KQ2VGA Black Screen

[Sotaria]

In updating all my games for XP I have NOT had a problem until I came to KQ2VGA.  All my other AGS games work fine after I tamper with the setup, but KQ2VGA still displays the black screen no matter what I do!  My drivers, ect. are up to date as all other AGS games run fine so what am I doing wrong?

[strazer]

I think the KQ remakes use full motion video for the intros.
Can you play the game if you try to skip the intro by pressing the ESC key?
Do you hear any sound when the black screen appears?
Have you tried changing some options in the game's setup?

[Sotaria]

Yup.  ESC does not work.  There is no sound in the background, just a black screen.  I have also tried every possible combo on the setup and compatibility.  Interestingly, I tried KQ1VGA, KQ2VGA, and KQ3VGA.  KQ3 runs fine but both of the first two have the black screen.  I think KQ3 was done by someone else, however.  The first two were Tierra.

[strazer]

In updating all my games for XP I have NOT had a problem until I came to KQ2VGA.

And what about your previous thread that's still on the front page? You talk about video lock ups there, isn't this the same problem?

[SSH]

Try the AGDI forums: http://www.agdiforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php1078

And then I renamed 1.vf1 and 2.vf2 and game runs fine.  These files were the issue on KQ1 aswell.

If we do another release of the game, I'll remove those .vf1 and .vf2 files from the game directory. They are not really necessary anymore.

However, in KQ2VGA you should not touch the 3.vf3 file at all. If you delete/rename the other two, it will still work fine, but 3.vf3 is required for the mirror cutscene to play, so you should leave that one fully intact.

[Sotaria]

On the previous thread ... I got all the AGS games working after updating Windows Media Player and the Dvix.

On this problem, I headed on over to Tierra's site and found the answer.  The .vf* do not work with Media Player files anymore.  Delete or rename all but .vf3 and the games run although I do get error messages on the splash screen.  Weird but true.  Funny thing is those both work with the .vf* files on my other computer, an XP laptop!

[strazer]

These vf files are the videos themselves, so if you rename them they can't be found and thus not played anymore and all you get is an error message and can resume playing.
vf1 and vf2 are merely the Tierra logo at the beginning of the game, but vf3 is a cutscene and if you leave that one intact, won't the game lock up again when the cutscene is supposed to be played later in the game?

To properly solve this it would be important to find out why your PC can't play those movies.
You can use a utility like GSpot to find out what codec the videos were compressed with and install the appropriate one.
If you just can't get it to work, another way would be to convert the videos to another, more compatible codec that works on your system. I think VirtualDub can do this.

Edit:

The ReadMe says they use the MPG codec for the videos. They suggest to re-install that. Anyone knows where to get it and how to do it?