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Quest For Glory III sound issue

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First post, by Colchek

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I've been wrangling with this problem since I found DosBox, and I'm hoping someone out there might hold the key to fixing it. 😀

The scenario:

Every single Sierra game I've played (which includes the other SCI games like Space Quest IV & V, Police Quest III, Police Quest I remake, etc) runs perfectly. Fast, smooth, and no sound problems at all. Except for Quest For Glory III. In this game, it runs fast, it's smooth, music plays fine, but there are no sound effects whatsoever. As a test, I tried it with VDMSound, and although the gameplay there was extremely choppy, the sound effects did play. Since DosBox runs it a lot better, I'd like to get it working here if at all possible.

Here is what I have tried to fix it:

First version of DosBox I had was .61. I tried .62 when it came out, then .63. Neither helped. For kicks I tried .58, same thing. In the DosBox config file, I've tried upping the memory, setting it to a higher cycle count when it starts (14000 runs best on my PC), tried different settings of Soundblasters, disabled EMS and XMS, then tried with one on and the other off, tried different CPU cores, and tried disabling other sound emulations.

I've also tried an alternate copy of the game, same situation.

Needless to say, I'm at a loss here. What bugs me the most is that the other games from around the same time period run perfectly. For reference, my PC's specs are a P4 3Ghz HT, 1 GB RAM, Ati Radeon 9800 128MB, and onboard 5.1 sound. (Had to cut a corner somewhere to get it in under budget. 😁 )

Any ideas?

Reply 1 of 4, by avatar_58

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What sound type did you set in the install.exe setup? Set it to "Sound Blaster" (without the compatible on the end) and then set the music either to "Sound blaster and compatibles" or "General Midi". Try it with very low cycles first.

It does work, I have it running with sound on my computer.

Does it say "Unable to initialize audio hardware" or the sound just doesn't work and comes out as adlib?

Reply 2 of 4, by Colchek

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The game is configured to use Soundblaster for Speech/Audio and Soundblaster or compatibles for Music. I've also tried General Midi Driver for music as well, either one has the same results. I can notice the difference in the music between the two selections.

The game doesn't give the "unable to initialize audio hardware" under DosBox, but it does under VDMSound. I haven't tried it with a very low cycle count yet, the lowest I've gone is 3000. I'll see what that does.

A point I missed in the first post, I'm running it under Windows XP.

Reply 3 of 4, by Colchek

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After some tweaking, it seems I've found the magic combination. I fiddled with the SB settings, and ended up setting the card to sb16, the base to 240, the IRQ to 7, the dma to 3, and hdma to 5. After that, it started giving me the 'unable to initalize audio hardware' message, but the sounds started working if I just clicked past it. Not a problem for me, as long as it works. 😁

Reply 4 of 4, by avatar_58

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If it says "uanble to initialize" lower your cpu cycles....thats usually the cause. If it still continues (or you don't like that low speed) download "GOSIERRA"

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=GoSierra

That will patch up the driver and you should be ok with any cycles. 😁

I suggest keeping the cycles low enough for Combat to be done properly. If its too fast combat is way too easy and not very fun at all.

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