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Question about DOS

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 5:19 am
by mikej23ca
Does anyone know if I will be able to play QFG II on my DOS-based system when it is released?

I just built a new(slow) system for all of my older games and I am hoping it will work.

Re: Question about DOS

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 6:00 am
by Blackthorne519
mikej23ca wrote:Does anyone know if I will be able to play QFG II on my DOS-based system when it is released?

I just built a new(slow) system for all of my older games and I am hoping it will work.
No, AGS(the engine used to make QFG2VGA) runs in Windows only.  You'd have to play it on a newer computer.


Bt

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 9:16 am
by Music Head
You my frined wasted your time, You can get your odl games to work on the latest and greatest with Dos Box

Dos Box Site

Question about DOS

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 11:13 am
by Moses
I have to disagree Frode

I tried DOSBOX.  So much wouldn't work, that I scrapped it and rebuilt an old DOS machine.  Everything works now.

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:05 pm
by Music Head
Oh, It's a shame that you had to go to those measures though

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:04 pm
by Kurdt
Well, it's just better in general to run the games on the machines they were intended to run on. I mean, I have an old Pentium 1 that I use in conjunction with NewRisingSun's patches and VDMSound to play my games. Sometimes, I machine is just too high-end for anything to work well. *shrug*

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 5:12 am
by mikej23ca
No, AGS(the engine used to make QFG2VGA) runs in Windows only.
So, could I use windows 3.1?
You my frined wasted your time, You can get your odl games to work on the latest and greatest with Dos Box
And I've tried many many DOS emulators and nothing seems to work quite as well as just a plain ol' 486.  Besides, I already had the parts laying aroud, so it wasnt a waste of time for me.  More of a joyous feeling of nostalgia.

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 5:14 am
by Music Head
On my old computer i mean really old. I could never get any sierra games to work well with my sounblaster 16

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 8:23 am
by Kurdt
Well you can't go back too far. You have to get the "most current" 486 that was on the market at the time. Just any old 486 wouldn't do it. You gotta have something that someone from 1995 would drool over for hours. You can't have something that's closer to a 386 or something. That'll just mess you up.

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 8:36 am
by Erpy
Eh, you really don't want to run QFG2VGA in Windows 3.1 on a 486. Try to get a Pentium 3 500 Mhz at least with either Windows 98 or Windows XP.

Image

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 9:53 am
by Peter Swinkels
On my old computer i mean really old. I could never get any sierra games to work well with my sounblaster 16
That's odd, I know of several older SCI games from Sierra that seem to have trouble working with a Sound Blaster Pro but work fine with a Sound Blaster 16 card. (This seems to apply to wave sound, midi music seems to work fine on both cards though.)  Did you play those games that had trouble with your Sound Blaster 16 under MS-DOS? If so maybe the Blaster environment parameter wasn't set correctly. The parameter should at least contain the soundcard's base address.

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 1:02 pm
by Music Head
Erpy wrote:Eh, you really don't want to run QFG2VGA in Windows 3.1 on a 486. Try to get a Pentium 3 500 Mhz at least with either Windows 98 or Windows XP.
What about Windows ME?

oh, wait don't even go there  :lol

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 2:10 pm
by navynuke04
You have to remember that the games are designed to run on today's systems, not older systems. We have a lot of reports that get solved when people upgrade to the latest DirectX drivers, etc. I shudder to think what kind of error you'd get if you were trying to run the games on a system that old.

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 6:37 pm
by El_Listo
MSDOS is somehow attractive.

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 6:13 am
by Music Head
Mabey because compared to Windows Xp you had control of your PC

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:22 am
by johnb4467
El_Listo wrote:MSDOS is somehow attractive.
Hehe, DOS was awesome for a few reasons...a major one being that, at that point in time, to know DOS and be able to work on computers actually meant something -- now anyone can click in windowsxp and 'do their thing'.
And yes, DOS gave wonderful control...though I DID despise that 640K conventional memory barrier!!! [QEMM to the rescue!!!]
I just started running Linux and it feels like a blast back to the DOS days; kinda exciting, but also reminds me how conformed to windows I've become...  :x

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 12:13 pm
by Peter Swinkels
You have to remember that the games are designed to run on today's systems, not older systems. We have a lot of reports that get solved when people upgrade to the latest DirectX drivers, etc. I shudder to think what kind of error you'd get if you were trying to run the games on a system that old.
I think it would be interesting to try it, just for the fun of it. I think that any Windows program (be it 3.x, 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP) would simply say it won't work in DOS Mode on any type of (IBM compatible) system when you try to execute it from MS-DOS or DOS mode. I would love to see what would happen if you tried to execute some Windows 95 or 98 from Windows 3.x...  Windows NT/XP/2000 programs generally give a  "A device attached to the system is not functioning." error when executed from Windows 95, 98 or ME. Do games using the AGS engine check what processor is installed? If not the games will probably simply freeze or not perfom certain tasks properly or crash with some error message if the processor is too old.
Erpy wrote:
Eh, you really don't want to run QFG2VGA in Windows 3.1 on a 486. Try to get a Pentium 3 500 Mhz at least with either Windows 98 or Windows XP.


