A guide to running the Simis Limited sim, KA-52 Team Alligator, natively in Windows 10. KA-52 Team Alligator is the successor to the earlier Simis Apache sim, Team Apache.
As usual I'll using a cd image rather than physical cd to install and setup.
Version
The only version I've been able to find is the original big box retail edition, released in 2000 and subsequent budget release. This is the release used in this guide. I haven't found any patches for this sim. There are two fan made patches that improve the flight model and joystick deadzone (see below).
The original specs for this game call for an Intel Pentium 200MMX to Intel Pentium II 450, 32MB to 128MB of ram, 3D accelerator and 100% compatible DirectSound card running Windows 95 or 98 and DirectX 7. Windows ME or XP are listed as incompatible.
Mounting the cd image
The cd image is mounted with DAEMON Tools Lite, as it supports many of the common cd copy protection components, in use when the game was released.
Installation
To install the following compatibility options should be set on the setup.exe file:
Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows 98 / WIndows ME.
Reduced color mode 8-bit (256) color.
Disable fullscreen optimization.
Once set, the setup.exe file should be able to install the game without issue.
DirectX wrappers
To run this under a Windows 10 machine, a wrapper will need to be employed to wrap the DirectX7 calls and convert them to their modern equivalents.
After testing both DxWnd and dxwrapper, my current wrapper of choice is dxwrapper, because:
dxwrapper does not suffer from HUD issues on fullscreen where the HUD lines will suddenly originate from the top left corner.
DxWnd suffers from audio issues affected by the vsync setting, dxwrapper does not, and sound is unchanged whether vsync is on or off.
The frame-rate can be controlled which helps with audio issues.
dxwrapper
dxwrapper was created by Elisha, so a huge thank you for all the hard work there and can be found at the dxwrapper GitHub repository. The wrapper is configured to convert dx7 calls into dx9 calls. It's also configured to wrap the dsound library.
The dxwrapper is configured with dxwrapper.ini, the configuration options are documented within the dxwrapper wiki. A zipped version I used can be found below:
You may need to change options depending on your own setup. To install the wrapper, the following files need to be copied into the Team Alligator game folder:
dxwrapper.dll
dxwrapper.ini
ddraw.dll
With the dxwrapper configured, there is no need to set compatibility options through the Team2.exe properties.
Patches (update)
There are 2 fan made patches for the game, the Zero G flight model fix and the joystick deadzone patch. The joystick deadzone patch includes the Zero G flight model fix, making it the one and only recommended patch.
Both patches are available from www.helosim.com in the downloads page. You may want to download both, as the Zero G flight model fix has a readme document providing some interesting background to the fix (there is a different readme document in the joystick deadzone patch).
The joystick deadzone patch is language specific, there being German, UK and US versions, the readme document for each describes how to determine the version you need. The installation instructions are in the patch readme document, but there are some additional steps needed to install in Windows 10.
The joystick deadzone part of the patch uses a 16-bit patcher app, which cannot run under Windows 10. These are the steps taken to install the patch:
Using the PCem v17 emulator, create a Windows 98 virtual machine. The Phils Computer Lab YouTube channel has an excellent video on creating a suitable virtual machine.
Install KA-52 Team Alligator onto the virtual machine.
Shutdown the virtual machine and open the virtual hard disk (.vhd file) in Windows 10.
Unzip the patch to a folder and copy the folder onto the virtual hard disk.
Start the virtual machine and follow the patch instructions, theTeam2.exe application should be patched in Windows 98.
Shutdown the virtual machine again and reopen the virtual hard disk in Windows 10.
Copy the patched Team2.exe file to the game folder in Windows 10, (take a copy of the original Team2.exe file first).
The Zero G flight model fix part of the patch is a file replacement, so just follow the instructions in the readme document to replace the required file.
And finally, a big thank you to Zero G and Jonathan Wright for their work on creating these patches.
Game setup options
The launcher app can be used to enable/disable sound hardware acceleration. You can also manually edit the sound.ini file. No compatibility options are required to be set through the launcher.exe properties.
The in-game options allow the limited selection of various graphics and sound options.
Controller setup
A 4 axes HOTAS should be able to be picked up and automatically configured by the game. If there are more that 4 axes then you may have to use your HOTAS profile software to limit it to 4 axes. There are no in-game options to select controller axes.
With TARGET I've configured by axes as follows (note: this game prefers the z rotation axis rather than the x rotation axis):
Joystick x-axis (DX_X_AXIS) Cyclic roll
Joystick y-axis (DX_Y_AXIS) Cyclic pitch
Throttle (DX_Z_AXIS) Collective
Rudder pedals (DX_ZROT_AXIS) Rudder
Issues
Sound issues remain, the start of speech can be clipped, however the sound seems to be affected by the frame-rate and limiting the frame-rate to 25fps seems to help somewhat.
Key-presses that generate speech, (e.g. landing gear toggle) will only result in audio twice. Toggling a third time will be without speech until an amount of time has passed. I'm not sure if this is intended behaviour or an issue with the game or DirectSound.
Documentation (update)
In addition to patches the www.helosim.com website has a very handy pdf key chart available at the downloads page. This is not the an official key chart since one was never produced, so a big thank you to the anonymous creator.
Good hunting!
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