I found a rather odd case in DOSBox 0.60, 0.58, and today's CVS version. With the shareware version of "Star Hammer" (1994, Silver Lightning) things work beatifully, but if I try to launch the registered version, I get a "Not Enough Memory" error. None of my experimenting with loadfix fixes the issue either.
I am running Slackware Linux 9.1 w/ kernel 2.4.22
Tried with all three versions of DOS Box I've listed.
either the registered exe is a bit corrupt or the game requires more memory. you can increase it in the configfile.
But i guess the registered exe has it's exe header wrong.
Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!
You may be right on it possibly having an odd EXE header. It's interesting, as Star Hammer registered is the ONLY DOS game I've seen to work in WINE. Just looked through it a little bit in a hex editor. Both versions have been compressed via PKLite. The Not Enough Memory string seems to be one of the first visible string in the file, after the PK-Lite information, perhaps it's an issue then with PK-Lite.... But then, that does not quite explain why the Shareware version runs, whilest the registered version doesn't. Also, IF the header is corrupt, it's not so messed up that MS-DOS 6.22 couldn't read it.
I am strongly suspecting that the Not Enough memory error is slightly bogus in this case, as the machine I used to run this on only had 8 megs, whereas DOS Box is allocating 16 megs by default.
Well sometimes something goes wrong what game doesn't expect to go wrong.
and it outputs its only documented error like not enough memory.
Dunno Pklite exe's tend to run fine as far as I know. But dunno
try unpacking first (there exists a share/freeware util unp.exe which can unpack almost every packed exe.)
Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!
Well, unp did the trick. 😀 I've saved a copy of my compressed exe, just to have an original copy. Truly intruiging process. I'm now glad I loaded up the exe in elvis, and poked around a bit. Again, both WINE and MS-DOS can run this one just fine, packed... so there might be something else going on. (The reason why I didn't just run it through WINE, is because WINE's sound support for DOS programs is horrid, so is it's keyboard handling, and the game itself ran just a bit too fast.)
Ludicrous Bump I know But i was hoping that Magamo might still be around!
Where did you get the registered version of star-hammer from - I can't seem to find a valid address for Home-Brew Software so seem's unlikely I can register it! Anyone have any clues for who might have the rights these days?
http://www.homebrewsoftware.com/
Yeah, don't you hate it when the address is so different from the company name? 😜
They don't offer an order option for that game, just GateWorld, but there is a contact page on the site. Lights are on, but dunno if anyone's home.
i meant that the publisher silver lightning no longer have a valid site, homebrew have an email address but it doesnt seem to work! (or at least it bounced this morning) I've managed to find the email address of the developer who still works there, so maybe he will be able to help.
wrote:Ludicrous Bump I know But i was hoping that Magamo might still be around!
Where did you get the registered version of star-hammer from - I can't seem to find a valid address for Home-Brew Software so seem's unlikely I can register it! Anyone have any clues for who might have the rights these days?
The mother of all bumps. If you are still alive after all these years if you even still care about Star Hammer FULL VERSION I have finally found it here:
LINK REMOVED
I wasn't sure if it was the shareware version or what not so I played through to level 21 the first mission of campaign 2, here are the screenshots to prove it is legit:
Get this into the DOS archives if you can. Sorry this has taken 9 years but the game has finally resurfaced! BTW the later campaign baddies are really hard!
Thread closed
Thread is old and so called "abandonware" is not allowed here.
