VOGONS


First post, by videogamer555

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

The game is called Vanslug: X Mission. I noticed when I played it in Dos Box, that after defeating the first enemy (or any enemy for that matter), the game immediately locks up. I notice it does this only when sound effects are enabled. Music being set to Midi, Adlib, or Off has no effect. Only sound effects being set to On or Off has an affect on this bug. Sound effects On means the crash will happen. Sound effects Off means the crash won't happen. The error shown in the DosBox console/status window is "Exit to error: DMA segbound wrapping (read)". I did some Google searches for help on this bug, and found that the very Youtube video that provided the link in the video description to the site that had the game download link, also had stated that DosBox 0.74 doesn't work with this game, and that I needed to downgrade to DosBox 0.73 to play it. I shouldn't have to downgrade DosBox to play a game, so I'm hoping this bug gets fixed.

Of course before you can fix it, you need to see exactly what happens, so to do that, you'll need to be able to repeat the action that causes the bug, so I'm going to tell you below, how to get the game, install it, and play it:
Step 1:
To download the game, go to (Edit by Dominus, abandonware link removed) and then scroll down to where it says "Download Links:" and click on the one that says "Van.Slug.X.Mission.The.Way.of.Super.Warrior.(ima).7z". Don't download the ZIP file one, because it is a supposedly cracked version, but the game doesn't appear to need a crack to play. I tried the regular version, and there's no apparent copy protection to worry about, though there might be if you want to play beyond level-1, I've not gotten that far, because it keeps crashing.
Step 2:
After uncompressing the 7z file, you'll have 4 IMA (floppy disk image) files. Decompress all of these. Among the files extracted from the disk images are 4 files you need that are themselves compressed files (not sure what format, but 7Zip will open them all). These files are DISK.01, DISK.02, DISK.03, and DISK.04. You will want to extract all of these into the final folder where the game will be played from.
Step 3:
Now, mount the folder that has all the game's files as the C dive in DosBox, or mount the folder that contains the folder that has the game's files, if you don't want the game's files in the root directory. To run the game, go to the folder that has the game's files in DosBox, and type "meca a v". Meca is the name of the exe file, "a" means use adlib audio for music, and "v" means use Sound Blaster audio for sound effects.
Step 4:
Now that the game is running, Press Ctrl+F12 to until it is using at least 10000 cycles (otherwise the game runs very jumpy / low FPS). Note that there's no penalty of it running too fast in this game if you accidentally use too high of a cycle count. Now wait for the Samsung logo to appear, and press the escape key (note that the first logo to appear is the "Soft Action" logo, during which pressing the escape key has no effect). Then when the the story appears (written entirely in Korean by the way), press the escape key again. You should now be at the main menu. Press the space bar to start the game. The first thing to appear when the game starts, is something that says "Body Check" and shows some robot character going through some diagnostic screen. You can skip that by pressing escape. Now when the real game is going, left and right are self explanitory, but to shoot you press Ctrl, and to jump you press Alt.
Step 5:
Finally, it's time to trigger the bug. Press and hold Ctrl to shoot at the first enemy that appears until he's destroyed. IMMEDIATELY the game locks up. Everything comes to a grinding halt, and the game can't be quit by pressing escape or any other key. The only way to get out of this lockup is to close DosBox. As I mentioned above, the DosBox console/status window will show "Exit to error: DMA segbound wrapping (read)" as the last entry when the game locks up.

I have yet to try the suggestion of the guy in the Youtube video I mentioned, and downgrade to DosBox 0.73, but I really hate to have to downgrade my DosBox in order to play just one game. I hope somebody fixes the bug in DosBox 0.74 at some point.

Reply 1 of 5, by Dominus

User metadata
Rank DOSBox Moderator
Rank
DOSBox Moderator

1st of all no links to abandonware sites (I'll fix that)
Also did you try SVN of Dosbox?

Also, the different versions of Dosbox can live on the same system as long as you use different folders. The hassle of using different versions is not more than two mouse clicks.

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 2 of 5, by videogamer555

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
Dominus wrote:

1st of all no links to abandonware sites (I'll fix that)
Also did you try SVN of Dosbox?

Also, the different versions of Dosbox can live on the same system as long as you use different folders. The hassle of using different versions is not more than two mouse clicks.

The game was made in South Korea, and as far as I can tell was never sold outside of South Korea. Good luck ever being able to find a copy for you to buy here in the US. I can't even find an online store that sells it (either in English or Korean). The site I linked to that had it for download is the only place that I was able to find a copy of it at all (couldn't even find another site that had it available for download). If the DosBox developers want to fix this bug, they will need to test it out for themselves. For them to do that, they will need to be able to get a copy of the game. My link was intended specifically for any developers that may wish to try to fix this bug, so that they would have access to the game to test it. I'm not about to ask the DosBox devs to take an airplane flight to Korea to buy a copy of the game.

Reply 3 of 5, by peterferrie

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
videogamer555 wrote:

the DosBox console/status window will show "Exit to error: DMA segbound wrapping (read)" as the last entry when the game locks up.

That's the clue to fix the problem - you can use the SVN version of DOSBox, and set the ems=emm386.
It avoids the bug in emm386 that is causing the lock-up.
For DOSBox 0.74, you can try to set ems=false and then run JEMM386 instead.

Reply 4 of 5, by videogamer555

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
peterferrie wrote:
That's the clue to fix the problem - you can use the SVN version of DOSBox, and set the ems=emm386. It avoids the bug in emm386 […]
Show full quote
videogamer555 wrote:

the DosBox console/status window will show "Exit to error: DMA segbound wrapping (read)" as the last entry when the game locks up.

That's the clue to fix the problem - you can use the SVN version of DOSBox, and set the ems=emm386.
It avoids the bug in emm386 that is causing the lock-up.
For DOSBox 0.74, you can try to set ems=false and then run JEMM386 instead.

What's JEMM386?

Reply 5 of 5, by Dominus

User metadata
Rank DOSBox Moderator
Rank
DOSBox Moderator

http://bfy.tw/1GH1

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper