Blank Text Glitch
Certain computers, for whatever reason, may render the text of the game invisible, specifically in the blue MSX dialogue windows. This is a big problem when using the Hand Scanner.
Note that this is not referring to receiving garbled text from tablets. That is normal, and you need the Glyph Reader to decipher them. This glitch will make even the signs, skeletons, and F4 window appear as blank.
To fix the problem, you can try to run the game in a windowed mode (Alt+Enter). This may fix the issue, but see below for grey box issue. Fixing the grey box issue by running in reduced color reintroduces the blank text bug.
If it doesn't work, or if you wish to run in Full Screen mode, then download the following file:
English Version Japanese Version
Make a copy of the "font.bmp" file in your La-Mulana Graphics folder, and put it somewhere else. This is just in case something goes wrong, in which case you can put the file back the way it was.
Place the new font.bmp file you downloaded and place it into the graphics folder where the old one was. Rename it to font.bmp if necessary.
If the above doesn't work, then you need to manually edit the bitmap file with a hex editor. Open font.bmp with any hex editor, go to hex offsets B2-B4 (these values store the colour of the font) and change the values to F7 F7 F7. No more, no less. Do NOT do this unless neither the original, nor the fix here works.
This bug is caused by whether your display driver truncates or rounds when converting to 16 bit color. The original graphic works only if your display driver truncates. 31 in 5 bits a channel corresponds to 255 in 8 bits a channel. 30 corresponds to 246. 247 truncates to 30, but rounds to 31. and 247 decimal is $f7 hex, which is our magic fix value.
The real fix is to patch the binary to subtract at least 9 from the channel instead of subtracting 1, if someone knows how to.
Vista Music Problems
If you have the following problems, installing Service Pack 2 will likely fix it.
The SSCC variety of music may not play. Fortunately, the SC88 variety will still play, but it still seems to glitch on some fields (The Dimensional Corridor and True Shrine of the Mother come to mind), as well as the instruments gradually becoming desynchronized over extended play. As of now, there is no known way to fix this. If the music glitches while playing on one of these fields or otherwise, switch to SSCC (if you're on one of the glitched fields, leave it first, because the game will crash if you try to switch within them), then back to SC88 immediately, and it will be fixed.
You can also fix this problem so that the SSCC music will play by downloading dmusic, dmime, dmband and dmsynth .dll files and placing them in the folder with the La-Mulana exe.
Windows 7/Vista Problems
Windows 7 does not handle paletted games very well in fullscreen mode and will corrupt the color palette. There have also been transparency issues reported that may be linked to it but may be caused by Aero.
First, open the screen resolution window (by right clicking the desktop and selecting it there). Now, just leave the window open (do not minimize it) and start the game normally. This should solve the problem.
If that doesn't work, try running in windowed mode. Just press alt+enter at any time after the game is launched. this should fix any color issues. if that doesn't work either, keep reading.
Alternatively try disabling Aero since if it enabled to see if it fixes transparency issues.
If transparency issues persist or you have palette corruption, try creating a batch file (lamulana.bat) with the following text in the La Mulana folder:
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe lamulana.exe pause explorer.exe
Then use the batch file to run the game. You will likely need admin rights though. You can also kill and restart explorer.exe manually.
Windows 2000
This problem occurs on Windows 2000 SP4 running Direct X 8 and 11. The batch file doesn't work because Windows 2000 doesn't have a taskkill command on the command prompt. There might also be some problems with text displaying after installing the English patch. As a solution, run La Mulana in Windowed mode. It should now work correctly.
IndieVolume Problems
If you are running Windows XP, and also have IndieVolume installed on your computer, La-Mulana's music will not play. Even when IndieVolume isn't running, the problem still persists. The problem is that IndieVolume will not let La-Mulana change music devices in the F5 menu. You won't have any music, and when you check the F5 menu, no sound device will be enabled. This can be normal the first time you run La-Mulana, but normally you should be able to just hit Left or Right and it will enable a sound device. However, with IndieVolume, you won't be able to do so.
- Solutions
Ending the IndieVolume will work in theory (via task manager processes or something else) before you load La-Mulana. However, IndieVolume does have an idle process running, even when IndieVolume isn't running itself. If all else fails, then try uninstalling IndieVolume.
Later versions of windows do not need IndieVolume, and let you adjust per application volume with their new mixer without breaking La Mulana's music, but have their own issues, especially 8 and 10.
Windows 8/10 Grey Borders around Sprites Problem
If you are running Windows 8/8.1 or 10, you may see grey borders around sprites in Windowed Mode. The culprit is DWM, the Desktop Window Manager, and it's desktop composition feature that tries to let windowed apps run in their native color mode (which is 16 bit for La Mulana) while your desktop is in 32 bit color.
Solution
Credit goes to blinkled of Reddit for this solution (https://www.reddit.com/r/lamulana/comments/5cm828/finally_fixed_the_grey_sprite_glitch_in_windows_10/). Close the game if it is still running, right-click on lamulana.exe and select Properties. Click on the Compatibility tab and tick 'Reduced color mode'. Either 8-bit (256) or 16-bit (65536) colour in the dropdown box below it will do. Run the game again and the grey borders should have disappeared. This may hurt performance on your computer, though. If so you will just have to play fullscreen.
Notice
If you modified the font.bmp with a hex editor to fix the Blank Text Glitch, you must set Reduced Color Mode to 16-bit, not 8-bit, or the text will still not display
.