Have you already checked the GOG forums?

There is a utility by ripsaw8080 that fixes the mouse issue in DOS (and DOSbox):

Re: Atlantis: The lost tales

I use ATLCUT 11 if you're wondering.

The cause is apparently the game being badly programmed in this particular and using two different timing sources as equivalent (since one of them was main cycle speed, everything got screwed up).

Note that this solution is still host cpu speed dependent so you have to adjust it yourself. I'd like a permanent stable solution that isn't 'use the windows version' myself. While the windows version has a natural gog made full install, which is nice, i prefer dosbox for portability (in this game i made a 'dvd' which allows changing cds by just pressing enter when asked because all the files are named different and the game doesn't check labels so they can go to the same drive or directory mounted as cdrom).

Jorpho wrote:

Have you already checked the GOG forums?

Yes and they told me to place my question here in Vogons since you are the experts with DosBox.

Serious Callers Only wrote:

There is a utility by ripsaw8080 that fixes the mouse issue in DOS (and DOSbox): […]
Show full quote

There is a utility by ripsaw8080 that fixes the mouse issue in DOS (and DOSbox):

Re: Atlantis: The lost tales

I use ATLCUT 11 if you're wondering.

The cause is apparently the game being badly programmed in this particular and using two different timing sources as equivalent (since one of them was main cycle speed, everything got screwed up).

Note that this solution is still host cpu speed dependent so you have to adjust it yourself. I'd like a permanent stable solution that isn't 'use the windows version' myself. While the windows version has a natural gog made full install, which is nice, i prefer dosbox for portability (in this game i made a 'dvd' which allows changing cds by just pressing enter when asked because all the files are named different and the game doesn't check labels so they can go to the same drive or directory mounted as cdrom).

I've tried that already, i've replaced the original ALTCUT with this one, I even tried executing it, but it says that it can't find the drive it was supposed to look for.
And even if I don't execute ALTCUT, just replace and play, there is no apparent change with the mouse speed. It's still stuck there.

Radio wrote:

I've tried that already, i've replaced the original ALTCUT with this one, I even tried executing it, but it says that it can't find the drive it was supposed to look for.
And even if I don't execute ALTCUT, just replace and play, there is no apparent change with the mouse speed. It's still stuck there.

Then, you're doing it wrong. You have to do it on a dosbox conf file [autoexec] section.

my conf file is similar to this, and i keep it outside of the game drive dir "game" (or edit any conf file that already exists and make it call ATLCUT 11 instead of ATLDOS.EXE)

1mount c "game"
2#i have every cd DOS file in a single dir
3mount d "cd" -t cdrom 
4c:
5#game installs here
6cd ATLGAME
7#the number scales the responsiveness of the mouse
8ATLCUT 11
9exit

that's all there is to it. You have to provide a argument that works for your computer speed (i used binary search to find one that fit for me).

You don't replace the game executable with this one (ATLDOS.EXE). ATLCUT.COM or ATLCUT.EXE is a new program that invokes the normal dos executable after fiddling with some stuff, so 'Replacing the old ATLCUT with the new' doesn't make sense... it's the same, ripsaw only made one of these.

If the ATLCUT exec complains about about not finding the ATLDOS, you shouldn't have deleted it. If ATLDOS complains about not having found the cd drive, you're mounting the drives wrong.

BTW, i personally had some other problems with this game. I needed to select a GRAVIS ultrasound to avoid some weird game soundblaster crashes.

A way i could make the game reproduce the crash reliably was to right click and move the cursor around near the fisherman, and wait for wave sfx. Nearly always froze. No matter, the GRAVIS sound is good too. But i suspect this and other crashes are cpu cycles dependant.

I also had to use

[cpu]
cputype=486_slow

in order not to crash after the intro. When i tried to run it with the defaults

core=auto
cputype=386
cycles=auto

it didn't crash on the debugger (gdb) but crashed without. It's a temperamental game, especially the dos version, and that the patches that work for DOS turn the main menu 'new player' into italian doesn't help. It's understandable why GoG gave up on distributing the DOS version.

Serious Callers Only wrote:

BTW, i personally had some other problems with this game. I needed to select a GRAVIS ultrasound to avoid some weird game soundblaster crashes.

A way i could make the game reproduce the crash reliably was to right click and move the cursor around near the fisherman, and wait for wave sfx. Nearly always froze. No matter, the GRAVIS sound is good too.

