Welcome back hachiman When I saw the name on the index screen, I thought oh, another hachiman. But it turns out you are the real deal.

I'm going to move this topic to the Apothecary for you. You will be able to reply to any questions or comments in that forum.

BTW, I recently gave STW a try. I have a Radeon 9700 (and XP) and noticed no dark map. I did note the text/speech out of synch though. When I exit STW, the game freezes, but I can use the task manager to end process on it. I think I only exited normally once in about a dozen tries.