| 4 MAY 2005 at 7:54pm |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | Has Dos actually been squashed with XP? Even when using a NTFS partition (my mistake), supposedly incomptabible with Dos, I still can get some Dos games to run perfectly under XP, so long as I use an external program to handle the sound. Games from the 80's in particular still work well, unlike many games from the late years of the Dos and the early Windows days.
Looking a bit more closely in XP, I noticed that all Dos commands had disappeared, but there is still Autoexec and Config, but with the .nt extension. Do you think it would be possible to get more of the Dos back in XP, by adding EMS/XMS support, and a couple of other things? Or is XP already handling Dos games by posing as Windows 95, or something along those lines? I cannot say I am an expert on "Windowology", so I wouldn't know *how* exactly the OS handles Dos... but looking around and messing with a few useless files (like system.ini or the whole Windows directory) is always so fun. Not always good idea, but fun regardless. :
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 8:09pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4940
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Alneyan (4 MAY 2005 7:54pm)
Has Dos actually been squashed with XP? Even when using a NTFS partition (my mistake), supposedly incomptabible with Dos, I still can get some Dos games to run perfectly under XP, so long as I use an external program to handle the sound. Games from the 80's in particular still work well, unlike many games from the late years of the Dos and the early Windows days.
Looking a bit more closely in XP, I noticed that all Dos commands had disappeared, but there is still Autoexec and Config, but with the .nt extension. Do you think it would be possible to get more of the Dos back in XP, by adding EMS/XMS support, and a couple of other things? Or is XP already handling Dos games by posing as Windows 95, or something along those lines? I cannot say I am an expert on "Windowology", so I wouldn't know *how* exactly the OS handles Dos... but looking around and messing with a few useless files (like system.ini or the whole Windows directory) is always so fun. Not always good idea, but fun regardless. :
Any DOS-like commands or things that appear to be DOS-like were placed in WinXP in emulator form to maintain a bit of compatibility with previous programs. Otherwise, there is no DOS left in WinXP. Also, if you run old programs using a boot-disk, you're running the program under DOS, not WinXP. It's interesting that some programs written years ago will run under WinXP because they did not try to do things like access hardware directly. However, other games, such as Under A Killing Moon which tried to be ahead of their time audio/video-wise cannot be run under WinXP without an emulator & even then you'll likely have to tweak it.
The future ain't what it used to be!
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 8:33pm |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | I did not mean using a boot disk; actually, I cannot use one, since my partition got put in NTFS, and I didn't notice that at once. And well, the thought of having to format everything again didn't appeal to me after that.
Most of the programs that do work are the ones that were written only for Dos, and without using EMS/XMS. That can give odd results sometimes: Discworld 1 works fine, but not Discworld 2, and it is much easier to run a game like Ultima 1 than a game released in 1994 or so.
But even then, there are no rules: Under a Killing Moon runs directly under XP, despite: 1) Having an uncommon mouse and DVD player 2) Being on a NTFS partition, technically impossible to use with Dos programs 3) Having a sound card whose specifics are unbeknownst to me. Don't ask how it can work, but it does: the only problem I can detect is with the movement of the mouse, but that's probably because I didn't use a Dos mouse driver. I cannot get the sound to run either, as whenever I try to use VDSM, the game no longer recognises my DVD player. Again, I think it is linked to the lack of a Dos driver.
I guess the good thing about informatics is that there are always surprises... I sure didn't expect Under a Killing Moon to work, at least basically, under XP. It can be emulated rather easily, but the game demands a lot of resources: 2 ghz aren't enough to get a good display when moving around.
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 9:19pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4940
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Alneyan (4 MAY 2005 8:32pm)
But even then, there are no rules: Under a Killing Moon runs directly under XP, despite: 1) Having an uncommon mouse and DVD player 2) Being on a NTFS partition, technically impossible to use with Dos programs 3) Having a sound card whose specifics are unbeknownst to me. Don't ask how it can work, but it does: the only problem I can detect is with the movement of the mouse, but that's probably because I didn't use a Dos mouse driver. I cannot get the sound to run either, as whenever I try to use VDSM, the game no longer recognises my DVD player. Again, I think it is linked to the lack of a Dos driver.
