HOWTO: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain on Win7/10

Blood Omen was originally ported to the PC in 1997, when Windows 95 was still the standard. Because of its age and a number of quirks in its design, it will not run on newer systems without a bit of help.

This guide is for those who actually wish to play this game on operating systems like Windows 7, 10 ... or even Vista or 2000.

Downloading...

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kain:

Vae Victis - suffering to the conquered. Ironic that now I was the one suffering. Not anything as pedestrian as physical pain. Rather the cruel jab of impotent anger - the hunger for revenge. I didn’t care if I was in Heaven or Hell - all I wanted was to kill my assassins. Sometimes you get what you wish for. The Necromancer Mortanius offered me a chance for vengeance, and, like a fool, I jumped at his offer without considering the cost. Nothing is free. Not even...revenge.

All you will need for this tutorial, is installation (preferably an ISO file or a physical disk), a patch and a tool specifically designed to force CPU usage called "CPU-Grabber".

I won't post the download link to the ISO, because I'm not sure if I have rights to do so, unless you know a reason why should the game be free. Instead, here's the essentials for the game to run...

1. 1. Download the patch (dropbox link): Click here [www.dropbox.com]
   
2. 2. Download the CPU-Grabber (dropbox link): Click here [www.dropbox.com]
   
3. 3. Assuming that you have the installation of the game, we can continue to the Installation part...

Originally posted by wrace
Additional patches (includes fix for video): Click here [onedrive.live.com] Huge shotouts to him! :)

Installing the game

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kain:

Their sneering faces were forever etched upon my memory. I had cross death for this moment. My mind was empty, save for one thought - I would kill!

1. Extract a shortcut of "SPLASH.EXE" from the disk/iso file contents. Either with tools like Daemon Tools or built in mount capability of Windows 10. Just place it on desktop or other easily accessible place. In the properties of shortcut, select to run in in compatibilty mode for "Windows 98/ Windows ME". This is so that installation would not get confused, because of your large disk storage space, due to the fact that at the time, hard drives were of a much smaller capacity
   
2. Launch the shortcut and install the game (default: C:/Program Files/KAIN)
   
3. Apply the patch "kain_setup.exe" and choose your current installation directory after selecting that Kain is already installed (default: C:/Program Files/KAIN)

That's about it for setting the game up...

How to PLAY

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kain:

Reputed to have been ripped from the chest of the greatest vampire to have ever existed, Janos Audron, the Heart of Darkness restores vampiric unlife. Life is precious, Janos discovered - as it was torn throbbing and bleeding from his own body.

To play the game, just launch the previously downloaded "cpugrab.exe" and select to use 60%-80% of the CPU power, press "start". This step might not be important, but it should solve issues with game freezing at the Tavern.

Now just launch "KAIN.exe" from its directory (default: C:/Program Files/KAIN).

Videos might have color issues, but other than that, game should run fine.
These screenshots are actual screenshots from in-game on Windows 7 using "Print Screen" function... yes, you can actually do alt+tab and it shouldn't crash the game or glich up your screen

Game launcher (*.bat)

If you have cpugrab.exe in the same directory as the main game and you use CPU Grabber to run the game, due to compatibility issues, you can create a custom game launcher in the game directory with *.bat extension, like this:

@ECHO OFF
CLS
COLOR 0A
mode con:cols=58 lines=14

:menu
CLS
ECHO.
ECHO          "Blood Omen - Legacy of Kain" Launcher
ECHO ==========================================================
ECHO.
ECHO              1. Start the Game (Recommended + CPUGrabber)
ECHO              2. Start the Game
ECHO              3. Exit
ECHO.
set choice=
set /p choice=Option:
if '%choice%'=='1' goto optone
if '%choice%'=='2' goto opttwo
if '%choice%'=='3' goto optthree
ECHO "%choice%" is not available
TIMEOUT 2
GOTO menu

:optone
ECHO Starting CPUGrabber...
ECHO Recommended settings - Grab 60 CPU
start cpugrab.exe
pause
ECHO Starting KAIN...
start KAIN.exe
goto optthree

:opttwo
ECHO Starting KAIN...
start KAIN.exe
goto optthree

:optthree
TIMEOUT 4

[QWEEDDY2]

Shalade
For old games almost all Steam release are come from GOG (and based on GOG). Yes. But at same time, not all GOG release are come to Steam. There is four Army Men instalments on Steam, but it be 5 on GOG.
There is a little bit more. And some are temporary exclusives. So it is 50/50 that BO1 are come to Steam.

Even with build-in wrappers i suppose it wont be support Steam Overlay, so Steam support be not 100% complete. But Verok's one that didnt change any files should be ok for Steam Overlay - it work for his other games solutions.

[Demon of Elru]

Yup I got my GOG copy and I will get it again if it comes on Steam. I have it on PS1 and PS3 as well.

[Shalade Kandara]

Blood Omen is currently on GOG.com for $6.99, hopefully that means a steam release will be forthcoming.

[QWEEDDY2]

Installing game from CD keep most part of the game on CD. Using some cracks and fixes (that include no-cd cracking)(same for Verok's GL wrapper that also been no-cd) - dont forget to copy files from CD.

Also, Blood Omnicide is good. And almost complete technically.

[QWEEDDY2]

There is no problem with installation for me for any oldest games on any drive (including ones with more than 2 TB free space). I know that happened. Just use path like X:\Games\BO-LoK\ . Better even without "_" (actual for DOS filesystems).
Too long, special symbols, non-latin symbols spaces and even "_" lead to "not enough space" error.
Create that folder before installation.

Ofc start autorun manually and as "as admin".

[Cignificant]

I can't download Verok's patch any clue why?

[Raziel]

@Shunso hey bro did you ever find a fix for your save game issue?

[Danteu]

I refuse to buy BO2 so sadly I can't rate this guide. (thumbs up for you)

[Nameless One]

BadTanMan, thanks.

[Demon of Elru]

Thanks I will have to try this out!