DOSBox installer problem

[dotkel50]

Hi Collector,

Your DOSBox installer for Heart of China isn't working correctly. It installs the game but when i click on the icon to run it, it starts DOSBox but then immediately closes to the desktop. I checked the dosbox.conf file and it looks ok but i noticed that only 6 of the 7 volume.* files were copied into the HOC folder. Also, the resource.cfg file has only 2 bites in it. I copied volume.007 into the HOC folder and tried again, still doesn't work. Any thoughts?

[Collector]

It looks like another version difference problem. Is your copy the 5.25" version? Mine is the 3.5" version. The VOLUME.000 file contains the other files needed to run the game, but is no longer required after the game is unpacked, so is not copied to the install folder. Could you post your VOLUME.000 and I will take a look to see if I can add support for your version of the game to the installer.

The RESOURCE.CFG file from the Dynamix games is different than the Sierra games. Sierra used an ASCII format and is readable to humans. The Dynamix RESOURCE.CFG files are not human readable, store less information and are thus smaller.

[dotkel50]

Yes, I have the 5.25 version (7 floppies).

[Collector]

I am still having issues with it. Please post your "INSTALL.COM"

[dotkel50]

here ya go...

[Collector]

OK, It is working, now for both the 3.5" and the 5.25" floppy versions. While the 3.5" version has 7 VOLUME files, the 5.25 version has 8, which makes sense as the 5.25" disks can't hold as much as the 3.5", so the data had to be split into smaller parts on more disks. The RESOURCE.CFG is also different. I now have a detection routine that looks for the 8th RESOURCE file and installs the right version of the RESOURCE.CFG for the version being installed.

Heart of China DOSBox Installer

Credit goes to dotkel50 for this one for supplying the information needed to make it work for the 5.25" floppy version.

[dotkel50]

Blows you another kiss. It's working!!!!

By the way....did you do an installer for the Roberta Williams Anthology? I thought you had but i don't see it anywhere.

[Collector]

The installer for the 2nd KQ collection will work for the 1st 3 discs. The 4th disc is just the demo of Phantasmagoria.

[dotkel50]

Ok, I have some good news and some bad news. The installer for the first disc worked fine, but.... the 2nd and 3rd disc installers kept asking me for the cd even though it was in the drive. Sounds like the same problem as the other KQ Collection installer, or was it the Space Quest Collection? I've lost track .

[Collector]

I was told by several people that it worked fine with the Anthology before I had the discs, so I never looked into it. I have the raw discs without packaging, now and can see there are enough differences to warrant a separate installer. It shouldn't take me too long as there are enough similarities that I can just alter and add to the 2nd KQ collection's installers to account for the differences.

[dotkel50]

Kool.......if you're taking requests.....how about the Inca and Inca II games?

[Collector]

The later Coktel vision games are problematic. The floppy versions have the resources broken up and compressed in an odd manner that make concatenating them back into a usable form is not straight forward. Short of reverse engineering the installer (which is beyond me) I need to find more information before I can do anything more with the the floppy versions.

The CD games, except for Woodruff, use Red Book Audio that game timing events are based on. The solution for the CD games is to rip the audio track, compress them to OGG or MP3 and set them up with ScummVM with whatever name that it expects the audio tracks to be. This is doable, but the one missing element is a light weight command line audio CD ripper that works in all modern versions of Windows, which I have yet to find. Such a program for Windows seems to be like hens' teeth.

I could write installers that would leave the ripping and compression up to the user, but I wouldn't want to list them on the installer page as it requires too much involvement on the part of the user. If there is demand for them, I could post these reduced functionality installers on the message board. It would be up to the user to use something like Audio Grabber to rip and compress the audio track.

[dotkel50]

I've installed the 2 Inca games to run with the CD in the drive...good enough for now. Any progress on a Roberta Williams Anthology Installer?

[Collector]

You may have some timing issues with Inca that way. I can do a quick and dirty installer if you are willing to rip the audio track and compress to MP3 yourself.

I'll probably have the RWA installer in a couple of more days. I have been distracted by other things and I wanted to finish up the SWAT installer.

[dotkel50]

Collector,

I'll take a crack at ripping the audio on Inca I & II if you make installers for them. No rush on those 2, they're on my list of games to play.

Thanks a lot