I guess the good thing about informatics is that there are always surprises... I sure didn't expect Under a Killing Moon to work, at least basically, under XP. It can be emulated rather easily, but the game demands a lot of resources: 2 ghz aren't enough to get a good display when moving around.
With all due respect, Under A Killing Moon doesn't run directly under WinXP and it doesn't work under WinXP. There is a difference between getting part of the game to come up under WinXp and having it run so that people can actually play it through. I mention this because a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to get UAKM to run reasonably under WinXP. No one that I know of has succeeded to get it to run directly under WinXP. However, it can be run with an emulator, but it can't be run easily with an emulator. That would be a surprise to Steve Metzler who put some effort into getting it to run under Dosbox. Even then, it doesn't run perfectly under Dosbox on some people's systems.
For those who are interested here is one of the best solutions for UAKM using WinXP/Dosbox: http://www.quandaryland.com/jsp/dispArticle.jsp?filename=/help/UAKM_and_XP.htm&articleType=Help!+Page&title=Under+a+Killing+Moon+and+XP
The future ain't what it used to be!
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 9:46pm |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | I haven't played around a lot with UAKM and XP; what problems that prevent effective play do you know of? I have also noticed (since my last post) that some animations are very slow (opening the configuration panel), and the game runs way too quickly... but that last thing isn't unusual. Still, the game is playable as it stands, unless something else latter in the game is broken, like playing a FMV or switching CDs. Another big problem is sound: I do not know if sound won't work because my machine isn't set up correctly, or if it cannot work without crashing the game.
I may be interested in giving it a more thorough try once my exams are over; unless of course the behaviour described above is the one you were expecting, in which case trying to work around those issues will be pointless. But for now, the game does run without me doing anything special, and can be played (in other words, I can move around, pick items and the like).
For the Dos Box method, it is almost the same as the one I used to get UAKM running with the emulation: the only steps that weren't necessary was the special low-level CD-rom support, and I don't think I had to use the 197.exe. Either way, it doesn't really require any specific step compared to other emulated games: the same setup used for UAKM works fine for various Dos games, hence my "rather easily" comment.
In case it can explain some of the oddities I am encountering (who knows?), I should mention my version of UAKM is a French one, from the last release of the game. Perhaps they changed a thing or two, making the game easier to run on Windows, which would explain why XP can run it on my computer. It doesn't see too likely, but then, my own situation isn't likely either, as the game isn't supposed to run under XP, both in theory and in practice.
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 10:08pm |
jalexSchattenjger
Posts : 2503
Joined: 5 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | I have tried using XP for older games many times and for some reason I just could get hardly any of them to run or for that matter even install. After a while I found myself giving up and installing Win98SE back on my system. I tried the win compatibility modes and I never found them to help run any of the ones I had trouble with. I have also found other programs (not games) that don't run well on Xp ether. Maybe some day I will try again as I have had my copy of XP Pro for a long time now and never used it more that a few weeks until I couldn't stand it any more.
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 10:41pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4940
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Alneyan (4 MAY 2005 9:46pm)
I haven't played around a lot with UAKM and XP; what problems that prevent effective play do you know of? I have also noticed (since my last post) that some animations are very slow (opening the configuration panel), and the game runs way too quickly... but that last thing isn't unusual. Still, the game is playable as it stands, unless something else latter in the game is broken, like playing a FMV or switching CDs. Another big problem is sound: I do not know if sound won't work because my machine isn't set up correctly, or if it cannot work without crashing the game.
How can you say you haven't played around with UAKM and WinXP as it stands, but it's playable as it stands? It's not playable: there's no way you can play the game from beginning to end directly under WinXP because of speed problems, video problems, no sound or sound problems & crashes. Also, to say it plays 'easily' under Dosbox implies that it plays without tweaking and without problems. You likely will have to tweak it under Dosbox and even then it may not run totally smoothly.
The future ain't what it used to be!
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 10:46pm |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | Most people have simillar problems with XP, though it usually works fine with very old games (in the "usual" case). That's why I am so surprised by how well my own XP computer is doing: it doesn't work quite as well as 98 of course, but it works surprising well... and it shouldn't work so well really.
