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This is the 2006 Sierra collection DOSBox update installer. On Windows 7 I installed the new collection and then used your updater along with my Larry 6CD cd and Larry 7 cd to install the missing parts (as well as Larry 1 original).

The voices in Larry 7 work fine, but those in Larry 6CD have no audio. The music and it seems the sound effects are okay. Just no narrator or conversation voices.

I tried switching between SoundBlaster and Thunderbird using the INSTALL.EXE in the LSL6 talkie folder and also between general midi and soundblaster for the music. General Midi of course sounds nicer since I'm using the Creative 8MB soundfont for it, which is possible due to the Daniel K Audigy 2 ZS drivers and software found in the Creative Forums (version 3.1 for Windows 7). He's got a midi synth switcher in there. Quite nice, with a working Soundfont Bank Manager as well.

Anyway, no change on the voices whichever I selected. The mouse cursor just has the waiting cursor while they're supposed to be talking. If I right click the game moves on but I never hear what they're saying. I see I could adjust the game to show the text, but that's not the point of the talkie.

Maybe one of the config files has a miss-typed director to the talking files? Everything seems to have been copied over fine from the cd as far as I can tell.

It could be that you have a different version than the one that I used to make the installer from. Does your CD have a RESOURCE.AUD file in the AUD folder? If so, it may have had trouble copying the large file to your hard drive. Is the RESOURCE.AUD file in your installed folder?

Wow, I fixed it!

I went to Al Lowe's Troubleshooting page to see if I could get a clue as to what might be wrong.

http://www.allowe.com/Larry/troubleshooting.htm

Looking at his section about the new collection, I noticed he has some instructions on copying the LSL6CD and LSL7 to the hard drive. It replaces the LSL6 installed by the collection done that way. I prefer to keep both so I'm glad you include the option of installing those versions in your updater/installer.

But the key was checking my resources.cfg in the LSL6CD folder. It did not have any resAUD or resSFX lines in it. I gave it a shot and added them, figuring the game might not be finding something it needs for the voices.

I added:

resAUD = .\AUD
resSFX = .\SFX

I typed it in with the big spaces around the = just so it fit in with the rest of the file, and put the folders in those caps since the folders appear capitalized like that in the folder.

Sure enough the game's next run had all the voices. It must be easier to find the music when left to itself but not the voices.

RESOURCE.AUD is in the AUD folder and you're right about that being a big file. Same size as on the cd so I think it's okay.

I had some fun initially installing this stuff. The first time I installed properly the latest DOSBox into C:\Program Files\DOSBox but left the big TM at the end of Sierra's install folder. Then when your installer requested a folder I just let it go since I saw it had C:\Sierra\Leisure Suit Larry Collection. Arrgh! No TM! Heh. So I had to uninstall your installer and uninstall the collection, the next time removing the stupid TM from the end of the folder name.

It's been a long time since playing these. I have the rest of the Sierra new collections as well and really have never played any of those, though I've played through and completed all the Larry games several times over the years (even that Magna C Laudy thing). I used to enjoy the Vivendi Sierra forums and have been using your installers for the other games. In the past I've just installed my Larry games from the Collection Series or Pleasure Pack (they're the same), but since you pre-patch the games now I figured this time on my new Windows 7 installation I'd go ahead and check out the Vivendi/Sierra version of the collection.

Another reason I've used the older installation media for Larry is that I've been using DOSBox on Linux a lot and haven't been using Windows for quite a while. Now, with Windows 7, it's something new to play with and experiment on.

I don't know if something went weird in the installation that caused those lines pointing to the aud and sfx folders not to appear in resource.cfg or whether they just won't appear unless actually running the original installer from the cd. Perhaps in another version you may want to script those lines into resource.cfg? Either that or just change the readme to include the suggestion to add those lines manually if there's a problem with the voices in LSL6CD?

In any case, you're doing a great service for old time gamer types like me! So I do want to say thank you for this great site, all the installers and troubleshooting help, forums, etc, etc.

Actually I'm not too sure I'm much of a gamer anymore. In the old days it was part of the fun of discovering computers for me, just figuring out how to get games and other software to work and then playing through the games and, in the case of the LSL series, laughing and enjoying every minute of it! Nowadays I've been more interested in watching Linux grow and change (I use Debian testing these days). I was a big Nintendo addict too, and play the old stuff on emulators now when I do want to do a little gaming. I can't see buying the newer consoles as I already have more games (PC too) than I'll ever devote the time to play.

Thanks for keeping the Sierra experience alive!

Here is the LSL6CD RESOURCE.CFG that the patch installs:

videoDrv  = VESA.DRV
 soundDrv  = GENMIDI.DRV
 audioDrv  = DACBLAST.DRV
 joyDrv    = NO
 mouseDrv  = NONE
 memoryDrv = NONE
 mode 	   = real
 minHunk   = 220k
 language  = 1
 patchDir  = .
 cmd	   = lsl6
 minmemory = 2M
                                   
resAUD     = .\AUD
resSFX     = .\
patchDir   = .\PATCHES
audiosize  = 32768

The installer places the SFX file in the base of the LSL6CD folder, hence the resSFX= .\ instead of resSFX = .\SFX. If the path statements went AWOL, intead of something you did, I would like to know so I can fix the patch.

videoDrv = VESA.DRV

soundDrv = GENMIDI.DRV

audioDrv = DACBLAST.DRV

joyDrv = NO

mouseDrv = STDMOUSE.DRV

memoryDrv = ARM.DRV

mode = real

minHunk = 220k

language = 1

patchDir = .

cmd = lsl6

resAUD = .\AUD

resSFX = .\SFX



That's mine now. The only additions are the resAUD and resSFX lines which did not exist. It looks like I was somehow missing the lower tier of lines you have there, as well as changes to some of the driver lines and the minmemory, the added patch and audiosize lines. Should I change the file to match what you have there? I did notice occasional audio scratchy-ness when testing out the beginning sections of the game.

Also, the sfx file is within the SFX folder, not in the base folder. I wonder what happened?

It sounds like you got an earlier version of the patch that had flaws that were corrected in the current version.

Really. That's weird since I just downloaded it a few days ago. I thought the patch with the ability to install the LSL6CD and LSL7 along with the rest was the only one offered on all the links you have on the forum and the help site. And that the older versions didn't have that option, since the older ones I have are from years ago that didn't have it.

I'll go ahead and wipe everything and reinstall with a new download just to see. I haven't saved any game states yet so it doesn't matter.

Okay, I reinstalled after uninstalling everything.

The installer I just downloaded is the same version (1,2,3,4) and installs that SFX folder with the resource.sfx into it instead of the game folder and sets up resource.cfg with no pointer to .\AUD just like the previous install.

The LSL7 game DOES install resource.sfx to the game folder.

I've added the patchDir = .\PATCHES and the audiosize = 32768 to the Resource.cfg like you had there in the previous post just in case those lines fix things up properly, as well as the resAUD = .\AUD and resSFX = .\SFX since that's where they are.

I also have kbdDrv = IBMKBD.DRV, memoryDrv = ARM.DRV, mouseDrv = STDMOUSE.DRV in mine, with no minmemory line at all. Are those okay?

I noticed that the LSL7 RESOURCE.CFG has patchDir = .\; .\patches\

That one looks weird, but is it normal?