The game installs and runs fine here using default settings in DOSBox 0.74 with an ISO image of the game disc. The intro animations or movies are visible, no blank screens. Even if it seems unnecessary to you, please always include your mount lines in problem reports, especially with CD-based games.

The game crashes during startup when using the included UNIVBE and SDD 5.3a with all machine types; however, it shouldn't be necessary. machine=svga_s3 has VESA in BIOS (i.e. built-in), and appears to work fine by itself. machine=svga_paradise or machine=svga_et4000 also work if you load their specific VESA drivers from the VESA\PARADISE or VESA\TSENG folders on the cdrom before running the GO batch file.

Thank you for your reply.

The following is my conf file:

1[sdl] 
2fullscreen=true  
3fulldouble=false 
4fullresolution=original 
5windowresolution=original 
6output=surface 
7autolock=true 
8sensitivity=100 
9waitonerror=true 
10priority=higher,normal 
11mapperfile=mapper-0.74.map 
12usescancodes=true 
13[dosbox] 
14language= 
15machine=svga_s3 
16captures=capture 
17memsize=16 
18[render] 
19frameskip=0 
20aspect=true 
21scaler=normal2x 
22[cpu] 
23core=auto 
24cputype=auto 
25cycles=max 
26cycleup=10 
27cycledown=20 
28[mixer] 
29nosound=false 
30rate=44100 
31blocksize=1024 
32prebuffer=20 
33[midi] 
34mpu401=intelligent 
35mididevice=default 
36midiconfig= 
37[sblaster] 
38sbtype=sb16 
39sbbase=220 
40irq=7 
41dma=1 
42hdma=5 
43sbmixer=true 
44oplmode=auto 
45oplemu=default 
46oplrate=44100 
47[gus] 
48gus=false 
49gusrate=44100 
50gusbase=240 
51gusirq=5 
52gusdma=3 
53ultradir=f:\ULTRASND 
54[speaker] 
55pcspeaker=true 
56pcrate=44100 
57tandy=auto 
58tandyrate=44100 
59disney=true 
60[joystick] 

61joysticktype=auto 
62timed=true 
63autofire=false 
64swap34=false 
65buttonwrap=false 
66[serial] 
67serial1=dummy 
68serial2=dummy 
69serial3=disabled 
70serial4=disabled 
71[dos] 
72xms=true 
73ems=true 
74umb=true 
75keyboardlayout=auto 
76[ipx] 
77ipx=false 
78[autoexec] 
79cd .. 
80cd .. 
81mount c .\games\SimIsle  
82mount d .\games\SimIsle\cd -t cdrom 
83c: 
84cls
85cd SIMISLE
86#call go
87#exit 

I have attempted svga_s3, svga_et4000, and svga_paradise (using the tseng labs vesa driver and paradise vesa driver respectively).

All three launch, and all three give me the following screen when the games starts:

You can see a few lines of what seems to be clouds appear. After a while very hard to read names begin to scroll upwards in a white font.

it appears the problem is during videos only.

exofreeze wrote:

I have recently installed SimIsle by creating an ISO, imgmounting it, and running the disc based install (dosbox 0.74).

1mount d .\games\SimIsle\cd -t cdrom

What happened between your initial post and that mount line? Are you using a disc image or a rip?

I was trying it both ways. First I mounted a bin/cue, and then I tried copying the files to a directory and mounting it as a cd.

Both the cd and the directory are 260megs, with 2,188 files in 81 folders.

Best to stick with the image for troubleshooting; least likely to cause problems.

Disc contents sound about the same; not exact, but could be differences in how the counting is done.

The disc I have was mastered on 08/26/1997. The top part of README.TXT for comparison:

1SIMISLE: Missions In The Rainforest
2
3Last Minute Info 6 September, 1995
4Updated January 6, 1997 -- Collections 3
5Updated August 26, 1997 -- Classic
6Ver. 1.034

I used your conf file with only mounts modified; no problem here.

Have you tried other output= settings?

The top of my readme states:

1SIMISLE: Missions In The Rainforest 
2
3Last Minute Info 6 September, 1995 
4Ver. 1.0

So apparently I am using an older version.

As far as output goes I have attempted surface and ddraw.

Doesn't mean 1.0 has a bug, but it seems something is different between the versions. Haven't found any patches, though.

I don't consider these things likely to help, but you could try experimenting with loadfix allocations of various sizes, increasing memsize, using DOS32A instead of DOS4GW, and just reinstalling (some mysterious problems have actually been fixed by the latter, for whatever reason).

I have tried the re-install a few times already.

I also just patched simisle.exe with the dos32a extender to the same result.

Zero luck with locating a patch file to a newer version.