Oni Headaches
- October 11, 2004
- 36 comments
I am having the worst luck when it comes to getting a copy of Oni to work! I’ve been trying to get myself a copy of a classic game from Bungie called Oni. For a while, I was trying to find a Mac copy of it, but that’s like trying to find a female yeti… impossible. They apparently don’t exist. I tried several different ways, including eBay, and had no luck.
Today I was in Texarkana with a friend and I noticed there was a new video games store in this one shopping center. We stopped in and found a treasure trove of games for the PC, Xbox, PS2 and GameCube. We also found used PC games. I was casually perusing the used games when a holographic shininess caught my eye. Oni’s box has this very distinct shininess to it that’s unmistakeable, so as soon as I saw that shine I got real excited in a hurry. I snapped it up for $5 and danced around like a kid at Christmas. (Note… I didn’t really dance around. But I wanted to real bad.)
We went back to my friend’s place and I installed Oni on his Dell laptop. His laptop has 16MB of VRAM, which is more than enough to run a 4 year old game like Oni. I think Oni requires a minimum of 2MB, so 16 would be great. Sure enough, Oni played very well on his laptop. I played around with it for a couple levels and then we left to go do other things.
I was eager to get home and try out Oni on my PC which now sports an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 with 128MB of VRAM. I figured if Oni shines with 16MB, it’s going to scream with 128MB. WRONG! I can’t get it to play right at all! When I first fired the game up, I noticed the game cursor was really slow in the main menu. And when I started the first level, the game crept along at what seemed like a frame a second.
I tried reducing details, uninstalling/reinstalling, etc. Nothing worked. So I figured maybe Oni didn’t like my card or vice versa. I took out my graphics card and switched back to the onboard nVidia GeForce 4 MX with 64MB VRAM, still more than enough for Oni. The same thing. It ran like crap. Back in went the GeForce FX.
My card was using the latest Microsoft driver at that point, so I installed the latest nVidia driver. My card now has all kinds of cool options, but the game won’t even start! It crashes every time! What the heck gives?!
If anyone has some pointers or knows how to fix this I will be very grateful. I have several Gmail invitations to give out, although those are a dime-a-dozen now. I would be willing to give away an invite for a tip that works. That or I’ll be your bestest buddy. All I want is for Oni to play well on my machine!
10/13: Here’s some more bad news regarding Oni. I have a Mac version of the app that supposed to be able to play well if you have the Oni files. I believe the game files for Oni are the same on PC and Mac (at least they appear to be). Even if they weren’t I had downloaded a Mac version of the game earlier. Anyway, the game would always crash immediately after startup on my Mac. I discovered that the reason it was doing this was because it wasn’t compatible with OS X Panther. Son of a %&#$!! Yet another wall I’ve run into while trying to get Oni working.
10/18: Eureka! A breakthrough! I can now happily play Oni on my PC! The miracle cure for my Oni blues was at Oni Central. It’s an unofficial patch that fixes the “Blam! Oni Crashed” message I was constantly getting. I tried it out and the game plays as smooth as silk now! Yay!!
hi
i have the patch, and i never needed it – even under windows XP, until i upgraded to DX9. I have it running on another xp machine, and an me machine and they both worked find, until dx9 was installed.
it even brought down the game on the me machine.
MS have a history with dx 9, especially for developers (like myself). They keep breaking backwards compatibility.
if you could send the patch anyway so i can make sure i have the correct one maybe it will solve it, but i put one on and no joy. I have the UK verison.
El Supremo
July 28, 2006
“This application has failed to start because binkw32.dll was not found”
Put this file in your oni directory, download it a dll site.
To fix the “lag” problems you should install a nvidia (not microsoft) drivers between 28.x and 60.x. More recent than this will give you problems with your graphic card, I have a geforce 2 mx 400/400 and I am using 60.x version..
look here for drivers:
http://www.fileshack.com/browse.x?cat=49
(you should remove current drivers first and then install the new one)
Shiity Ok
November 6, 2006
TropiKo
November 6, 2006
hey i just bought oni and when i start it the pointer gets reallll slow at the main menu and when i click on new game ,the game runs even slower!! i have XP and have even downloaded the XP patch from onicentral, nothing seems to work. i had oni a year ago when i had win98 and it ran absolutely fine. i havent upgraded anything else in my computer. what should i do please reply
???
You need Open GL, 2.0 maybe.This happend to me too in my first launch of the game.
Yossi
February 1, 2007
Same by me! I downloaded the patch from Oni Central, but it doesn’t work! It worked at a different of myne, but that’s only cuz this patch apparantley only fixes the “blam, Oni crashed” thingy, but that’s not my problem! My problem is that it going REALLY SLOW… but like, EXTREMELLY slow. Please, help me… I’m despsrate to play Oni once again…
I’m using Windows XP,
NVIDIA Geforce FX 5200.
Is that good?
Myke Rennie
June 19, 2007
You are a legend for finding that patch and telling us about it. Period. I have been ripping my hair out for the past two weeks to try and figure out how to get Oni to start working on my Acer Aspire T310 with an old Nvidia Geforce MX 440.
What the most frustrating thing was, is that it used to work on the older configuration of my computer, and Take 2 and Bungie were not being very helpful. It got to a point where my laptop sat there in a mocking way as it would play Oni like a charm. I figured that it was the newest Nvidia Driver that was giving me the problems, however my elder one did not give me happy times either. So, I was left with a catch 22.
Simply put, thank you for finding it, and thank you Oni Central for building it. You’re all legends.
onimotoko
August 15, 2007
eric_palmquist
February 1, 2010
if you have win XP you need patch for xp… write me at neppo@pobox.sk and i can send it to you