Clue - Murder at Boddy Mansion

[Matt]

[Gary]

Hey!

I'm probably grasping at straws here because this seems to be a VERY common bug in one of my favourite classic PC games, but your previous patch was so helpful I wondered if you had any ideas.

I'm from the UK and recently found my old copy of Cluedo - Murder at Blackwell Grange (Clue- Murder at Boddy Mansion to others lol!). I managed to install it on my windows 10 system, overcoming the issue of typing my name in with your brilliant patch :-) BUT as I expected/remembered from last time I played, the game either crashes or does this weird thing where once a player has finished their turn it refuses to jump to the next player. This nearly always happens when I'm on the brink of discovering the murderer!! and it happens soooooooo frequently.

I shouldn't complain as this is a very old game now but I just still love playing it! It would not be worth contacting Hasbro about this as I doubt they would have any interest in a product from 1998 and ofcourse any patches that existed and now gone.

Anyway - IF you have any ideas or thoughts I would be really grateful!

Cheers!

[Matt]

Hi Gary!

I HATE that bug. lol. It is aggravating to the point of ruining the game. It's a shame because this is a fantastic version of Clue otherwise.

The bug has been around literally since release ~ it would even do it on my Pentium III Windows 98 PC back in the day, so it's definitely not an operating system issue.

I'll play around with it this week, but I doubt it's fixable. Think it was something hard coded in the game that Hasbro themselves messed up. How something that big slips through testing I don't know.

The only thing you can do in the meantime is save, save, save as you play. That's actually the real point of the patch I put up -- you can simply set Windows 95 compatibility mode and you'll unlock your keyboard, but compatibility mode has the side effect of breaking the in game save feature. With the freeze of death hanging over your head at all times, you have to be able to save or you'll never finish a game.

I wish I had something better...if you're interested, this is the Clue/Cluedo patch that was put out, but it doesn't fix the bug.

Clue/Cluedo Patch 2.2 Link

[Matt]

Hmm...I did a google search and came across this from an old message board post:

"the patch does seem to fix problems with getting stuck on a computer players turn. Sometimes, for example, Mrs. White will apparently roll a 1 on her die, and then move one position and then just sit there. But if you wait long enough the next player will finally get his/her turn."

As silly as it sounds, maybe we just aren't waiting long enough? I'm seriously going to let it sit for like 20 minutes the next time it freezes up. I'd be interested to see if it ever does correct itself.

[Gary]

Hi Matt!

Sorry for the late response back, haven't been online much lately but came across the Cluedo game box today when tidying and rememebered I had asked you a question here lol!

Thanks for replying, I had a feeling the game had always had the same issue, as I remember when I first played it back in like 2003 it did the same annoyingly frustrating usually at a critical game moment crash!!
It really is quite shocking though that Hasbro let this be released with such a major flaw and kinda just left it out there, I did think maybe someone somewhere would have invented a patch for it so I will do like you said and try the patch above and just wait!!! give the characters a chance to move turns a little longer and also hope it maybe helps with the crashing too.

It really is the best Cluedo game out there, even after all this time its still damn good to play! Very good graphics considering the age and also love how its always a different outcome, unlike Hasbro's final Cluedo release 'Cluedo Chronicles' which yes I loved to play as it was a brilliant new format and was a point and click game plus great puzzles....BUT....always ended the with the same murderer etc etc.

Anyway!! thanks again Matt!

[Lane]

I just got this game again and am trying to work it and I downloaded your patch link but it still won't let me add a name. Any other suggestions?

[Matt]

Lane, which version of Windows?

If all else fails you should be able to set Windows 95 or 98 compatibility mode on the clue.exe file and it will let you enter a name at least.

[Lane]

Oh I got it. Thanks! (and I keep losing...)

[Nostalgiastakinganosedive]

Hi there!

I'm honestly at my wits end with this game trying to get it to install, I used to play this game religiously when I was younger and recently I found it again on one of the many retro game sites and was hit with nostalgia of the hours and i mean hours I spent solving the murder. So I've literally scoured through pages and pages of bull to try and find a way to install the game on my Windows 10 pc (honestly, I hate 10) and I keep getting hit with a roadblock, DOS doesn't support me, the compatibility won't support the game it just crashes, I've converted it to a ISO file and mounted it to a virtual drive and I can't even get to the first install page, it just gives me the blue ring and then nadda. How did you guys manage to get the game to load let alone install and play on a Windows 10 PC? I'd appreciate any help! Thank-you!

[Matt]

Hi Nostalgia,

You're going to hate me, but how do I install it in Windows 10? I put in the CD....and run the install.exe. Comes right up. Computers realllllly suck sometimes, don't they?

OK, the first thing that comes to mind is that maybe something is wrong with the download you found -- could try re-downloading the file, or better yet, see if you can find it on a different site. If that's not it, it's likely that another program running on your computer is somehow blocking the setup program from running.

Back when I had Windows 8, I had to disable a bunch of pre-installed HP junk -- a LOT of older games wouldn't install for me until I did that. They'd do the same "spinning blue circle to nowhere" deal you describe.

I don't know how "techie" you are, but I would look at the startup section of Task Manager and try disabling any non-essential programs listed. If you need help with how to do that, let me know and I can walk you through it.

If all else fails, we can probably copy the files off of the CD ourselves and have it work, but it will be a little tricky. The folder structure on the CD is all over the place.

[Dana]

Hey so uh I can't seem to get the game running past "entering the mansion" I check the error file and it says unable to load (insert name here) for a good amount of things like the ballroom, the players, etc. I installed it, uninstalled it, I'm running it in compatibility mode and everything but no dice. Any suggestions? (I'm on windows 7 64 bit OS)

[Matt]

Hi Dana -- could you post up a screenshot of what happens when you try to enter the mansion? Or the text of the error log file?

I had something sort of like that once before - except in my case the game would crash before the intro video would load. Wish I could remember exactly what I did...I think I used the K-Lite Codec pack to fix the AVI video Codec inside Windows.

[Mike]

About the patch cluepatch.exe, I downloaded it and extracted the files it contained using Universal Extractor. In the metadata of one of the files, patch.exe, is the comment "Utility to update Clue/Cludeo from version 2.00 to version 2.2."

My Clue CD, one distributed in cereal by General Mills, (c) 2000, is version 2.2 already, so I didn't apply the patch. I found my CD's version by opening one of its files, Data.tag, with Notepad. Thought this might be of some interest.

[CowboyJoseph64]

I have the general mills CD, and it won't run at all. I managed to install it, but if I try to launch clue.exe, it briefly shows the picture then just closes itself. If I try to open it from menu.exe, it'll say it couldn't find clue.exe.

[CowboyJoseph64]

oh yeah, and I'm running on windows 10 upgraded from windows 7.