How to play Age of Mythology on a VM

Question

I've recently been hit with the desire to play old games.

Due to my past experience with old games, such as Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, which usually crashes a lot under Windows 8.1, I decided to set up a Windows XP VM (Virtual Machine) for exactly these kinds of cases.

I then proceeded to install Age of Mythology on the VM, but it refused to start, saying that my graphics adapter was not supported, and with following info:

Video Card 0: vmx_fb.dll VMware SVGA II Vendor(0x15AD) Device(0x405)

I've played more demanding games on a Windows 7 VM before, so I know this error is just plain textbook defeatism.

How do I teach Age of Mythology to be a little bit more trusting?

Answer 1

Thanks to Google, I found this site, which is about playing Age of Mythology on Ubuntu over a Virtualbox VM.

The solution only works for Virtualbox, however, not for VMware. It still helped me find a working solution, as all I needed was to adapt a few variables.

To trick Age of Mythology into launching despite not recognizing the graphics adapter, you'll have to create a file in the [AoM install directory]\gfxconfig directory. If you installed Age of Mythology in its default location, that would be C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Mythology\gfxconfig.

Inside that directory, you have to create a file named: [vendor ID]_[vendor name].gfx. Looking at the error message:

Video Card 0: vmx_fb.dll VMware SVGA II Vendor(0x15AD) Device(0x405)

we can tell that [vendor ID] is 0x15AD and [vendor name] is vmware, so the file's name would be: 0x15AD_vmware.gfx.

Now that the file exists, you'll need to open it with a text editing software, such as Notepad, which is pre-installed in pretty much every version and edition of Windows, and add following text to it:

[config]
Vendor=VMware
defaultdevice=CyberBladeXP.gfx

[knownGoodDriver]
Month=9
Day=21
Year=2009
Product=0
Version=0
SubVersion=0
Build=0

[device]
0x405=CyberBladeXP,CyberBladeXP.gfx

Actually, it doesn't seem to matter much, what info is written inside. I just copy-pasted the text meant for Virtualbox, and it still worked like a charm (although I admit, I didn't try to actually play the game then). Apparently, you need to make sure the [knownGoodDriver] part matches your driver's date, but I think it doesn't really matter, as long as your drivers are newer than what's listed.

Unfortunately, Microsoft thought it was a good idea to hide extensions of known file types, such as .exe or .txt, so it's possible your file has a .gfx.txt extension and you just don't know it yet. This Microsoft support site tells you how to "fix" that issue. If it doesn't help, you can always ask Google.

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Although this solution is limited to Age of Mythology, there's a good chance for it to work for other Ensemble Studios games as well.

Enjoy your nostalgia.

Answer 2

To build upon the existing answer.

I found that you don't have to find the date of the driver on your system. Instead use the .gfx file as follows with VMware (tested on VMware Workstation 10):

[config]
Vendor=VMware
defaultdevice=CyberBladeXP.gfx

[knownGoodDriver]
Month=0
Day=0
Year=0
Product=0
Version=0
SubVersion=0
Build=0

[device]
0x405=CyberBladeXP,CyberBladeXP.gfx

Also, to make this work with both the base game and the extension (The Titans), I had to copy the file from the folder gfxconfig into gfxconfig2 as well.

Answer 3

I used to get the same error:

Video Card 0: VBoxDisp.dll VirtualBox Graphics Adapter Vendor(0x80EE) Device(0xBEEF)

In my case I had installed Virtual Box Guest Additions in "normal mode" of Windows. The diagnostic tool of Directx (dxdiag) showed that the video card didn't support DirectX 3D acceleration.

Solution: I re-installed VB Guest Additions but in this time in "Safe mode" of Windows and when I started the game it played fine! I didn't have to create the .gfx file. Also further searching I discover that now the Graphics Adapter is totally different from what it used to be.