the main text screen, then Encoding -> Unicode. This should make the game significantly nippier and may also be more stable. 

You can get a copy of 3.0.60 player I’ve rehosted here. I do reccomend though that you use 2.6 or 2.4 if at all possible.

There’s are two main things that you can try;

-First you can try installing the SQL which RAGS needs to run which you can find here.  (Includes the 32 and 64 versions if needed as if one doesn't work installing both can help)

-The other is that RAGS needs WMP installed which depending on your version can be found in these locations;

For Windows 7 N SP1. 

For Windows 8.1 N

For Windows 10 N

Once downloaded make sure WMP is actually installed and enabled. You may need to go to Start -> Control panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn a Windows feature on or off -> expand the "media" folder -> make sure Windows Media Player is checked

A couple of other suggestions;

Do not open the file directly from your browser, save it to disk and open from that folder separately.

Make sure it is a folder you have full rights to, say your Documents folder, and not one that is read only.

If you are in a country that does not use a decimal place for number, say Germany that uses a comma (ie 1,23 not 1.23) then RAGS games can badly fail and the only solution is to change your locale to a country that uses a decimal place

I hope that helps if you’ve been having problems and thank you to weird, greyelf, cmacleod42, anon and karazelle for this information.

Performance Improvements

Now I’ve not tried this myself as RAGS player has always been pretty responsive on my system, but if you want to take some extra steps these additional fixes could well help out. 

Quoting the post by Figment on Hypnopics:
Found a huge performance improvement for .NET BinarySerializer that vastly improves the performance of Rags saves for No Haven.  It sped up loading a game save from 50 seconds to 10 seconds on my computer and appears to be very safe.  The main requirement is that you have .NET 4.7.2 installed which I believe you have to install separately.

.NET 4.7.2 Offline Installer
.NET 4.7.2 for Windows 7 from catalog

Here is an article about the change itself:  Serialization Performance Update With .NET 4.7.2

Here is a file for that for Rags.exe config.  Just replace the existing config wherever you installed Rags. Rags.exe.config [mega]

...
I cannot fix everything in Rags but these seem reasonably safe.  Also this should work for any Rags game and not just No Haven.

Patched Executables Download:
Rags_2.4.16_SlightlyFasterPatch_v1.7z [mega]

Warning: The patched files might cause problems that I'm not aware of so use at your own risk.  Make backups and all that.  The other config change should be totally safe.

To emphasise the warning no support on this will be offered and these are to be installed at your on risk. They’re also not going to be relevent I’d guess if you’re using 3.0.60. They have though been used and found to be good by cmacleod42 who is someone I trust so there’s one endorsement, and I've since had reports from others who have seen improvements by using this.