Even when under their new partition system (NTFS), many games still work fine, and have no trouble with saving games. How a game can create a file under an alien partition system is beyond my understanding. Pure Dos won't even recognise my partition (as expected), so it does work well.
It almost sounds like as if I am complaining about Windows working *too* well. I am more like wondering about the *why* of the thing, rather than trying to figure out how to break it. I haven't changed a thing to XP either, so I cannot take credit for those games that work fine on my computer, and the games themselves haven't been altered. I guess it is just a lucky string of games that XP can handle, doing all the work of converting those applications into "NT compatible" programs... if it can indeed do such a thing.
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 10:59pm |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | By "playing around", I meant tweaking; I have only launched UAKM under XP on a hunch a while ago, as I currently lack time to do more thorough tests. Of course, getting the game to work fully isn't/wouldn't be easy. My query was more along the lines of which problems you are aware of: if other players have managed to launch the game in a half-working state (like I did), then there is probably no point in my trying to do any better.
However, if it is the first time you hear of UAKM actually working under XP, then the other problems might be fixed... though I may not be the good person for the job. More clearly, are those issues (list below) linked to the game, or to my current configuration? If it is the former, I rest my case; if it is the latter, there might be hope... though it would likely be linked to my version of the game rather than anything else.
And you are correct about the "playable" part: I should have said the game can be run and works (at least on my computer), but cannot be played yet; at least, not by a human player who likes to have sound and a working interactive mode.
Current encountered issues: No sound or VDMS running into a "cannot locate CD-rom problem" mostly, and reducing the speed of the game in movement mode if Moslo doesn't do the trick; a slower mouse and a *slow* configuration panel should still allow a player to make it to the end of the game. Everything else appears to be working fine, but no extensive testing has been done for the time being.
*Reads his post carefully, and shudders* Technical posts made at one in the morning aren't the prettiest thing in the world.
|
| 4 MAY 2005 at 11:54pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4940
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Alneyan (4 MAY 2005 10:59pm)
However, if it is the first time you hear of UAKM actually working under XP, then the other problems might be fixed... though I may not be the good person for the job.
I understand that we may be dealing with a semantics issue here ie. communication, but this isn't the first time I've heard that UAKM works under XP because it doesn't work under XP. What you've been able to do is get it to 'come up' under WinXP but not run in the way people expect a game to run. To most people, saying that a game works or runs under an OS means that you can play it and say that you can play it means that one can sit down and reasonably expect to get through it without the game driving you crazy, crashing or both. Again, getting it to load so that you see a few screens doesn't mean that it 'runs' or 'works' under XP.
You may wonder why I keep harping on this: The reason is that getting old AGs to work is part of my hobby and UAKM is a prime example of one of the most difficult games to get running under WinXP. UAKM was released in 1994 when DOS-based multimedia was at its peak (DOS was dislodged by Win95 a year later). The developers pushed hardware to the limit with this game & you needed the latest CPU, the most available memory and generally the latest hardware to get it to run well. Some people never got it to run reliably or at all in 1994. Take a look at the UAKM manual sometime to get an idea what people must have gone thru to get UAKM running.
In retrospect, I can hardly believe we got anything like UAKM running in those days. There were different video systems, different sound systems, unreliable & slow cdrom drives and all sorts of hardware conflicts.
Ar-r-r-r-g-g-g-g
The future ain't what it used to be!
|
| 5 MAY 2005 at 5:18pm |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | My last post on the matter for now: we indeed have two different terms to describe the same thing. In my book, a game works if it can be loaded and has all features technically working, while you use the term playable for that (I describe a game as being playable if you can play it without getting an headache in the process). Other than that, we seem to be in agreement.
I will probably try to see if I can do anything about the speed and the other problems (related to my DVD player, I believe). For the time being, I believe those problems can be fixed, and are related to my computer, mostly because the game never worked for me under XP previously (ie, it didn't load at all). But that's hardly more than a hunch for now, and it will stay so until I can do a few tweaks.
