The installer just unzips the archives and writes out the .CFG file, it doesn't do anything else to the installed files. There was nothing wrong with the thread starter's files, the game just wasn't properly installed.
Now I'm puzzled and don't understand. Will need to look myself to see what's different/not correctly installed
The problem in this case could have been in correctly following those installer-less installation instructions on the Exult page rather than some deficiency in them. 😉
wrote:Now I'm puzzled and don't understand. Will need to look myself to see what's different/not correctly installed
As a followup, I compared the md5 checksums of the resulting files if I installed U7SI with INSTALL.EXE versus the manual install. The md5 checksums were equivalent.
Then I noticed that some files were being placed in the root directory (i.e., the C:\ directory, not the C:\SERPENT directory). At one point I saw a MAINBOOT file after using INSTALL.EXE. And at another point I saw a FILELIST.CFG file (although I'm not quite sure at what point that was generated). They were both 1kb binary files that had no human readable content.
The strange thing is that if I place either file into the root directory of my U7SI manual install that did not work before, it suddenly starts working.
Anyway, it appears that the correct installation procedure creates extra files that the manual install does not. And then the SI.EXE program checks for the presence of those files and if it doesn't find them, aborts.
Seems to be a form of copy protection. The installer creates a file in the root directory containing some encrypted info, the filename being randomly chosen as EMS.CFG, DOS.UTL, DRIVER.CNT, MAINBOOT, or FILELIST.CFG, which I guess looks important enough to discourage people from deleting it, and both installer and game executables go to some trouble to keep those filenames hidden. Serpent Isle also has a documentation-based protection not long after the game begins, so apparently more concerned with protection than Black Gate.
BG has the documentation based protection as well on two occassions in the game (SI also two).
But the floppy protection only on SI and that very half assed because every good copy program could deal with that... There is a help text somewhere for U7 that mentions that for SI you need to have the original disks...
The contents of the file don't seem to matter, or at least the game doesn't complain about it right away, so perhaps a check for proper installation rather than protection. If it truly doesn't matter what's in the file, you could update the installer-less installation instructions for SI to create one of the files in the root.
Maybe I'll just update it that for a working game you need to do a real install. The purpose of the instructions are NOT to have a working game but to get the data files (everything in the STATIC folder) which the manual installation does just fine 😉
OTOH it's so easy that I can just add this info 😉
Horkalite or Ripsaw, could you image disk 5 for me? My floppy disk has bad sectors.
I've spent the last few nights imaging my floppies and it's saddening how many have gone bad. My Spanish Serpent Isle has three bad disks out of 8, English SI one bad disk out of 7 and both add-ons for U7 are bad ;(
On the bright side Black Gate's disk are all good.
Does your SI.EXE in the SIDISK00 archive on disk one match the MD5 that I posted or the one Horkalite posted? I think it'd be best to get disk 5 from the matching release.
heya, finally had time to look at it.
My SI.exe md5 matches Horkalite's
