My Adventures in Retro Adventure Gaming in Vista 64

[TheLonelyPaladin]

My purpose is creating this thread is to document my attempts in running old adventure games in Vista 64, in order to explore what tricks work for what game. If anyone has any tricks of there own, or if anyone has anything they'd like me or someone else here to figure out, please share. Hopefully we can muster all of the "how do I run _____ on a new PC" discussion into one place and offer the best advice to the adventure game community.

[TheLonelyPaladin]

This list thus far (games played start to finish with no game stopping issues, if anyone adds to the thread, I'll add them here. I've got MANY more games than this that I've got working right now, but I won't post them until I can play 100% through with no game-stopping issues):

Sierra:
King Quest VI (Windows MPC): Runs well with Windows 3.1 install in Dosbox, but requires sound card and SVGA drivers see: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=9405 for info on setting up Win3.x compatible sound and SVGA drivers in Dosbox.
Quest For Glory I (Dos VGA): Runs well in Dosbox, no special tricks required
Quest For Glory II: Runs well in Dosbox, no special tricks required
Quest For Glory III: Runs well in Dosbox, no special tricks required
Quest For Glory V: Must install Quest For Glory 5 Update 1.2 and QFG5Win2k and run game in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2 after which game can run natively in Vista64 with no issues, however the patch applications are no 64bit compatible and must be run in a 16 or 32 bit OS, which can be done by in an emulated or Virtual Machine OS, or by simple copying the installation directory to another computer, patching and copying it back.

LucasArts:
Full Throttle (FT95 verison): Runs well in Windows 98SE running in Virtual PC 2007. No special tricks required.
The Curse of Monkey Island: Runs well in ScummVM. No special tricks required.
Loom (VGA CD): Runs well in ScummVM. Requires CD Audio. This can be accomplished by either leaving the game CD in the CD drive, which must be mapped properly within ScummVM, or encoding audio track into MP3, OGG, FLAC and then configuring ScummVM to utilize that instead. For more information see: http://www.scummvm.org/faq.php#id2504814

[TheLonelyPaladin]

The Retro-Gamers Best Friends:

These are things everyone interested in playing old games on a new computer hould have. Many are free, some aren't but don't cost too much and will make you life much happier:

Dosbox(This one's a no brainer! Be sure to keep up with new verisons):
http://www.dosbox.com/

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (It's free, and will allow you to install any virtualized Windows 98SE and up):
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc ... fault.mspx

Windows 98SE (Using this and Virtual PC will give you a OS to run all your old Win9x games that won't run on an NT based OS natively, it's protect by copyright and obviously out of print and unsupported, but can still be had legitimatly for under $20 and it's well worth it):
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid ... Categories
Note: Windows 95, and Windows 98 First Edition are not compatible with Virtual Machine 2007

Windows 3.1 (Really the only use here is games that require extentions that are only compatible with Windows 3x, such as Video For Windows, also boot it up to impress your freinds and settle any arguement about how old software doesn't run in Vista. Remember Windows 3.1 is a DOS shell, not an OS, therefore you can install in it Dosbox).
http://computers.shop.ebay.com/items/Vi ... 86.c0.m282
Note: You'll need video and sounds drivers, you can get them and instructions for using them here:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=9405

ScummVM: a popular virtualization program for running primarily older SCUMM based LucasArts games, but some others as well. I used to think it wasn't particularly useful in Vista64 but then I learned not to suck at using it. My opinion of it it now, is that for the games it supports it's deffinately the way to go
http://www.scummvm.org/

MagicDisc: When dealing with older software there are two major reason why you should always back up your CDs and work off of disc images instead. A) A monted image of an older disc is often more stable in a new operating enviroment, and B) It will save wear and tear on your old discs which may be difficult to replace if damaged. MagicDisc is a robust easy to use freeware program for mounting disc images. Your computer won't know your not using a CD.
http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso- ... istory.htm

[TheLonelyPaladin]

One final note: Just about everything here is available elseware on the internet, and nearly all of it is my re-hashing and/or building upon someone else's work. The reason I thought it should go here, is because with the excellent work AGD has done this has become one of the most active communities for old-school adventure gaming on the internet. Whether long time or first time, just about everyone who has been or will be into adventure gaming is coming here. As such there really is no better place for this discussion.

