Did you run the install program after installing to pick your sound and video drivers?

Also, did you check the folder after installation to ensure that the .drv files are there?

Be sure that your RESOURCE.CFG file has the line "videoDrv=EGA320.DRV" in it and that that file is in the game's folder.

Actually I can play these games on Win98se but I also get the video driver error UNLESS you MANUALLY set the colors to 256 colors. This is typical poor programing by Sierra which does not alter the color mode, so it is looking for 256 colors. Try to manually alter the colors on your PC and them try running it under WinXP (Win95 mode). If not, there should be some way to fool the program in DOSBOX, but I do not know how.

That can't be related to the problem you're having with running inside of DOSBox.

As for switching to 256 color mode in XP to play old Windows games, if you pull up the properties for any Windows program shortcut, you'll see an option to do this automatically on the Compatability tab ("Run in 256 colors").

I recommend a more specific Sierra interpreter.

http://freesci.linuxgames.com/?page=links

DOSBox is easier to setup and can be used for nearly all of the DOS SCI games. FreeSCI is worthless for later SCI games. FreeSCI development is also next to non existent. I had great hope for FreeSCI at one point, but have since given up all hope for it. With the development of DOSBox I see no need for FreeSCI. With the coming Windows 3x support in DOSBox, we will soon be able to run the Windows only SCI game, too.

It would be really cool if there was an active project for creating a third-party, cross-platform interpreter like SCUMMVM, but for Sierra games. I don't understand why such a project doesn't currently exist.

I also wonder if SCUMMVM itself could be extended to support AGI & SCI games (both old and new), which I know a lot of other people would like to see as well.

I would imagine that AGI would be relatively easy to do. It would not need to be very game specific. SCI would be much harder. You would almost have to add support for each game individually. Sierra used to archive the interpreter they used with any given game with the code for that game since other versions would not work with it. You can't swap SIERRA.EXE between games.

ScummVM is adding support for the Coktel Vision games, but I doubt they will get around to the Sierra games anytime soon, if ever. Still it would be nice...

AGI is relatively easy. I wrote an AGI interpreter over the course of a week. There are a few things that seem to be game specific, though.

My intention was to make that interpreter support both AGI and SCI games, but I never got around to the SCI part.

I'm sure there is a large common set of functionality among SCI games, but you're right that it's obvious they extended and customized the engine while developing each new game with it (especially when they went to VGA)

nagi ?
or is that somethign different ?

NAGI is for AGI only. It is C code created by reverse engineering an AGI disassembly, rather than reimplementing based on the specs. Doesn't do SCI, though.

NAGI is pretty good, but I would like to see a couple of improvements. It would be nice to be able to a) switch between full screen and windowed mode with Alt+Enter b) The ability to close the window with the close button. Of lesser importance, it would also be nice to have some kind of scaler. I don't think that NAGI is still being developed, though.

HunterZ wrote:

Did you run the install program after installing to pick your sound and video drivers?

Also, did you check the folder after installation to ensure that the .drv files are there?

The folder contains files with .drv, so yes, unless there's a specific one I should be looking out for. As for the install program, if I install it again...it just installs again. I'm pretty sure I put in the correct specifications for DOSBox during installation, but I'll go and check them again just to be sure.

collector wrote:

Be sure that your RESOURCE.CFG file has the line "videoDrv=EGA320.DRV" in it and that that file is in the game's folder.

If I open my RESOURCE.CFG file from either KQ4 or PQ2 in notepad, I get a blank pad.

Also, here are screenshots of the KQ4 and PQ2 folders:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/KK_Akki/pq.gif
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/KK_Akki/kq.gif

Thanks again for all your help.

EDIT: As for running my computer in 256 colour mode, it doesn't seem to make any difference in the slightest. I still recieve the same error message.

About the installer: I think there's a point where it says you can hit ESCape to exit without reinstalling (but still saving settings).

Sounds like you didn't do this and the game hasn't generated a valid resource.cfg for you with the right settings. Note that Sierra games have no ability to auto-detect your hardware, so you must use the install.exe utility to generate a resource.cfg with the desired settings before the game will run.