Oni Headaches
- October 11, 2004
- 35 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!!
I’m glad you’ve been reading my site, but I haven’t been posting stuff for four years. I’m pushing three years now.
Oni is such a classic game. It was worth digging around until I found a solution. I’m glad I was able to help others find the solution too.
The search engine hilite is a nice feature. I figured since most of my traffic is coming from search engines, I better help them out as much as possible.
Rocky Howard
October 31, 2004
Hehe, you didn’t get the sarcasm…that was the first time I visited your site U.
I was mocking what people tend to post in these cases: senseless praising 
.
Anyway, I’ve been reading some of your stuff and it’s good, plus your site is aestethically very pleasant for me so I’ll mark it up among my faves.
I’d wish to have a website of mine to share but I’m such a procrastinating bastard -_-.
Oni is not only a classic game but a very good one as well, a bit stereotypical in its story (and it tries hard to be a Japanese game) but I’ve yet to find a game with the same freedom and fluidity of character movement this game offers, playing with Konoko is an exciting experience.
Victor Knight
December 16, 2004
Alexandre
February 2, 2005
Keith
February 27, 2005
Cyrax
Veneto
May 3, 2005
Have you tried contacting the guys at Oni Central? If your question has anything to do with their patch, they would be much more qualified to help you than I would.
Jace Mindu
May 4, 2005
Connor
May 7, 2005
samuel
May 18, 2005
Veneto
May 23, 2005
Try downloading the patched Oni.exe from here. Also look around in that forum to see if anyone else is having the same problem you are.
Carl
June 28, 2005
Jonh
adhiraj
May 9, 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’ve downloaded and are launching the patched version of Oni? Both versions will be in the Oni directory, but you’ll want to make sure you’re launching the patched version.
That’s what fixed my slow-as-molasses Oni problem. I’m not sure why that wouldn’t work for you. Just to be safe, make sure you’ve got the latest drivers for your graphics card.
neppo
June 10, 2006
i’ve got the latest nvidia drivers and also the unofficial patch but it doesn’t work :((( i launched onipatch.exe but when i chose the oni.exe file (or the others) it wrote me this:
Executable checksum failed: you may have a different version of Oni. Continue anyway?
if i click yes it won’t work… it’s the same with no… help me please… write on my email
))))))))) thanks
Your site is very cool man!!!
I’ve been reading you since 4 years ago and you’ve been a lighthouse in the dark ocean that is my life.
Keep up the good work.
With the token “guestbook/comment” part out of the way, let’s get to business.
THANKS!!!
I was having the same problems with Oni, both the slowdown with my old nVidia GeForce 2 and the hella annoying “Damn – Blam, oni crashed!” (why would a programmer do that to a fellow gamer? T_T) with my GeForce FX5200, I was about to uninstall it…again, when I decided to do a google search for the problem solution and “Blam, your site appeared” and gave me the link to the solution of my problems.
Also thanks for the “Welcome Google user! I noticed that you arrived here via Google. To make your search easier, I’ve highlighted your search terms.” bit, I wish some sites would do the same thing.