The mouse problem starts from the beginning. The moment I disembark from the flyer I can't move the camera to get on with the story.
I've never experienced such problem with any other Dos game.

BTW I've downloaded Atlantis (along with several hundred Dos games) from http://www.old-games.com/. It's an easy-setup version, just extract and play. The guy who makes them uses a START THE GAME.bat file. If you want things changed you just tamper with dosbox.conf.
GOG had the same principle except that you had to go along with their installer and their .conf files were a mess. Old-Games doesn't have an installer and it's .conf files are more organized.

Up until now the only problems I've experienced was with Atlantis: The Lost Tales, Crusader No Remorse (cinematics sounded like were in mono, but I solved it by taking ASYLUM.DLL from the GOG version and replacing it with the Old-Games version) and Blood: One Unit Whole Blood which doesn't play the intro video, or any other video.
Everything else worked like a charm.

I'll give it a shot with this GRAVIS ultrasound tip of yours because some times I hear a sound pop in dialogues.
Anyway, I still don't understand why Atlantis doesn't work. Maybe if there was a way to tamper it with hexedit like I did with the GOG version.

The most important thing seems to be making sure the cycles prevent a crash. I don't know the optimal 'cycles' for this game but i suspect they're quite restricted, considering the way crashes happen in soundblaster and music in all cases can crackle or repeat. That fisherman 'wav sfx' crash i mentioned causes the soundblaster music to repeat, interupt, repeat, just as a wave sfx would be starting. I mentioned gravis because it seems slightly less sensitive (doesn't crash on the fisherman with the same setup otherwise for example).

And i had to use cputype=486_slow not to crash right after the intro as said. Not to mention the mouse problem (ATLCUT 11 *does* solve it here).

You can somewhat test the cycle sensitivity of the DOS version when you start the game. With soundblaster for me, if i put the cycles above 12000, the sound during the 'sun intro' (before the 'player' menu), has no sound. 13000 and bam, silent fmv. It's unplayable at that speed though, so workarounds are needed.

edit: replacing (that is renaming and overwriting) DOS4GW.EXE of the game by DOS32A.EXE) seems to 'fix' the intro sound at any cycles. You may have to replace the extender *in* the executable (with sb.exe /b ATLDOS.EXE). It's different for the patch or not apparently (patch has dos4gw bound to exec).

Actually, gravis ultrasound doesn't avoid the crash apparently, just makes it less likely. I reproduced it soundblaster 16, pro and gravis now, although it's less likely with the later two.

You can try it with these savegames (namely the 4th). Go near the fisherman, and click right to open inventory and move the mouse around and wait for sfx. You may have to repeat some times.

http://www.nicouzouf.com/en/?id=atlantisthelosttales

Just for posterity, a guide for how i defiled this buggy game:

1. installed the DOS version of game
2. replaced the exec by the DOS patch from patches scrolls
3. rebound bound extender from the exec with dos32a. 'sb /r ATLDOS.EXE' and deleted all the extra files (renamed DOS32A.EXE to DOS4GW.EXE just to be safe too).
4. downloaded ATLCUT from the ripsaw link.
5. combined all the cds into a single 'cd' dir, placed ultrasnd files on a dir there too (structure), copied the modified execs to the 'cd' too. This is just my 'no cd' hack, and to make sure reinstall doesn't nuke the exec changes, it's not really needed (and it's not too elegant since you still have to click ok when it asks you to change cd).
6. setup the game to use gravis ultrasound that seems less prone to speed related soundcard crashes
7. used this conf file

1[dosbox]
2memsize=63
3
4[sdl]
5fullresolution=original
6output=overlay
7
8[gus]
9gus=true
10ultradir=D:\ULTRASND
11
12[cpu]
13cputype=486_slow
14
15[autoexec]
16mount c "game"
17mount d "cd" -t cdrom
18c:
19cd ATLGAME
20ATLCUT 11
21exit

You have to make sure the mount paths and game dir are correct ofc. This is setup to have the conf file outside the game dir/drive, which is how i like it.

486_slow avoids crash after intro, ATLCUT increases mouse responsiveness, ULTRASND dir is the gravis stuff/drivers (i don't think the game uses this, but just to be sure). 63 mb because why not. Fullresolution original because the game has a 15 bit or 16 bit per pixel and dosbox doesn't scale up those unless rez actually changes (with this config it gets streched unfortunately, but better than a small square at the center of the monitor).
edit: this 16bpp thing is a dosbox bug, not something inherent.

