The Carmageddon games — the original (1997) and Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now (1998), both from Stainless Software — practically invented vehicular mayhem, and both predate everything modern Windows takes for granted. Carmageddon 2 in particular got a full investigation from DxWnd’s developer ghotik in the project’s forum, down to registry entries and which executable actually plays sound. This guide covers both games using his findings; where a report comes from a single user and he could not reproduce it, it says so.
Carmageddon 2 is three programs, not one
The first thing the forum work makes clear is the architecture. What you launch from the desktop, carma2.exe, is only a frontend. The actual game engines are two separate executables: Carma2_SW.exe, the software/DirectX engine, and Carma2_HW.exe, the Glide engine — which also accepts a -D3D command-line parameter to run on Direct3D instead. For DxWnd profiles, the engines are the interesting targets, and knowing they exist explains most of this game’s quirks, starting with sound.
What ghotik’s investigation found
The frontend can silence the game. In his tests, launching Carmageddon 2 through the frontend left the game with no audio at all, under both of DxWnd’s injection methods, while starting the engine executables directly produced working sound effects. His theory is that the frontend locks something in the audio path. The practical advice follows directly: if your windowed Carmageddon 2 is mute, point the profile at Carma2_SW.exe or Carma2_HW.exe and launch the engine, not the frontend. Set the profile up the usual way (see how to use DxWnd) and just choose the engine as the target.
The game may need its registry entries. The original engines look for their install in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SCi\Carmageddon2, in the ExecutableLocation and SourceLocation values. When those are missing or wrong — common with a copied or relocated install — DxWnd’s virtual registry can supply them per-profile, exactly as ghotik’s test configuration did, alongside a virtual CD drive letter for the game’s data disc. When those values are absent or point at a folder the game no longer lives in, the engine cannot locate its own installation — the class of failure that presents as the game demanding its CD, opening on the wrong drive, or exiting before it starts. Supplying the values virtually fixes the game’s view of the world without touching your real registry or reinstalling anything, which is exactly why ghotik reached for the virtual registry in his tests. This is advanced profile surgery; how DxWnd profiles work explains where per-profile settings like these live, and why an imported profile can carry them for you. Note the original CD engines are also SafeDisc-protected, which is a separate modern-Windows obstacle that DxWnd does not bypass — one more reason the GOG release (below) is the path of least resistance.
One reported error the developer could not reproduce. A forum user reported a “Cannot find EXE” failure when using the Detours form of the extended hook. Ghotik states he could not reproduce it. If you hit it anyway, the engine-direct route above sidesteps the frontend path entirely — but file it under “reported once”, not “known bug”.
Which engine should your profile target?
Since both engines accept DxWnd profiles, pick deliberately. Carma2_SW.exe is the software renderer — the look closest to how the game shipped in 1998, and the simpler target: no Glide translation in the chain. Carma2_HW.exe is the Glide engine; run bare, it expects a Glide environment modern PCs do not have, but with its -D3D parameter it speaks Direct3D instead, which is the form in which DxWnd can window it conventionally. If one engine misbehaves on your machine, the other is a genuinely different code path, not a settings variation — worth trying before concluding the game will not window. Either way, the frontend lesson from ghotik’s tests stands: whichever engine you choose, launching it directly, rather than through carma2.exe, is what kept the sound alive in his configuration.
One more item from his test setup deserves emphasis because it generalises to many CD-era games: the data problem. Carmageddon 2 wants its CD. Ghotik’s configuration gave the game a virtual CD drive letter inside DxWnd’s virtual environment, alongside those virtual registry values, so the engine found its data where it expected it. DxWnd’s virtual-registry and CD options exist for precisely this generation of games — titles that hardcoded drive letters and install paths when both were safe assumptions. If a profile from the forum seems to contain odd registry entries, that is what they are for; do not clean them up.
Carmageddon 1 notes
For the first game, the forum record is thinner and this guide keeps it that way. The documented item is about CD music volume: with DxWnd’s Sound options set to play CD audio and emulate the mixer, the CD track volume could not be adjusted separately — only the general volume responded. In other words, expect to balance music against effects at the master level rather than per-channel. There are also community reports of the first game’s window being processed oddly (sitting in a screen corner), which is the general class of problem covered by window size and position settings. Beyond that, the standard DxWnd flow — profile on the game executable, current build, launch from DxWnd — is what the evidence supports, and nothing more specific is claimed here.
Where to get Carmageddon legally
Both games are sold DRM-free on GOG: Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now and the original as the Carmageddon Max Pack. The GOG builds are also the easiest way past the CD-era protection and registry expectations described above. (That is an ordinary store link; this site may earn a commission on purchases in future, as explained in our disclaimer.)
Scope note: everything documented above comes from single-player testing. The forum threads behind this guide do not cover the games’ period LAN multiplayer modes, and this guide makes no claims about them — network play in late-90s titles is its own compatibility topic, separate from getting the game windowed.
More game-specific setups live on the DxWnd games hub. Sources: ghotik’s Carmageddon 2 configuration posts in the v2.06.12 release thread and the DxWnd window-processing thread, on SourceForge.