Installing TriTryst

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Obtaining TriTryst

TriTryst is not available in any store of which I am aware.  Certainly, you won't find it in any of the major gaming outlets.  The game is almost 8 years old as I write this.  It never was a huge seller, so finding actual CDs or diskettes is not very likely.  If you already have a copy of the game on CD or diskette, you can skip to the Installation section.

As of March 31, 2011, you can still download TriTryst from http://www.hotud.org/component/content/article/41-puzzle/20879.  There is a link on that page that will take you to the download site.  You might have to enable popups in your browser in order for the download link to work correctly.

I make no claims as to the legality of obtaining the game from the above-mentioned site or any other download location.

The downloaded file is called tritryst.zip, and is approximately 6,600 KB in length. This will take 20 minutes or more to download with a 56 KB modem.  Download the file to your Windows Desktop.

Installation

I have used the following instructions to install TriTryst on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. I have no reason to believe that they would not work on Windows ME or Windows NT4. However, there might be compatibility problems running the game on Windows NT4.  If you have TriTryst on CD and you're trying to install it on Windows 2000 or Windows XP, skip to the section titled "Manual Installation of TriTryst from CD."

Extracting and installing the program requires many steps because the downloaded file contains compressed copies of the files from the six original distribution diskettes. Once you get everything installed, you can make a copy of the installation directory and use that to install the program on other computers.

The following instructions assume that you downloaded the file to your Desktop and that you're going to install the program on your C drive.

  1. Create a new directory on your C: drive called TTINSTAL.
  2. Move the file tritryst.zip from the Desktop to the C:\TTINSTAL directory.
  3. Double-click on the tritryst.zip file to load the file.  In Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT4, or Windows 2000, you will need WinZip or a similar extractor tool. In Windows XP, the Zip file explorer is built in.
  4. There are six files in this archive, named tritryst1, tritryst2, etc.  Extract these files from the archive into the C:\TTINSTAL directory.
  5. Close the extractor program or Zip file explorer.
  6. Your C:\TTINSTAL directory should now have 7 files: the original tritryst.zip file, and the six smaller .zip files.
  7. Double-click on tritryst1.zip to start your Zip explorer program.
  8. Extract all of the files in tritryst1.zip into the C:\TTINSTAL directory.  Be careful here, because the extractor program might try to put the files into a different directory.
  9. After extracting all of the files in tritryst1.zip, close your zip explorer.
  10. Double-click on tritryst2.zip to start the zip explorer program.  Again, extract all the files here, being sure that the destination path is set to C:\TTINSTAL.  When files are being extracted, the program will probably prompt you to overwrite some files.  You can safely say "Yes" or "Yes to All" when asked if you want to overwrite.
  11. Close the zip explorer program.
  12. Repeat steps 10 and 11 with tritryst3.zip, tritryst4.zip, tritryst5.zip, and tritryst6.zip.  Once you have completed these steps, your TTINSTAL directory should contain the zip files and about 15 other files that were extracted.
  13. Double-click on the INSTALL.EXE program in your C:\TTINSTAL directory.  This program will create the actual game setup files from the extracted distribution files that you just created.
  14. The program starts by asking you for the Source Directory.  This should be set to the directory from which you ran the INSTALL program.  In this case, it's C:\TTINSTAL.  Press the Enter key to move to the Destination Directory field.
  15. The Destination Directory field will automatically be set to C:\TRITRYST.  You don't want that.  Change it to C:\TTINSTAL\SETUP.
  16. Press Enter and the program will create the SETUP directory.
  17. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the C:\TTINSTAL\SETUP directory.

Okay, time to take a little break here and explain a few things.  Things were a lot different when I wrote TriTryst in 1995.  It was one of the first commercial games for Windows 95, and one of the first to use DirectX, which also was new in 1995.   Back then, not everybody had DirectX on their computers, so we shipped a copy of DirectX 1.0 to be installed automatically if it wasn't already there.  If you run the TriTryst setup program (SETUP.EXE) , it will check to see if DirectX is installed.  If it isn't, SETUP will try to install it.  There are two reasons I wouldn't recommend running the SETUP.EXE program:  first, if you want DirectX, go to Microsoft's site (http://www.microsoft.com/directx) and get the latest version.  Second, it's just possible that SETUP might try to copy DirectX 1.0 over the top of the latest version.  This would be very bad.

In 1995, Windows NT was at version 3.51, and it didn't support DirectX so TriTryst wouldn't run.  The SETUP program was designed to detect Windows NT and refuse to install on that platform.  Because of this, if you're running Windows NT4, Windows 2000, or Windows XP, SETUP.EXE will report the following error:

TriTryst setup error:
TriTryst requires Windows 95.
It will not run under Win32s or Windows NT.

TriTryst will  run on Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, provided that you have a compatible version of DirectX installed.  But the SETUP program won't run on these systems.

For the reasons listed above, I suggest that you perform the manual installation steps given below rather than running the SETUP.EXE program.

Compatibility Mode

In order to run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP, TriTryst requires a feature of Windows called "Compatibility Mode."  This feature is included and enabled by default in Windows XP, but in Windows 2000 you have to enable it yourself.

Compatibility Mode was introduced with Windows 2000 Service Pack 2.  To enable the feature, you have to do the following:

  1. Click on your Start menu, and then click Run.
  2. In the Open box, type regsvr32 c:\windows\apppatch\slayerui.dll, and then click OK.

If your Windows directory is something other than c:\windows, then you'll need to substitute that directory name.

For full information about Compatibility Mode, see Microsoft's support article How To Enable Application Compatibility-Mode Technology in Windows 2000 SP2 and SP3.

Manual Installation of TriTryst

  1. There are two folders in the C:\TTINSTAL\SETUP directory: DIRECTX and TRITRYST. Using Windows Explorer, right-click the mouse and drag the TRITRYST folder from this directory to your C:\ directory. When you release the mouse, you will be asked if you want to Move or Copy. Click on Copy.
  2. Navigate to the C:\TRITRYST directory.
  3. Right-click on the TRITRYST.EXE program and select "Create Shortcut" from the popup menu.  Then drag the "Shortcut to TRITRYST.EXE" file to your Desktop or wherever else you want it.
  4. If you are running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows NT4, skip to step 9.
  5. (Steps 5 through 8 are for Windows 2000 and Windows XP) Right-click on the shortcut and select Properties from the pop-up menu.  Windows will display the Properties dialog box.
  6. Click on the Compatibility tab of this dialog box.  If you don't see the Compatibility tab, see the note above.
  7. Under "Compatibility mode," check the box next to "Run this program in compatibility mode for:", and make sure that the drop-down box is set to "Windows 95".
  8. Click the OK button to save your changes.
  9. To run the program, double-click on the shortcut.

Manual Installation of TriTryst from CD

The CD drive contains the same directory structure as the C:\TTINSTAL\SETUP directory described in "Manual Installation of TriTryst".  Assuming that your CD drive is D, you can install TriTryst from the CD by copying the D:\TRITRYST directory from the CD onto your C:\ drive, creating C:\TRITRYST.  Then just follow the Manual Installation, starting at step 2.

Copying the TriTryst installation

If you want to install TriTryst on other computers, you don't have to go through all of those steps.  The C:\TRITRYST directory that you created has all of the files that you need to run the game.  You can make a copy of that directory on a CD, copy it across the network, or make a Zip of it and extract it on another computer.  Remember to set the compatibility mode if you're running Windows 2000 or Windows XP.