VOGONS


First post, by tk05

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Up to the end of Chapter One, the only problem I saw with Dosbox was that the movies and voices weren't completely in sync. But after the end movie, the game asked for Disc 2. I thought there may be a problem with this and I was right. When I eject disc 1(Mandrake/Mandriva uses Supermount), the kernel log complains about a media change where inodes are in use(looks like the SCI programmers had a bad habit of not closing files when wanting to change cds). I then have to mount CD 2 in tty2 because supermount wouldn't. I then try hitting enter in dosbox and get a little black and white SCI window complaining it couldn't find a file(maybe a file it wanted to leave open on disc 1?). So I exit the game and copy disc 1 and disc 2 to the hard drive but there are 3 common file names: resource.aud and resource.sfx. I decided to try keeping the resource.* files from disc 1 and then try the game again. Now it just redraws the prompt for inserting the next CD when I hit enter. In the Games DB, this game is listed as working well but there's a comment about maybe needing multiple drives. I'm not sure how that would help since the game is incapable of looking elsewhere for data than the drive specified in the config file before running. From the messages concerning this game I found doing a search, it doesn't seem like anyone else is having this problem, maybe someone knows a work around? Any help would be appreciated!

Reply 1 of 4, by dougdahl

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As a longshot have you tried hitting Ctrl-F4 after changing the CD?
Dosbox needs to rescan the media when you change it. So in this case when you changed your cd Dosbox would presumably still see the files from the first cd.
(Personally I don't use Supermount and when I tested it just now I couldn't even get the CD to unmount)

Just tested-the hard drive version worked for me. (for some stupid reason my secondary cd drive won't eject the cd at the moment so I am unable to put GK2 disk 2 in)
If you have two CD drives you could try mounting disks 1 and 2 and editing the RESOURCE.CFG to have both cd paths instead of just one.
And if not I just found a way that could work with a hard drive copy-
-copy disk 2 onto the hard drive
ie /home/name/gk2
-mount that directory as a separate drive
ie MOUNT e /home/name/gk2
-edit the RESOURCE.CFG and have the drive letters for the CD and disk 2 copied files drive
ie CD:=D:;E:

Reply 2 of 4, by Bogorra

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Ok, I believe that I can help with this problem. I install Gabriel Knight 2 in Windows xp (Is this your operating system?) instead of using dosbox. Select install from the autorun menu after placing CD-1 into your drive. After the installation is complete, go into all programs from your start menu, sierra, and finally click on The Beast Within. The game will run, with perfect movies and voices. Following these steps, I did not encounter cd change issues, and the game ran flawlessly. To play it in full screen, go to your control panel, and double click on display. Click on the settings tab,and then click advanced. Now click the Adapter tab, and then List all Modes. Scroll up to 640 X 840 True color 75 Hertz, then ok and apply. Et voila! The game runs in full screen. Though this may sound complicated at first, it be comes very easy. Hope this helps!

Reply 3 of 4, by tk05

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dougdahl, dosbox doesn't seem to have any responce to Ctrl+F4. Thanks for that RESOURCE.CFG tip though, I just copied all CDs to the hard drive and mounted them each as different drives. It allowed me to continue to chapter two.

Bogorra, No Windows XP is not my operating system.

Though this RESOURCE.CFG trick worked while playing, it didn't work later. Whenever trying to load a savegame that wasn't from Chapter one, dosbox crashes with Illegal Instruction 7. I can't figure out why it would do this since save games are just memory dumps in SCI. This wouldn't be a problem though if dosbox offered save states that one could use as an alternative to save games. There's got to be some work around to get save games to load.

Reply 4 of 4, by dougdahl

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Forgot to mention- about the voices not being in sync you might want to try playing around with the Frame Skip (Ctrl-F7 down, Ctrl-F8 up) and the Cycles (Ctrl-F11 down, Ctrl-F12 up). Also it might not hurt to try it windowed instead of full-screen to see if it helps. Probably won't help, but it may not hurt to try.

Can't seem to get the error with loading savegames Illegal Instruction 7. (though only from towards the start of Chapter 2. And never tried copying all my cds onto the hard drive either)
Some suggestions that amount to little more than shots in the dark. (Apologies if any offend, I'm just suggesting all that comes to mind.)
-If you're using dynamic core try switching to normal.
-If you copied over CD 1 onto the hard drive, you might want to try commenting out that drive and just running it with the CD 1 in your cd drive instead.
-Try having only the CD(s) you need at the time commented in as a drive and in the Resource.cfg.
-If you're using an older version of Dosbox, you might want to try 0.63.
-If you're comfortable with CVS, you might want to try getting a copy and running it. In the past there are been some games for me that weren't working quite right with the version of the time that did with the CVS version. Though as always-no promises, and any troubles you have with the CVS version will probably receive no help. (If you don't know how to use CVS or even what it is, it would be best to ignore this suggestion altogether).
-As a last resort there is a patch at sierra.com for GK2. Unfortunately it would appear that using the patch makes the game unable to use the old savegames. Absolutely NO guarantee that it will help at all. Probably wouldn't hurt to make a second install, patch that, and try from there just in case someone comes up with a solution 2 minutes after you patch the game and have all your savegames become useless.