Collector - Leisure Suit Larry Casino.

[Tawmis]

Ever consider doing an installer for it?

Since it has an offline mode?

[Collector]

I have thought about it, but it looks like it may be more involved than I care to take on at this point. To my memory I believe that the off line is mostly limited to the liar's poker and you can wander around.

[Tawmis]

I have thought about it, but it looks like it may be more involved than I care to take on at this point. To my memory I believe that the off line is mostly limited to the liar's poker and you can wander around.

I can try seeing if it runs through DOSBox - and see what the limits are, if I can get it work.

I was curious because I was scanning and making .ISO files - and noticed it says, "No Internet? No problem! They'll still make fun of you in offline mode!"

[Collector]

It is a Win32 game, so no DOSBox.

[Tawmis]

It is a Win32 game, so no DOSBox.

Ah. I see. Well, scratch that. I see why you say it'd be more trouble than it's worth.

I may throw it on my Windows Vista laptop that's currently running Johnny Castaway non stop (I think that's Win32). I am not 100% sure.... since:

With the release of Vista, Microsoft simultaneously launched the 32 bit x86 and the 64 bit x64 editions. The retail editions contain both the x86 and x64 editions, while the OEM versions contain one or the other and you have to decide before you order.

[Collector]

Any problems with it have nothing to do with a Win32 app on X64. Win32 apps usually run fine on 64-bit Windows. The problem is more of a matter of changing APIs. Ones that a game was written for when they were developed often have been depreciated. Some can get fussy about the particular version of DirectX, etc.

To get around this usually requires developing shim and or using wrappers. doing so can be a slow tedious process. And then after all of that work a Windows update can break it.

The only thing that I meant by the Win32 comment is that while DOSBox supports installing Win3x, Larry's Casino needs 9x, which is not supported in DOSBox. On top of that even Win3x, let alone 9x is not a viable solution for an installer since I do not have rights to distribute even older Windows.

[shoptroll]

Sorry for the bump, but just want to add to what Collector said based on my own experience with trying to get this to run in the past.

On Windows 7 x64 I was able to get this run I think by doing the normal install and then copying over any additional files that were still sitting on the disc (I don't remember specifically but it was probably the video or audio files knowing the era when the game was made). Since Windows 7 compatibility mode only allows switching color depth to 256 colors I had to make use of a utility called qRes (https://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/) and a .bat file to automate switching the display to 16-bit color mode (and then back after it quit):

Code: Select all

qres.exe /C:16
LCasino.exe
qres.exe /C:32

This was back in 2014 based on the last modified date on the .bat file. I also remember I needed to fiddle around with the audio acceleration setting in Windows, and it had to be disabled otherwise the sound effects and voice acting would get cut off or overlap (I don't remember which) which was less than ideal as that's not something I know how to automate.

Unfortunately since then I've upgraded to Windows 10 x64 and now the game completely fails to recognize 16-bit color mode when it's active. I don't know if this is caused by a display driver or an API change, but I think this illustrates what Collector is talking about with the need for a wrapper or shim around the executable.

Anyways, I'm not looking for a fix on this, but just wanted to pass this along in case it's useful to Collector or anyone else. I only discovered this last night because I've been playing around with DOSBox-X to run Windows 95/98 era games and I was curious if this game could still run on my host OS without needing to get tossed into a VM or emulator. Which unfortunately it likely now needs to be.