It should therefore also be said that we all adventure game enthusiests owe AGD a huge debt of gratitude, not just for the great work they've done one their remakes and original projects, but perhaps even more so for bringing the adventure game community together and proving beyond any doubt that the genre is nowhere close to as dead as the industry wishes it was.

[TheLonelyPaladin]

What I'm doing right now:

Overview:
Playing through the entire Kings Quest Collection.
Have aquired every LucasArts Scumm and GrimE Adventure Game made, this is going to take a while.
Expanding my Adventure Game Collection.
Pending release of QFG2VGA will probably slow me down
Next aqusitions will be the Broken Sword series, Blade Runner, and the Gabrial Knight series.

Specific Games:
Playing too many to even list at this point. I'll update the completed list as I finish.

[MusicallyInspired]

Waiting on a giant bundle of LucasArts games to arrive so I can get hot on that.

...

3)The Curse of Monkey Island: Solved several issues but seem to have created new ones. Getting closer though. Aside from a issue that causes cut-scenes to lock up at random times, the game is now playable.

You don't count ScummVM?

[TheLonelyPaladin]

I can't get ScummVM to work right, mainly because I currently have no way of even installing most of the era of LucasArts in a from that ScummVM can work with outside of virtualized Windows 98, but running in virtualized Windows 98 has created it's own crop of problems. I've got a few ideas yet to try.

-edit: ideads involving ScummVM among other things. Which leads me to my next question: Any one know a quick an easy way to take copy files from my .vhd off of my .vhd so I can use them in my host OS?

-edit2: Well it took me all of 5 second to answer my own question. Now I should I should be able to run the game in Vista with ScummVM with no problems.

[MusicallyInspired]

You don't need to install the games for ScummVM to work with them. You just copy the contents of the game CDs onto your hard drive and open them with ScummVM. It actually recommends against playing them from the CDs.

Here's a website for which files are needed from each supported game for playability.

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Datafiles

What problems are you having installing ScummVM itself? It really is the better choice over DOSBox, VDMSound, Virtual PCs or anything really.

[TheLonelyPaladin]

I just suck at ScummVM because I haven't used it as much... I'm learning.

edit: Actually, I get it now! Thanks Music! You have helped me become less stupid.

[Schloss Ritter]

Am I the only one who actually liked Phantasmagoria 2? Guess it comes from being raised on campy horror and sci-fi. I always get sad when [spoiler]a certain character dies late in the game.[/spoiler]

Sure, it's no GK3, and Phantas 1 is more of a pure horror story, but "A Puzzle of Flesh" is entertaining in it's own way.

[TheLonelyPaladin]

I was 17 when Puzzle of Flesh dropped, and I really liked it then mainly because I hadn't really been exposed to as much of that sort of psycological horror, but I don't it's held up very well at least for me. Now days I find having to role play finding my damned wallet so I can get to work on time a little too much like my average day to be entertainment. Also, the dialog is frankly pretty awful even by adventure game standards, especially the romance between the obviously disturbed main character and Ms. I'm So Desparate for Work I'll do Nudity in a Sierra Adventure Game, bad dialog is considaerbly more jarring when they're striving for realism than it is in a cartoony fantasy game.

[Schloss Ritter]

Yeah, I was more intrigued by Curtis's other relationships than the one with his "normal" girlfriend. That and sometimes I don't know bad campy from good camp even if it slaps me in the face. I have to admit that I always thought most of the detective interrogation scenes were pretty shoddily written/acted though.

Sorry to derail... back to Adventures in Vista64 Land.