What about Windows ME?

oh, wait don't even go there  
Theoretically Windows ME should work on a 80486 since it uses the 80486's instruction set (at least I think it does. Windows 98 and 2000 do.) although it will run horribly slow. I did get Windows 2000 to work on a 80586 running at about 47% of the minimum recommended speed for that os.  :x  The best you could probably run reasonably smoothly on a 80486 would be Windows 95 and perhaps 98 if it is a very fast 80486.

BTW:  Windows 95 should work on a 80386 as well.

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 7:29 pm
by Torin
Hi, I'm new.  I'm computer illiterate for the most part (just the basics) and I had a question.  I wanted to start collecting the older games such as King's Quest, Quest for Glory and so forth but I was wondering if they would still run on my computer.  I have a laptop with a Pentium III processor and Windows XP and then a desktop with I think it's called a Celeron processor and Windows XP.  Will older games run on that?  If not is there anything I can download to make them work?  Thanks.  :D

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 8:19 pm
by Peter Swinkels
Most games using the AGI engine should work on newer computers running Windows XP without problems. I have noticed however that some video drivers for XP don't seem to support the EGA/CGA graphics any more.

Most games using the SCI 0 engine should also work except that they might have same problems with the video driver and it seems that the Adlib driver (which is compatible with the Sound Blaster soundcard and also seems to produce the best sound) doesn't work on fast computers (roughly Pentium II 400mhz and faster.)

Most games using the SCI 1 engine shouldn't have any trouble with the video driver but a lot of these games have a Sound Blaster 16 driver that won't work on a fast computer. This usually can be fixed using the GoSierra utility. The newer SCI 1 games should support the Sound Blaster Pro sound card which should work on newer computers. A lot of the SCI 1 games need patches. Patches for some of these games can be downloaded at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Ar ... nloads.htm for example. You will also the need VDMSound utility for Windows 2000 and XP to get the sound card drivers to work.

The SCI 2 games? (which usually use SVGA graphics)  should mostly work without problems on newer computers under windows if you use the Windows version. You might still need to get patches from of the games.

If a game has speed related problems you can try disabling the internal and external CPU caches in the BIOS. However, your computer might still be too fast and Windows will run much slower (possibly too slow to respond properly.) If you use this method you could use a bootable disk with DOS. DOS should work fine even on a very slow computer and you will avoid any Windows compatibility isues.

You could search the forums here for more information. I and others as well have posted several other messages which might contain useful information.

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:24 pm
by Kurdt
A translation for the computer illiterate would be:

AGI Games = King's Quests 1-3, Space Quests 1 & 2, and the like

SCI0 Games = KQ4, SQ3, Original Quests for Glory 1-2, Conquests of Camelot, Laura Bow 1, and the like

SCI1 Games = KQ's 5 & 6, SQ's 4 and 5, QFG's 3 and 4, Laura Bow 2, Conquests of the Longbow, etc.

SCI2 Games = KQ7, SQ6

Essentially, most all of these will work for you if you take the proper measures. If your AGI games have garbled message boxes, you'll need an emulator (something that mimics the system the game's supposed to run on) like NAGI to get it running properly. The SCI0 games should be fine but may sometimes require something like DosBox to run properly. SCI1 games can either use DosBox to work properly OR you can download patches for some specific games here. With these patches, the parts that once depended on CPU speed to operate now operate normally. However, if you still have audio troubles you can go here and get VDMSound. Implement that in conjunction with the patches and your game should be impervious to any new computer problem! As for SCI2 problems, like Peter said they should be fine unless otherwise noted. Good luck!

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:39 pm
by Torin
Thank you!  I didn't want to start buying them until I knew whether or not they would work.  If it was "not a chance" then I didn't want to waste my money.  I'm going to start buying them one at a time and making sure they each work.  If I have problems I can come here to look for help.  Thank you!  :D

Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:20 am
by Torin
Okay, I'm back with a question.  I got Torin's Passage today and tried setting it up on my 3-4 year old laptop with Windows XP and a Pentium III processor AND on my Dell Desktop with a Celeron processor which is brand spanking new.  On both I got a install message with the Torin's Passage logo.  Clicking on install led to a screen with a voice that if you can hear it you can support wave.file blah, blah, which I could.  Anyway, after that it suddenly says it has detected a CD connected which makes no sense because it's the Torin's Passage CD it's detecting.  It's like saying it has detected itself.  Then it says it is going to check the CD for something, gets about halfway through, and has an error saying an integer was divided by 0.  It then shuts down.  Anyone have any ideas?  I'd really appreciate it.
:D

Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:27 pm
by Peter Swinkels
Usually a division by zero error message happens if the computer is too fast. I think this happens with nearly all SCI 2 games when you try to perform some test in the Windows Setup. Just try skipping all tests and simply install the game, it should work fine but I can't promise anything.

Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:43 pm
by Torin
Yeah, it works!!  thank you!!  This is cool because it means I can still play older games like the KG games on my PC.  Thanks!!!   :rollin

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:52 am
by Peter Swinkels
Glad to be of help. But don't forget that not all games will work without problems. Kings Quest 7 for example, is a SCI 2 game that works fine on newer computers except for a nasty timer related bug.

[spoiler]A firecracker explodes too soon on fast computers after having been picked up because the time remaining before it explodes after having been picked up is related to the computer's speed.[/spoiler]