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+--- Thread: I finally have all my old games working again! (/showthread.php?tid=5146)
I finally have all my old games working again! - Dark Jaguar - 21st February 2009
Ever since my last update to my computer, I have been unable to use Windows 98 for my retro needs. The hardware is simply too modern and a lot of components lack 9x drivers, namely my sound card. So, I've had to scrap that. I had few alternatives. For some time I was considering digging up the components to make a really old computer specifically for this task. After making a number of changes to DOSBox, I don't think I'll need to any more. The biggest change was realizing I could install Windows 3.11 in the latest version of DOSBox :D. So I've got that working now, with old drivers for the S3 graphics card and SoundBlaster 16 which DOSBox emulates, and after installing some needed components in it, like Windows Video, I've got access to the full King's Quest collection in glitch free mode. Yes, I could play the DOS versions of them, but in the case of KQ5, the music is aweful, just aweful, and in KQ6, the character portraits are in VGA instead of SVGA resolution and don't look nearly as nice (plus the starting and ending movie files are much lower quality). Plus, after finally getting extended midi support working in my emulated 3.11 experience, the music in KQ5 6 and 7 were even better than what DOS could offer. In the case of KQ7, the DOS and Windows versions are identical (In windows it doesn't even have the title bar) so I may just go with DOS for that one for simplicity. Windows 3.11 starts basically instantly so it's not like there's any wait. Oh, ABF you have noted the "larger black bars" around KQ5 and 6 before and I never quite got why they would be like that. I get it now though. Nothing is cut off the screen. It's just that there's a different aspect ratio. Since Windows 3.11 is locked in a 640x480 resolution, and those old KQ games are in 320x200, something had to give. Displaying it in DOS just means using that exact resolution, but in Windows they had to "double" it to fill the screen space, which works except it's then 640x400. In other words, nothing's been cut off, it's just in a pseudo wide screen mode. Since the aspect difference is so negligable, I never really noticed it before, but as that's how I originally played them, I prefer it that way, and in the case of KQ6, it was actually designed around that aspect ratio so it works better. I prefer smaller more accurate cursors to larger ones too, so the cursors being black and white doesn't bother me either.
There is one last thing to deal with. For some reason KQ7 under 3.11 has issues with it's cursor. Whenever it animates, which is often in KQ7, it blinks away and back in, making it hard to see sometimes. I may just go with the DOS version after all for that.
Oh yes, The Dagger of Amon Ra works flawlessly now! It works better than it did in 9x in fact. That one ONLY has a Windows version so DOS wasn't even an option there. Running a true DOS game under 3.11 under DOSBox under Windows XP seems to be a step too far though, as they glitch like crazy in that environment (and the characters wax too philosophical about their world within a world, nope guys, I'm at the top), but that's fine as I just set up a standard DosBox environment for them, and heck, the earliest KQ games using the AGI interpreter still work perfectly under XP anyway.