Try running "loadfix -32" before trying to start the game. You can give any number you want instead of 32 but make sure that it is lower than 100.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately when I do that, the more memory I allocate, the more it tells me I need, and it still doesn't run. Any more ideas?

That is really strange. When I start dosbox and run "mem" I get that I have 637Kb of free conventional memory. Than means that only 3Kb of the conventional memory is being used! Most of the dos games need about 580-600Kb of conventional memory to run and as they aren't used to seeing that much free memory they get confused, asking for more. Usually what you need to do is to run loadfix to allocate some memory and have "mem" show about 580-600Kb free conv. memory and you are set. If that doesn't work then something else is going on... No pc has more than 640Kb of conventional memory and I don't think the game needs more than 16MB of RAM.

Yeah, my "mem" shows the same thing... So no more ideas then, I guess?

Now it's telling me I need 86640 more bytes of free memory... What is going on??

How much more does it say you need if you have it eat, say, 128KB of RAM? Maybe there's a point where it just freaks out and gives nonsensical numbers because there's too much RAM available.

Here is everything I tried:
Note that whenever I got a "You need xxxxxx more bytes..." the game would give me a loading screen, which is just a black screen with a little crown mouse cursor, then it would quit to DOS after a few seconds. Whenever it gave me an "Out of hunk space" error, it would just give me the error after a few seconds with no loading screen. So here's what I did:

loadfix -128 results in:
You need 152176 more

then loadfix -12 (leaving me with 496kb free) results in:
You need 165520 more

then loadfix -128 (leaving me with 366kb free) results in a different error message:
Out of hunk space.
Script #: 0, IP: 0

then loadfix -128 (leaving me with 237kb free) results in the same "Out of hunk space" error, but now it's in a much lower resolution for some reason. I assume this is because the game tried to launch itself in 320x200 but failed and somehow it didn't get switched back.

Then I did loadfix -f to put everything back to normal and did loadfix -256 (leaving me with 380kb free), which resulted in "Out of hunk space" again

Then loadfix -f again then loadfix -200 (leaving me with 436kb free), which resulted in "You need 225904 more bytes etc."

I stopped after this. BTW, I just checked the KQ6 box, and it says it needs 640kb of memory to run. DOSBox seems to provide 637kb of free conventional memory by default. Could this be the problem? I don't know how extended and expanded memory come into play.

it's impossible to get 640 kb free.
it's actually impossible to get 637 kb free 😀 That's why loadfix exists.

But kqVI might look like a protected mode game and maybe it wan't more XMS

try setting the memsize(configfile) to higher value.

Hmm seems more likely that you setup the sierra install to not use xms/ems memory so it runs out with only using low memory.

Obix: sorry, could you maybe explain a bit more?

Harekiet: When I installed, I did set it to use xms/ems.

Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it. Hopefully we can figure out what's going on.

Just tried KQ6 on DOSBox 0.60 and it runs fine...

The default 16 MB value of the memsize option is sufficient to run KQ6, so are the XMS=true / EMS=true / DPMI=true settings.

You might perhaps want to edit your dosbox.conf file (in your DOSBox directory, use Notepad) and change the given values, but again, KQ6 runs perfectly well with the defaults.

Try running the install.exe in your King's Quest directory and select these options:
-Music: General MIDI Sound Driver
- Speech: Sound Blaster
- Memory: Use your machine's extra memory

Hope this helps, I've got no other idea 😕

Hi Xelasarg. Thanks a lot for your reply. It's good to know someone has gotten it working. Is there any way I could get you to post a quick list of the exact steps you took to get the game working? Did you run the game's original install using DOSBox, etc., stuff like that. It's still not working for me for some reason 🙁

Hmm...

I didn't do anything special, just opened DOSBox, ran install and played it.

At least you get a loading screen, KQ6 obviously doesn't crash due to an incompatibility with DOSBox. Something's simply eating up too much memory. I've got the floppy version - if you're you using the CD-ROM edition, maybe disabling speech and/or music will help.

Good luck 😉 !

P.S.: I've just deactivated the "use extra memory" option and it works, too. Have you already tried that?