Serious Callers Only wrote:

Then, you're doing it wrong. You have to do it on a dosbox conf file [autoexec] section. […]
Show full quote

Radio wrote:

I've tried that already, i've replaced the original ALTCUT with this one, I even tried executing it, but it says that it can't find the drive it was supposed to look for.
And even if I don't execute ALTCUT, just replace and play, there is no apparent change with the mouse speed. It's still stuck there.

Then, you're doing it wrong. You have to do it on a dosbox conf file [autoexec] section.

my conf file is similar to this, and i keep it outside of the game drive dir "game" (or edit any conf file that already exists and make it call ATLCUT 11 instead of ATLDOS.EXE)

Copy code to clipboard

1mount c "game"
2#i have every cd DOS file in a single dir
3mount d "cd" -t cdrom 
4c:
5#game installs here
6cd ATLGAME
7#the number scales the responsiveness of the mouse
8ATLCUT 11
9exit

that's all there is to it. You have to provide a argument that works for your computer speed (i used binary search to find one that fit for me).

You don't replace the game executable with this one (ATLDOS.EXE). ATLCUT.COM or ATLCUT.EXE is a new program that invokes the normal dos executable after fiddling with some stuff, so 'Replacing the old ATLCUT with the new' doesn't make sense... it's the same, ripsaw only made one of these.

If the ATLCUT exec complains about about not finding the ATLDOS, you shouldn't have deleted it. If ATLDOS complains about not having found the cd drive, you're mounting the drives wrong.

ALL RIGHT, IT WORKED!!!
Thank you so much!!!

Camera movement isn't as smooth as GOG's version but it's much better than not moving at all.
A couple more questions though:

Here's how I put ALTCUT in my conf:

@mount c .\
imgmount d ".\ -t cdrom
@c:
cd ATLGAME
ATLCUT 11
@cls
@atldos
exit

Is it OK? Because when I chose EXIT GAME it restarted automatically.

And what's this 11 for? You say that the number scales the responsiveness of the mouse. It bypasses sensitivity or something? And what happens if I increase the number? Set it on 20... or 100?

You don't call atldos, ATLCUT does it for you (it creates a new process, think of that exe as a bat file). When you exited the game it started again because you called it again. Remove @atldos.

Ripsaw explained better what the 11 does (it can be any number from 0 to 99 i think). It's not that it bypasses sensitivity but that it bypasses a bug on the game. You have to experiment to see what 'feels good' for your machine/cycles because the bug is host cpu speed dependent.

If you want to know the bug, ripsaw theorized that it's because the programmers were moving the mouse a little bit at a time to the center based on the number of 'mouse events' they caught. Originally this was no problem, but modern OS are sending so much of that info and the game is running so fast that every movement was almost canceled before the user could move. Ripsaw utility filters out these mouse events and only lets some pass, working around the bug.

BTW, my last post as a complete 'how to' (but you should keep your cd mounts because mine are a dvd hack, unless you want ofc). I'm using dosbox svn, though.

Serious Callers Only wrote:

You don't call atldos, ATLCUT does it for you (it creates a new process, think of that exe as a bat file). When you exited the g […]
Show full quote

You don't call atldos, ATLCUT does it for you (it creates a new process, think of that exe as a bat file). When you exited the game it started again because you called it again. Remove @atldos.

Ripsaw explained better what the 11 does (it can be any number from 0 to 99 i think). It's not that it bypasses sensitivity but that it bypasses a bug on the game. You have to experiment to see what 'feels good' for your machine/cycles because the bug is host cpu speed dependent.

If you want to know the bug, ripsaw theorized that it's because the programmers were moving the mouse a little bit at a time to the center based on the number of 'mouse events' they caught. Originally this was no problem, but modern OS are sending so much of that info and the game is running so fast that every movement was almost canceled before the user could move. Ripsaw utility filters out these mouse events and only lets some pass, working around the bug.

BTW, my last post as a complete 'how to' (but you should keep your cd mounts because mine are a dvd hack, unless you want ofc). I'm using dosbox svn, though.

OFC? What's that?

Abbreviation for 'of course'.

By the way, i figured the 486_slow crash. I screwed up in the upper config file and set cputype to 386 instead of auto. Didn't realize auto was its own cputype, not one of the others. autoworks fine for atlantis.