Betrayal at Krondor BAK understanding RESOURCE.CFG

[softdrinkviking]

Hello forum (and to the Collector),

I am having some trouble with the BAK game on my PC.

I am playing on a newer PC with windows 7, using DOSBox, and I can get it to run, but there are a number of problems with the sound and graphics support that I am trying to isolate.

this is my RESOURCE.CFG

soundDrv = MT32.DRV
mouseDrv = none
memoryDrv = none
joyDrv = none
minEMS = 1024
minCPU = 386
minDOS = 500
size = 15000
cd=yes
nonrotatingmap = 1



This is my DOSBox config

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fullresolution=1440x900
output=openglnb
autolock=true

[cpu]
core=normal
cycles=15000
cycleup=500
cycledown=20

[render]
aspect=false
scaler=rgb3x

[midi]

mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=0


[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

@ECHO OFF
mount C "."
imgmount d "bak.inst" -t iso -fs iso
c:
cls
KRONDOR.EXE
exit

As you can see, i prefer the rbgx* scaler.
but i have tried other scalers, and met with similar results.

the basic problem is, my computer doesn't want to scale when i use the apect=true on the scaler.
so i enabled my gpu scaler on my ATI card through catalyst control center, and it does okay sometimes, but other times, it just doesn't work at all. sometimes the screen hangs and it won't render anything.
i have never had this problem before, including with other sierra games from the same time period, which I have played recently.
I think I need to adjust some settings, but I don't know what to do.

Also, as per my post title, I am interested in understanding the RESOURCE.CFG file present with this game. For example:
minEMS = 1024 is something to do with EMS memory, but I don't know what maybe it's saying that it won't run without this much EMS? or maybe it's allocating space on my system? would it help to change this?

minCPU = 386 this appears to be the 386 (x86) processor, but i don't know what the min denotes. does anyone else know?

minDOS = 500 dos 5.0?

size = 15000 size of what? memory? what kind of memory? RAM?

As you can see, I can't really figure this one out by myself, and I looked at hundreds of google returns searching for resource.cfg plus betrayal or seirra, and nothing has my answers.

maybe the resource file isn't important, but if you know, I would really like to know too!

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

- The Soft Drink Viking

[Collector]

Welcome to the forum. Your RESOURCE.CFG only has one thing not right. It has MT-32 selected for the music. The only time that you would use this is if you have a real MT-32 or are using Munt, the MT-32 emulator. Music will sound very bad if you use the MT-32 driver without the hardware or at least the emulator. For BaKCD, you do not need to select a music card driver as the music is the Redbook Audio CD track on the CD, not MIDI.

Most of your problems are from your dosbox.conf settings. BaK seems to not like the default machine, machine=svga_s3 or vgaonly. Try vesa_oldvbe. This should take care of most of your graphical glitches and should scale better.

Your sound issues are because, as I said, the audio for BaKCD is a Redbook Audio CD track. An ISO will not contain the audio track. Make a BIN/CUE of your CD for your image or mount the CD directly. You may also need to add the -ioctl switch to your CD mount command.

The other questions about the dosbox.conf settings are not relevant to BaK, as the DOSBox defaults are best for the game. If you just wish to understand these settings better, the DOSBox README will explain these settings and the DOSBox Wiki has far more information that I can cover in few sentences.

[softdrinkviking]

Hello Collector,
how are you?
I thought that MT-32 was a little fishy; i went through that business with the GS wavetable and MT-32 drivers years ago for a different game, but i forgot. go figure.

It definitely sounds weird and bad with MT-32 sound.
The general midi isn't that great either, but i'm guessing it will be better than soundblaster.

i'm still having some issues with the scalers and stability, what would you recommend for a good picture in this game on a LCD monitor? (which scaler, or none?)

thanks so much for your help.
hope all is well.

-The Soft Drink Viking

[Collector]

Use windowresolution=original or specify the native resolution of your monitor.