Bypassing bugs in QfG3 - try Scumm VM instead of DOSBox

Not finding any Glory in this whole Quest for Glory bit? Need a hint? Or just want to discuss Quest for Glory - this is the place to do it!
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Nowhere Girl
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Bypassing bugs in QfG3 - try Scumm VM instead of DOSBox

Post by Nowhere Girl »

I have long had problems with QfG3 and, to a somewhat smaller extent, QfG4. Both have their share of bugs and in case of QfG3 even slowing the game down doesn't help at all. I've run into four unpleasant bugs:
1. I can meet Harami at the bazaar at nght - however, he doesn't approach the hero during daytime asking for help.
2. I can't tell him about Rakeesh and conversation topics with him don't change after first meeting.
3. When I ask the Laibon about bride price or when I pay it (I forgot), for no reason he gets annoyed and starts saying "So, friend of Rakeesh, what have you come here for?".
4. When I ask Uhura how to make the Leopard Lady accept the hero (she is in her hut with Simba, hence "they"), a message "They don't seem to be speaking your language" appears and I can't ask any other questions (however, I can normally say goodbye).
As said, I tried solutions listed at Sierra Help sites and at least in my case they didn't help. It seems I'm not the only player for whom they were unhelpful. Therefore I wanted to present an alternative: Scumm VM can be used instead of DOSBox to run this game and it allowed me to evade all bugs listed above.
It has its drawbacks: first, Scumm VM is a bit harder to run correctly and importing a hero doesn't work as almost-automatically as in DOSBox. The file must have the right name (in my case it was "qfg2-wizard.sav") and must be put in the right folder - I somehow couldn't find it or make it work (I'm a computer user, but I'm no specialist - in fact, I do consider myself a "technological conservative", that is, a person who prefers to stick to technologies I already know and doesn't enjoy learning new technical stuff. For example, I still use a mobile phone which was released in 2000...), so I had to change the program's save path. Second, there is quite an annoying bug in terms of graphics only: no darkness. Night-related events work just fine, but it doesn't get visually dark at night. Only twice it did: in the inn and room on the first night and then when travelling with Rakeesh to SImbani village. While I generally think that beautiful night sceneries are an EGA thing (for me, in EGA night sceneries are very interesting and sometimes better than daytime ones - examples: Spielburg castle gate or Heinrich's field - in VGA everything just becomes darker, bluer and harder to see...), the game feels strange without darkness at night (having said that, I would love to see a polar day once. I have never been further to the north than about 50 km south of the nothern polar circle. One of my hobbies is visiting and climbing ski jumping hills and I'm dreaming of climbing the hill in Tromsø at midnight in sunshine :D) and it leaves the player with less possibility of keeping track of time - for example, you may run to the next overall view screen and discover it's already middle of the night because you didn't see darkness fall. But generally, Scumm VM definitely surpasses DOSBox in terms of evading bugs in this particular game.
And still I am first of all a DOSBox user - I just love D-Fend Reloaded, this program made me crazy about collecting screenshots. But Scumm VM is better for some games (Humongous Entertainment games, "Broken Sword" series...) and QfG3 also seems to fall into this category.
Nowhere Girl
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Re: Bypassing bugs in QfG3 - try Scumm VM instead of DOSBox

Post by Nowhere Girl »

PS. I'm not sure if it was a bug or not, but I guess it must have been (still, I simply wouldn't have known that it was a bug before seeing the correct version). When I played QfG3 on DOSBox / D-Fend Reloaded, the area under the monkey village looked the same like one of the default jungle screens. Now it didn't, it's a separate scenery which only appears in this place. A very nice one, actually; I just threw away one old screenshot and saved the "monkey village entrance" screenshot instead.
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OmerMor
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Re: Bypassing bugs in QfG3 - try Scumm VM instead of DOSBox

Post by OmerMor »

Nowhere Girl wrote:Second, there is quite an annoying bug in terms of graphics only: no darkness. Night-related events work just fine, but it doesn't get visually dark at night. Only twice it did: in the inn and room on the first night and then when travelling with Rakeesh to SImbani village.
Quite possibly, this is https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/10304.
Nowhere Girl
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Re: Bypassing bugs in QfG3 - try Scumm VM instead of DOSBox

Post by Nowhere Girl »

Hi again, this time I need help.
I wanted to replay the game in ScummVM, but I don't know where's my file!
I mean: I copied the saved character from my QfG2VGA to QfG3 folder with the correct, ScummVM-recognisable name. I tried to import character and discovered that the statistics don't match. I deleted the file from QfG3 folder (don't worry, the original is still where it was)... and I can still import character! But when I type "qfg2-wizard.sav" into my Windows search, no other file with this name is found!
Where can this extra file be? Why doesn't it show up in search results? I need to know it so that I know where to copy the new one. I don't remember such things, anyway ScummVM paths are a bit of a mystery for me, to the point that I screwed something up when last playing QfG3 in ScummVM and stil have to take screenshots from ScummVM games with Irfan View instead of the in-program capture...
Nowhere Girl
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Re: Bypassing bugs in QfG3 - try Scumm VM instead of DOSBox

Post by Nowhere Girl »

I already figured out what to do.
However, the more important thing I wanted to write is: in version 2.1.2 of ScummVM compatibility with QfG2 seems to have been improved and the "no darkness bug" doesn't seem to appear.
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