Playing SoF1 on 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate as a standard user
Running an old game like Soldier of Fortune on modern hardware and operating systems is pretty easy. There's no need to waste bandwith on downloading special editions. All that's needed is your original Soldier of Fortune Platinum CD (or older version with Raven updates for 1.07f) and one small patch. I only tested this on the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, but other versions of Windows 7 are probably similar.
Installation by an administrator user
- SoF1 Platinum can be installed from the original CD by an administrator user. Start the installer and simply accept the defaults on the istallation screens to install SoF1 in the default location at 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Raven\SOF PLATINUM\'.
- Manually create an empty 'user' directory 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Raven\SOF PLATINUM\user\'.
- You can skip this if you are using a recent SoFplus client: Install a fixed 'ref_gl.dll' in 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Raven\SOF PLATINUM\'. You can download the fixed version here. Without the fix, some new graphics drivers may make your SoF1 crash while starting.
Playing SoF1 as a standard user
- Simply start SoF1 with the existing desktop shortcut.
Configuration files, logfiles, downloads, screenshots and recorded demos can't be written to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Raven\SOF PLATINUM\user\', so Windows will write them to 'C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Raven\SOF PLATINUM\user\' instead. Note that 'AppData' is a hidden directory.
You can specify a custom location for the user directory:
- Create an empty directory in your home directory: 'C:\Users\USERNAME\sof1\'
- Create a copy of the existing SoF1 desktop shortcut
- Modify the new desktop shortcut by right-cliking on it and selecting 'Properties'
- Change the shortcut target and add the location of the new user directory to it: '"C:\Program Files (x86)\Raven\SOF PLATINUM\SoF.exe" +set console 1 +set logfile 3 +set user C:/Users/USERNAME/sof1'
