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Ballance(2004)

Ballance Setup Guide

Updated 3 years ago by Jezs

As is the case with most old PC games, setting up Ballance to run smoothly on a modern day PC isn't so straightforward. Thankfully, it's not too hard as long as you know what to do. This guide will cover the steps necessary to get Ballance working properly on a Windows 10 machine.

Install Ballance

Note: If you install Ballance from a game disc you are required to have the disc in your disc drive in order to launch the game. You can get around this by using a virtual disc drive to mount a Ballance ISO, however it is much easier to purchase and install the game from Steam or GOG.

Level 13 (Twilight Zone) can be downloaded from the Resources tab. Installation instructions are included.

Set Compatibility Mode to Windows 95 for Player.exe

After the game installs it should create a shortcut on your desktop. Launching from this shortcut will start Startup.exe which is a launcher, which will then launch Player.exe after selecting "Play Ballance". It is Player.exe that you want to change the compatibility of.

Right click the Ballance shortcut and select "Open file location".
Open the Bin folder and find Player.exe.
Right click Player.exe and select Properties.
Under the compatibilty tab, check "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and select Windows 95.

Note: Using compatibility mode will force the program to run as administrator. Because of this, you must make sure your split program, OBS, etc. are also running as administrator to work correctly. (Right click the program icon, then select "Run as administrator".)

3a) Playing in Fullscreen

If you choose to speedrun Ballance in fullscreen, the following steps apply to you:

Set "Perform scaling on" to GPU in NVIDIA control panel.

Right click your desktop and select "NVIDIA Control Panel".
Under the Display tab, select "Adjust desktop size and position".
Set "Perform scaling on" to GPU.

Limit and display the game's frame rate.

Playing Ballance in fullscreen mode allows the game to run with an unlimited frame rate. This is problematic as playing at higher frame rates will cause Ballance to actually run faster in almost every aspect. To prevent this from making the speedrun too ridiculous, the rules state the frame rate must be limited at 240fps maximum and the frame rate must be displayed on screen at all times during the run.

There are multiple ways to limit and display the frame rate, but I personally use RivaTuner Statistics Server.

Click here to view my settings.

Note: Make sure the settings apply to Player.exe and not Startup.exe. You must launch the game from Player.exe directly for RivaTuner to limit and display the frame rate.

3b) Playing in Windowed Mode

If you choose to speedrun Ballance in windowed mode, the following steps apply to you:

Download and run the registry file from Resources.
Setup a frame rate display.

The game rules state the game's frame rate must be limited to 240fps or lower and displayed on screen at all times during the run. Running Ballance in a window will automatically limit the frame rate to 60fps, however it is still required to have a frame rate display.

There are a number of ways to setup a frame rate display. I recommend Fraps or RivaTuner Statistics Server. If you are playing the Steam version, you can alternately enable the FPS counter in Steam settings.