karenfromusa wrote:
Well I am at a complete loss. I bought an old copy of Alone in the Dark on 3.5 floppies on eBay. I have installed it, and tried to run it under Windows 98 SE. I can get the opening sequence to play, and I can hear the sound fine, but when it gets to the actual part that the game play starts, it crashes back to DOS.
I also tried running it under DoxBox, but the exact same thing happens. I have a riptide sound card on an older HP computer running at 550 Mghtz.
Also, there is a strange thing that happens when I first start the game. It shows a selection of game items, one on top and one on the bottom. There are arrows which allow you to scroll though them, such as the pot, gun, etc. If I click on one of them, I get the message "Wrong Selection!" If I click on them again, I continue to get this message three times, and then the game finally loads. I have no idea what this is all about. I have only ever played this game on a mac, way back when. Am I supposed to choose one or the other of these item icons here? And what is the purpose? To clarify, this is NOT during the game play. It is before the game starts and before you choose which character to play.
This reply might be a little late for the person who posted the original message, but it might be helpful to others who are now experiencing similar problems.
The item icons that can be selected when the game first loads are, indeed, designed for the game's copy protection. Some time ago, a complete listing of the copy protection codes were available from one of the abandonware game sites, and I had a copy of it, but I deleted it early this year just prior to changing over to Mandriva Linux 2007.0 from Windows 98. I have, thus far, been unable to find it again.
If I recall correctly, each selectable item is keyed to a letter of the alphabet, so to unlock the copy protection two alphabetic letters must be entered in the correct sequence. Three tries are allowed; if unsuccessful, the user is booted back to MS-DOS.
All this copy protection nonsense can be avoided by downloading the game from an abandonware game site. The download will have the copy protection unlocked, or 'cracked'. I recommend the following link:
www...................
Edit (MiniMax): Link removed by moderator. We don't encourage download of unlicensed software here at VOGONS.
he size of the download there is 5,336 KB. There is absolutely no need to buy used copies of any of the "Alone in the Dark" games, if they can be found. The games are no longer supported in any way by the original distributor and even used copies are extremely scarce.
I ran the game with no problems on my now discarded AST 486DX2-66MHz with a Soundblaster Vibra 16 sound card. The OS was Windows 98. All drivers to run the game were Windows 98 drivers, not the original MS-DOS drivers for the hardware. I have not yet tried running it on my Compaq Deskpro EN, Pentium 3 933 MHz, Mandriva Linux 2007.0, using DosBox-0.72. I strongly suspect, however, that because 'karenfromusa' can hear sound initially, her Riptide sound card is good enough to run the game's sound. The crashing she complains about might simply be due to her failure to unlock the copy protection scheme.
I would advise first downloading a 'cracked' copy of the game. Install the game, carefully following any special instructions provided with the download. I agree with the person who replied that the game should be run in MS-DOS mode (if possible), rather than using an emulator, although in doing so a slowdown utility should be necessary. "Alone in the Dark" was originally intended to be playable on a machine with a 386-CPU, so a machine running at 550 MHz will run the game way too fast. I want to note, however, that the game is reported to be playable using DosBox-0.65 running under Windows XP. Try DosBox if you do not want the extra bother of downloading and installing a slowdown utility. Keep in mind that not all slowdown utilities are free-of-charge.
Once the game is installed, run the setup program to see what options have been pre-selected and what options are available. It is normal to see some selections grayed-out, so your options might be very limited. My old AST ran the game just fine using the pre-selected options.
I would not recommend installing any drivers specifically to run only this game. That would require too much extra effort and might only lead to more trouble. If you cannot run the game using any of the available setup options, give up. Play another game.
For those who can run "Alone in the Dark" successfully and want the sequels, 'cracked' copies are available at various abandonware game sites. Cheat codes are also available for all titles, so you can be assured of having plenty of health points, ammo, etc. to get you through the game. The difficulty level of "Alone in the Dark 2: Hell's Kitchen" is very high, so cheating a little bit will avoid a lot of frustration. I would rate "Alone in the Dark 3: Ghosts in Town" as the best of the series, but the download is much larger in size than the other two games and my copy ran only under a 32-bit Windows operating system in windowed mode. "Alone in the Dark 2" is the least-liked of the original trilogy.
