The same thing happened with me. My version is also from Home of the Underdogs though I do remember it working with ME without DOSBox of course. I am also getting the game.bat error. Does anyone know how to fix it?

So does anyone else have the same problem as me? This was the only topic I could find that was concerning Alien Odyssey so that's why I am trying to post here. I want to know how to solve this problem and I have already tried looking at the DOSBox compatibility list and it did not show Alien Odyssey so I do not know what to do to start getting it to run.

Interl@ce, start by posting the content of that GAME.BAT file here.

Here are the contents of that GAME.BAT file:
@echo off

del *.swp
cls

set dos4g=quiet
set dos4gpath=.;..;

mcp

You should replace the dos4gw stub with the DOS32A one (search forum for details) and get rid of the batch file.

I tried that, it didn't work - as luck has it, I tried to run the game yesterday and run into the exact same problem. This is the original CD game, no downloaded rip. The game won't run and if I replace dos4gw with dos32a and edit the lines, it STILL doesn't work.

Do you have any other ways of getting the game to work? I was going to try that solution until red_avatar posted and said that it would be no use.

Red_avatar have you figured out a way to get the game working yet? You said you just tried getting it work but you were unsuccessful so have you figured out other ways of getting the game to run?

What error messages are you guys getting?

I get the same error message as Interl@ce:
***Please use 'GAME.BAT' ***

The game won't work and I am sure I am running GAME.BAT in C:\ODYSSEY so I am definetely sure that the path I have installed the game is correct.

try the cvs version of dosbox.

Where can I find the latest official release of the CVS version of Dosbox? I need a download link to it and then I can give it a try.

There's no such thing as an "offical CVS release" because CVS is the work-in-progress versions of the source code that aren't officially built and released until Qbix and Harekiet decide to label the current state of things as a new official release version. Lots of people have their own experimental builds of the latest CVS source code, though, and you can find links to them elsewhere on these forums (I'm not at home right now so I don't have any URLs handy, unfortunately).

Okay I tried the game again today - replaced dos4gw.exe with dos32a.exe (I always do this) and patched the game file to have dos32a.exe imbedded too. No difference - with latest CVS. Game still complains about not finding game.bat

Hi,
I don't know if anyone has come up with a solution yet. Today I also wanted to play Alien Odyssey but ran into the same problem as you. I checked the batch file etc. but everything seemed ok. *But* on a closer look, in the batch file, the MCP.EXE has an ASCII character 8 as command line parameter. Probably DosBox doesn't handle non-character values and dismisses it.
Well, I modified the mcp.exe so it doesn't check for the parameter anymore, the game works fine so far.
You can get the new file from http://gamefileformats.the-underdogs.org/ao/mcp.rar

Have fun playing! 😀

hmm nasty.
dosbox doesn't throw away characters that easy though.
Let's take a closer look on it

Edit:
character 8.. isn't that tab ?
That would be nasty. Dosbox does do some weird things with tabs though

No, it's backspace Qbix: http://www.asciitable.com/

perharps even worse.
Will see what I can do.

Fixed it.