I have the retail CD of Noctropolis. Installs no problem from CD. Mouse works in the install program, etc. Sound card is detected no problem. Have tried with both mouse and sound disabled and no drivers loaded as well. Have tried multiple CD drives, multiple versions of MSCDEX as well as SHSUCD with the ISO loaded as a virtual drive.

No matter what I do when I run dark.exe or darkrun.exe the game displays and ankh symbol and then exits with the message "program terminated normally". If I run dark.exe it changes the display mode, displays the ankh symbol momentarily then switches the display mode back and exits. If I run darkrun.exe it changes the display mode then exits without changing it back and you can still run DOS commands and see a tiny command prompt that's repeated about 6 times across the bottom of the screen - seems that this executable doesn't restore the display mode like dark.exe does.

System specs:

PC Chips M912 V1.7 Socket 3 motherboard.
Intel 486DX4-100 w/heatsink & fan.
64MB (2x32 72 pin) memory.
ATI Mach32 VLB 2MB video.
Trident TVGA8900D ISA video.
OAK technology ISA video.
SB Vibra 16 ISA sound.
DOS 6.22

System plays Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, Doom, etc no problems and perfectly stable.

I have used both the ATI (with the Mach32), UNIVBE and Scitech DD drivers with all three of the video cards I have with essentially the same results.

I noticed that the game seems to seek the CD drive before exiting which is why I have tried so many combos of drives and virtual drives.

I have it up to about 624k of free conventional memory. I have the EMM386 setup exactly as in the game manual, etc.

Running out of ideas!

GD