I actually had no trouble running UAKM on Windows 95 or 98, either directly in Windows or by using a Dos boot... then again, it looks like my computer doesn't quite behave as expected. How in hell games can work under XP when pure Dos fails is beyond my understanding... not that I understand that much about informatics.
So, I should be done with trying to fix those problems in a week or so. If it does indeed work, it will mean there is something different in my version; if it doesn't work, then it will be because of problems in the game itself. The latter is the more likely of course, but there is still hope, I guess. Either way, I will bring that topic up as soon as I am done with more thorough experiments.
|
| 5 MAY 2005 at 7:24pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4940
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Alneyan (5 MAY 2005 5:18pm)
I will probably try to see if I can do anything about the speed and the other problems (related to my DVD player, I believe). For the time being, I believe those problems can be fixed, and are related to my computer, mostly because the game never worked for me under XP previously (ie, it didn't load at all). But that's hardly more than a hunch for now, and it will stay so until I can do a few tweaks.
Well, go for it. And if you do find a way to make UAKM run directly under WinXP be sure to post the results here with details- if you succeed, you'll be the first to do so. Remember that you have to play far enough into the game to make sure it's stable and that the sound & video are stable. Most people will not consider an AG playable if the mouse response is unreliable, if the video is too fast, too slow or jerky and especially in a game like UAKM if there is no sound. Also, if one spends a few hours working on the game and then it crashes, one really doesn't want to waste more time on the game if it continues to crash periodically.
Good luck!
The future ain't what it used to be!
|
| 21 MAY 2005 at 9:15pm |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | It has been a while since my last post here; I only found the urge of toying around with Windows this evening. The news are mostly good.
First of all, scratch virtually everything else I posted on that thread. My problems were not at all related to how Windows XP handles CD-ROM drives under Dos; they were linked to a peculiarity of Under a Killing Moon, which can be thankfully bypassed. Once I realised everything I had assumed was wrong, it was only a matter of time before Google came up with a working method... and work it does!
So, the game runs under Windows XP; definition of "runs" for my purposes is: "all major features work fine, but the game has not been thoroughly tested as of yet". Only a few steps are required: manually setting up the sound card, activating VDSM with a few special options, and doing some hex editing. That last step allows to solve the "mouse too fast, configuration panel way too slow" problems.
More detailed instructions will be posted soon; for now, I am off to playing. There is currently one fairly major problem: the sound stutters quite a lot, but I think something can be done about it. There have also been reports of the game crashing once in a while, but it could just how the game "works" (or fails to). Still, this alternate method should be helpful for computers not fast enough to run UAKM under DosBox... provided no further problems come up, that is.
|
| 22 MAY 2005 at 10:32am |
MorgausePrivate Detective
Posts : 687
Joined: 2 SEP 2004
Status : Online | *Grumbles* A couple of issues have appeared since my last post, after having fiddled a bit more with the game. Here they are:
- MIDI runs poorly: either it stutters and slows the game, or it is of poor quality (Generic Midi device). Still, it's not too bad, I think.
- The sound doesn't work perfectly: again, it is a choice. Either the sound doesn't stuter (in 8-bits), but sound in FMVs will be broken, or it can be made to work well in the FMVs, but it will always stutter.
And the big one: on my computer, the game crashes after every single FMV, except the cutscenes between two days (at least the instruction works fine). I suspect this is linked to my computer however, as I have been unable to find any mention of such a bug.
Thankfully, the game can still be played in this state, as you can resume the game just after the FMV. Still, given the number of such scenes in the game, it will become a major annoyance soon. I will try to solve that thing; using Fix8X14 didn't help though.
If you have any idea about what can make UAKM crash, please let me know (my graphic card is an ATI Radeon, All-in-Wonder 7500).
|
| 22 MAY 2005 at 5:33pm |
jamarchandSchattenjger
Posts : 1665
Joined: 10 OCT 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Scorpion (3 MAY 2005 5:12am)
Try "Gabriel Knight 2" and you'll hate myst
Gabriel Knight is a trilogy. Those 3 games are some of the most important in game industry ever.
Did you have relatives working for Sierra Studios?
 &&&&[move]Actually playing SHIVERS and Rhem 2[/move]&&
|
