unable to allocate primary video buffer command and conquer original and RA95
Its kinda sad I know, but I still love playing my old command and conquesr games, not too much blood and gore.
Until just now I have been able to play with only 2 niggly little problems
1 The menu text wasn't visible sometimes
2 I still can't beat the games on Hard, let alone hard and fast.
It had been a few days since I fired the game up but in between the latest Windows 10 update installed.
Reading some old posts somewhere I tried putting -w in the command line for game settings and took off the "show origin" or whatever it is.
Please tell me there's hope to get these games up and working again.
Uh... neither your point 1 or 2 seem related to the topic title...
The error in the topic title is related to screen resolutions. The games' default resolution is 640x400, which is a bit nonstandard, and a lot of modern graphics cards can't handle it. The unofficial patches fix it by unlocking full resolution switching in C&C1 and RA1.
As for your other problems...
1. What games? I never heard of anything like that on the original C&C and Red Alert, but it is a known issue in Tiberian Sun, and also known to occasionally occur in Red Alert 2.
2. The original C&C doesn't have difficulty levels... so I'm assuming you're not talking about that one. Anyway, one tactic I've learned from online games is to build a second refinery as soon as possible; the extra cash flow is an enormous help to get your army built up. Besides that, especially on tactical missions... just, get better, I guess :P
The Origin option was actually to disable the "use Origin In-Game" option on the game's entry in Origin, but I think in recent updates this was changed to be disabled automatically on the C&C games.
On to actually solving your problems...
Command & Conquer 1, Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Sun have all been upgraded with community-created unofficial patches that fix a lot of their bugs and compatibility problems. For Red Alert 2 there's a more general patch that solves a lot of its graphics problems. You can find them here:
Command & Conquer 1:
- Nyerguds' C&C95 v1.06c revision 3 patch (which also adds bonus missions originally exclusive to the Playstation and Nintendo 64 versions of the game)
Note that this patch fixes two quite common and completely fatal game crashes (top-of-map reconnaissance crash, stealth crash), so installing it is strongly advised.
Red Alert 1:
- Funkyfr3sh's automatic Red Alert 1 patcher/installer (The thread also has briefing videos for the expansion missions, converted from the Playstation version of the game)
- Nyerguds' main.mix cleanup for TFD/TUC (Not really needed, but cleans up about a gigabyte of unnecessary files in the RA1 folder. Unpack in the game folder, run "patch_main.bat", let it finish, and then delete the files you extracted.)
Tiberian Sun:
Red Alert 2:
- The graphics system patch DDWrapper is known to solve a multitude of graphics problems, including the "black screen" issue.
Download the zip file and extract "ddraw.dll" and "aqrit.cfg" into your game folder. Then, open the configuration file "aqrit.cfg" in Notepad, change the "ForceDirectDrawEmulation" option to 1, save the file, and try running the game again. - If you still have problems with RA2 even after this, I advise installing the CnCNet installer for RA2/YR. It comes with a bunch of automatic fixes, and has a configuration tool which offers more choices in graphics fixes than just DDWrapper, so if one doesn't work you can just try if some of the other options do the trick.
- Nyerguds' C&C95 v1.06c revision 3 patch (which also adds bonus missions originally exclusive to the Playstation and Nintendo 64 versions of the game)
