Kings Quest Collection - In High Rez (KQ6)?

[YotaMan]

Hi I just purchased a new copy of the 2000/XP version of King's Quest Collection (games 1-7). I remember playing a version of King's Quest 6 back in the day at someone's house that had high resolution characters as seen here in the 3rd pic.:

http://www.jellofishi.com/gamewiki/inde ... ow_-_CDROM

I got my version to work on Windows 7 64 bit by installing my 2 CDs and installing the King's Quest Collection patch:

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Misc/KQCPatch.html


Am I able to run the high rez version of KQ6 somehow or is this release missing several of the high rez files. My version is displayed with the portraits looking like the 2nd pic in the 1st link I posted.

Everything else works great sound and all, I would just love to have KQ6 look better...If I remember right the sierra logo also turned into a mountain that resembled Yosemite Natl. Park at the intro too. I'm willing to open files up and change them...whatever needs to be done!

I've been searching all night just for this, but didn't find anything.

[Collector]

The higher rez dialog images are with the Windows version of the game, which is 16-bit, so will not run on 64-bit Windows as is. The good news is the Windows version is now supported by ScummVM. The latest version of the stand alone KQ6 installer from here will set it up with ScummVM, but the collections installers have not been updated, yet.

[YotaMan]

Thanks for the reply! It's too bad to hear that, but understood.

Thanks!

[MusicallyInspired]

How is it bad news? Use the standalone installer for KQ6 instead of the collection installer.

[audiodane]

The higher rez dialog images are with the Windows version of the game, which is 16-bit, so will not run on 64-bit Windows as is. The good news is the Windows version is now supported by ScummVM. The latest version of the stand alone KQ6 installer from here will set it up with ScummVM, but the collections installers have not been updated, yet.

Just updated my portable USB-collection to include both DOSBox and SCUMMVM "versions" of the game ... The standalone KQVI installer downloaded a slightly older version of ScummVM (1.2.0xxxx). I updated the USB copy to v1.2.1 with no problems..

Thanks Andrew!
..dane

[Collector]

Yeah, I haven't updated the ScummVM routine yet.

[audiodane]

Yeah, I haven't updated the ScummVM routine yet.

No worries, man ... just letting you know it worked fine! At this point I imagine keeping up with SO MANY installers gets to be quite a chore! I'm sure if you were to even just go recompile each installer (making NO changes), it would still take you a while...

So in your opinion, is ScummVM going to be the recommended environment (over DOSBox, for example) for all Sierra PC-games at some point, or just some (like kq6)?

..dane

[Collector]

Absolutely not, for several reasons.

The sound emulation in DOSBox is far more accurate. Qbix has said that this is very important to him and it shows in how good it has become in DOSBox.

ScummVM does not offer any real advantages graphically over DOSBox.

The SCI games are such low demand that ScummVM offers no performance gains on a PC.

ScummVM has been made very restrictive with the SCI games, not allowing you to run the games with any fan made patches or modifications.

While ScummVM prevent other's modifications from being used, the devs have included their own "enhancements" such as the SCI0 undithering that have been made default. This might change with the next non-maintenance release, but we'll see.

There has been a rather arrogant indifference towards the Sierra fans by the SCI devs. Only they are experts in matters of SCI. Only they should decide how the games should be experienced. There was a big debate about the undithering being made the default setting. The developer of the undithering feature just started raging in a very immature manner about anyone that didn't think his pride and joy should be forced on everyone.

<rant mode>When agigames.com shut down they setup an AGI/SCI fan game development subforum on the ScummVM boards, insisting that they should have control of the AGI/SCI community, since they were the only experts of AGI/SCI. This ignored the fact that the SCI community already existed and could be considered a direct decedent of the old Mega Tokyo AGI/SCI boards. Not only was this in essence an attempt to take over an existing community, a couple of the devs were upset when the old Free SCI documentation was included in the SCI Programming Wiki because it was already in the ScummVM Wiki.</rant mode>

In all fairness, not all of the ScummVM devs act this way and have been voices of reason to counter the ones working on the SCI engine. And I certainly don't mean to dismiss ScummVM altogether as a viable solution to the Sierra games, but all things considered, I can only recommend it for certain situations where it does offer a real advantage. That is for the Windows games (currently just KQ6) that DOSBox is not a viable option and for handheld devices that don't have a DOSBox port or are too low powered to run DOSBox. It is a god send for the Coktel Vision CD games.

[audiodane]

I almost feel unclean for even mentioning such an idea... sorry!

