29th July 2004, 11:38 AM
(This post was last modified: 29th July 2004, 11:55 AM by A Black Falcon.)
KQ1-4 are DOS games but all run just fine on my PC with no fiddling or modifications needed.. well, except for this one from this nice site I found that fixes some timing bugs. There is this one part in the first game that you couldn't do because it was timing-related and went too fast... but they run with sound. It's KQ5 and EcoQuest's DOS speech that don't work Sierra-wise, on my PC. ... but that's the one advantage I have of having WinME (and the Win98 SBLive! drivers that are installed, giving me the SB16 emulation). :)
This program didn't seem to work for me (for KQ5), but it's supposed to fix the speed problems for some old Sierra games. V3 is newer. :)
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-viewer?...sierra.zip
And here's that page with various Sierra game timing bug fixes. Download these for the games you have.
http://geocities.com/belzorash/
KQ5... I've tried all the settings I can think of. It just does not run. It gets to the green Sierra logo, the fanfare plays,and it hangs there. And then if I want DOS sound I have to reboot -- the SB drivers only support it in one window at once and if you force-close a DOS window the DOS sound won't work again until I reboot.
As I said it only runs in DOSBox (the DOS emulator), and it runs too slowly to be fun there. The sound is also somewhat choppy...
What a hassle! In ME if you have the Display Properties toolbar icon all you have to do is rightclick on it and you can choose any color/size mode available, from 640x480 256 color to 1600x1200 32 bit color...
VDMSound. Oh, and this thing I just found a link to yesterday... might want to try it, someone said they got all the Sierra game sound working between it and VDMSound (in XP/2000)...
http://www.softsystem.co.uk/page3.htm
True, they didn't fill the monitor, but I find that blue bar extremely annoying... 650x480 and it's fullscreen except for that bar, but the bar is really annoying and why deal with it when I can run the DOS version which is the same, except without it (for KQ7/QFG4)? :)
Oh, and my SB16-emulator thing also includes Roland and General MIDI support... I use General MIDI when I can, of course, because it sounds best by far. Roland is the second choice.
SCUMMVM! It saves to whereever your SCUMMVM folder is, you know. The only catch is that the saves are not compatible with the original game saves... the emulator has its own save system and doesn't use the ones that the original games used.
Oh yeah... SCUMMVM now has three free adventure games it supports. Old once-retail ones, too... Revolution Software (the Broken Sword series)'s 'Lure of the Temptress' and 'Beneath a Steel Sky' and one from some other group called 'Flight of the Amazon Queen'.
http://www.scummvm.com
Oh, in case you didn't remember the address... VDMSound.
http://ntvdm.cjb.net/
And yeah, despite all these utilities I can't get KQ5 to run without freezing on the Sierra logo. Oh well... Of course I don't have XP so VDMSound and that other sound utility don't exactly help me any...
Easy enough to tell which game it is. 1 is a German village and surrounding forest, 2 is in the desert, 3 in an African setting (with the main town full of stepped pyramids and lion-people), and 4 a Transylvanian-ish one. 5 is Greek. :)
This program didn't seem to work for me (for KQ5), but it's supposed to fix the speed problems for some old Sierra games. V3 is newer. :)
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-viewer?...sierra.zip
And here's that page with various Sierra game timing bug fixes. Download these for the games you have.
http://geocities.com/belzorash/
KQ5... I've tried all the settings I can think of. It just does not run. It gets to the green Sierra logo, the fanfare plays,and it hangs there. And then if I want DOS sound I have to reboot -- the SB drivers only support it in one window at once and if you force-close a DOS window the DOS sound won't work again until I reboot.
As I said it only runs in DOSBox (the DOS emulator), and it runs too slowly to be fun there. The sound is also somewhat choppy...
Quote:If you want to get KQ5 working under XP, there's a bunch of hoops you gotta jump through. First, you MUST be running in 256 colors and 640x480 resolution. Sadly, XP's "automatic" switching via shortcut options won't work. You have to go into display properties, not that first one, since it doesn't go low enough, but deeper in "advanced", then go to the adapter tab of that level, and click the "all modes" button, THERE you'll finally be able to set things nice and low.
What a hassle! In ME if you have the Display Properties toolbar icon all you have to do is rightclick on it and you can choose any color/size mode available, from 640x480 256 color to 1600x1200 32 bit color...
Quote:After THAT, ya gotta make sure the sound is working. That's VERY tricky in XP as you might imagine... There's a special program out there that does the trick from what I understand... Eh, anyway suffice it to say keeping 98 is a good move for retro gaming.
VDMSound. Oh, and this thing I just found a link to yesterday... might want to try it, someone said they got all the Sierra game sound working between it and VDMSound (in XP/2000)...
http://www.softsystem.co.uk/page3.htm
Quote:Oh and, yeah running in a window is a bit of an annoyance, but since the gameplay screens were never filling the moniter anyway, it's no big deal. Also, if you have the resolution set correctly, the gameplay area won't be a small box. It's a lot of work and all, but it can get to working. As far as DOS modes, well I never bothered with those, especially when I'd rather they use Windows sound instead of the SB16 DOS emulator sound for the midi's.
True, they didn't fill the monitor, but I find that blue bar extremely annoying... 650x480 and it's fullscreen except for that bar, but the bar is really annoying and why deal with it when I can run the DOS version which is the same, except without it (for KQ7/QFG4)? :)
Oh, and my SB16-emulator thing also includes Roland and General MIDI support... I use General MIDI when I can, of course, because it sounds best by far. Roland is the second choice.
Quote:Anyway, fun games, but Win 3 was NOT a good system to design games for, and KQ7's 95 remake really didn't remake enough of the code... If MI3 came out then, then yes, Sierra was fine by then. Before then, Lucas was still doing DOS games, though honestly I've had a lot of trouble getting The Dig to work due to that. It's working now though, it's just sorta annoying that there's no way at all for me to change the save file directory (it'll ALWAYS be on drive C, when I want my DOS stuff on drive D). Oh well, it's fine.
SCUMMVM! It saves to whereever your SCUMMVM folder is, you know. The only catch is that the saves are not compatible with the original game saves... the emulator has its own save system and doesn't use the ones that the original games used.
Oh yeah... SCUMMVM now has three free adventure games it supports. Old once-retail ones, too... Revolution Software (the Broken Sword series)'s 'Lure of the Temptress' and 'Beneath a Steel Sky' and one from some other group called 'Flight of the Amazon Queen'.
http://www.scummvm.com
Oh, in case you didn't remember the address... VDMSound.
http://ntvdm.cjb.net/
And yeah, despite all these utilities I can't get KQ5 to run without freezing on the Sierra logo. Oh well... Of course I don't have XP so VDMSound and that other sound utility don't exactly help me any...
Quote:That is a pretty good deal. I've only played one of the Quest games, the third one I think, but it was pretty fun and I used to play it a lot back when I still had DOS.
Easy enough to tell which game it is. 1 is a German village and surrounding forest, 2 is in the desert, 3 in an African setting (with the main town full of stepped pyramids and lion-people), and 4 a Transylvanian-ish one. 5 is Greek. :)