I am relatively "new" to DOSBox, scummvm, and all of that jazz-- I just enjoy playing these old games-- and did not know all that is surrounding scummvm that you mentioned. Seems unfortunate for sure.

I have certainly enjoyed the miracle that is DOSBox and the rebirth of these old games that it has given me! I really haven't used ScummVM much, and KQ6 will be my first big experience with it when I start playing it in a week or three...

In all fairness, not all of the ScummVM devs act this way and have been voices of reason to counter the ones working on the SCI engine. And I certainly don't mean to dismiss ScummVM altogether as a viable solution to the Sierra games, but all things considered, I can only recommend it for certain situations where it does offer a real advantage. That is for the Windows games (currently just KQ6) that DOSBox is not a viable option and for handheld devices that don't have a DOSBox port or are too low powered to run DOSBox. It is a god send for the Coktel Vision CD games.

I was wondering about this (handheld devices), but will save that for a new appropriately-titled thread...

thanks,
..dane

[audiodane]

The higher rez dialog images are with the Windows version of the game, which is 16-bit, so will not run on 64-bit Windows as is. The good news is the Windows version is now supported by ScummVM. The latest version of the stand alone KQ6 installer from here will set it up with ScummVM, but the collections installers have not been updated, yet.

I know your installer cannot go this far (copyright infringement) but would DOSBox with Win31 or WFW311 be a better proposition for KQ6 than ScummVM? All the sound support of DOSBox with the Win16 support of Win3x?

just curious...
..dane

[envisge0ne]

I know using Win 3.1 with DOSBox & running KQ5 Win & KQ6 Win work on my system. But it's using 32 Bit Win7. I dunno if it matters or not that yours is 64 bit. If it works on your system, it's a pretty nice way to get them to run.

[Collector]

would DOSBox with Win31 or WFW311 be a better proposition for KQ6 than ScummVM? All the sound support of DOSBox with the Win16 support of Win3x?

As wonderful as the sound in DOSBox is, Win3x's sound drivers tend to be pretty poor. I didn't spend too long exploring it, but it might be OK if you could find a GM driver that would install in it. As it is, Win3x SB drivers and the Win3x sound mapper gives pretty poor music.

And as you said, there would be the copyright issue with an installer making use of it. Mac System 7x is available for free, but of course not Win3x. It would also greatly increase the size of it. The OS spans across 7 1.4" floppies without any any of the extras that would need to also be installed, like the extra drivers, Win32s, WinG and the video players/codecs (Video for Windows, QuickTime, Indeo). you can easily be talking over 30MB, not counting what is needed just for the game itself.

If Microsoft freewared Win3x I would probably make a DOSBox installer for it as a standalone installer which users could then use the original installers to install any games with in it.

King's Quest 6 and to a lesser degree KQ5 are about the only SCI games that you would be thinking about using the Win3x versions over the DOS. The other Win only games are really more 9x games. These are the games that ScummVM is (will be) an answer for. With the exception of these two, most of these are not yet supported by ScummVM. Even KQ7 will still be best in DOSBox as the Windows only versions of the game are very buggy and should be upgraded to v2, which had a DOS interpreter. The SHP KQ7 installer will upgrade 1.4 and 1.51 to 2.00b and uses DOSBox.

[MusicallyInspired]

I know using Win 3.1 with DOSBox & running KQ5 Win & KQ6 Win work on my system. But it's using 32 Bit Win7. I dunno if it matters or not that yours is 64 bit. If it works on your system, it's a pretty nice way to get them to run.

It wouldn't matter if your computer is 32-bit, 64-bit, or 128-bit someday down the road. As long as DOSBox is compiled to run successfully on any platform (which isn't changing any time soon) it doesn't matter what runs inside DOSBox itself since it's a completely emulated environment. Windows 3.1 itself is 16-bit.

[envisge0ne]

Yeah, I assumed it would run just fine on 64bit, but since I couldn't test it, I couldn't swear 100%. I have Win KQ5 & KQ6 running through Win 3.1 via DOSBox and they play through the MT-32. Through the MT-32 the music plays just fine. Haven't tried playing them through anything else so couldn't tell you how they'd sound.

[MusicallyInspired]

Actually, that's not quite possible. Well, technically it is for KQ6Win since its MT-32 score is simply the MT-32 remapped to General MIDI, but KQ5Win's soundtrack would come through horribly wrong on the MT-32 because it's rearranged into General MIDI.