Why don't you use DOSBox or SCUMMVM?

Freddy Pharkas is an SCI game, so no ScummVM, but eL_PuSHeR does have a point about DOSBox. I have no issues with FP's SB audio in DOSBox. If you are limited to that system can you install Win 3x and just play the Windows version?

collector wrote:

Freddy Pharkas is an SCI game, so no ScummVM, but eL_PuSHeR does have a point about DOSBox. I have no issues with FP's SB audio in DOSBox. If you are limited to that system can you install Win 3x and just play the Windows version?

My fastest computer (2GHz P4 w/ XP Pro) is too old to run DOSBox smoothly, which is why I posted here. However, when I did try it in DOSBox a year or so ago (0.68?), the sound *did* work for me, but it doesn't seem work in the newest 0.72 release. Have you tried the latest version?

I have removable hard drives, so I have no problem playing the windows version in Win98 if I wanted to. But I don't like the windows version. It has hideous graphics. 320x200 graphics do not stretch to 640x480 and look pretty. Another thing I hate is the lagging mouse responsiveness. This problem can be fixed in later windows interpreters by adding asyncCheckFreq=60 to the config file, but not in the SCI 1.1 win interpreter. (Plus, in the DOS version you get pretty screen transitions and colorized cursors.) Like I said, I have no trouble getting the game to work. I just can't seem to get it to work *perfectly*.

I am using .72, but admit that I have not played through that far with the latest version of DOSBox, just through the entire opening and a few minutes of game play with no issues. A 2 GHz machine should be able to run any SCI game in DOSBox smoothly. What core/cycles etc. are you trying?

I can only get about 7000-10000 cycles before DOSBox starts running like crap. But I did manage to get the sound working again. I had to set the set the tandy sound back to auto because for some reason it was trying to play the sounds through tandy dac.

But that still doesn't answer my question: How do I get the SB16 sounds to work in real DOS? (or the DOS version in Win98) I don't feel like dragging my Pentium 90 over to my P4, crawling around on the floor, getting all dusty, making a big mess of wires, just to use my SCC-1 in a SLOOOWW dosbox environment. It would be easier if I could just get it to work directly on my Pentium 90 (or any of my other machines with ISA slots, for that matter.)

7000-10000 is plenty fast enough for Freddy. I have never heard of this SB error with FPFP, before, but I know that it has popped up in at least one other SCI game.

With all due respect, I'm not interested in using DOSBox. That's why I posted in this section of the forum. With my current setup, DOSBox is more trouble than it's worth. 7000-10000 cycles may be good enough to get it *to run*, but my Pentium 90 can run it much better (with exception of the sound.)

This sound problem seems to happen if you use a SB16 PNP compatible sound card with KQ6CD, LSL6 Floppy, LSL6 lo-res CD, and the GK1DEMO and any newer SCI 1.1 games that use what is *supposed* to be a SB16 compatible driver. You can always tell which games they are because GOSIERRA.EXE is incompatible with their Sound Blaster drivers and every time quitting the game it "adjusts" the software mixer (stupidly) muting the CD and line-in. With KQ6CD, there is a replacement driver, but this driver is incompatible with freddycd and lsl6.

Here's an excerpt from the README of the replacement driver that fixes KQ6CD:

Updated SoundBlaster Driver - AUDBLAST.DRV

This updated AUDBLAST.DRV corrects a problem with some SoundBlaster 16 ASP
sound cards in which only the first digitized sound effect is heard. It
works with the following games:

EcoQuest CD-ROM
King's Quest VI CD-ROM
Laura Bow II CD-ROM
Space Quest IV CD-ROM

Of these four games, KQ6 was the only one I have ever had trouble with. I think it was released late enough that it had SB16 support built in from the get go. (Crappy SB16 support though.)

It's an error that I have never encountered, so I have not had much incentive to find a fix. I would not have expected the GOSiERRA patch to help in this case. It only changes the detection/initialization routine of Sierra's SB driver. You might try contacting Lars Skovlund, he seems to be one of the more knowledgeable people around when it comes to sound in SCI games.

What would be the best way to go about contacting Lars Skovlund?

He is involved with the Free SCI group. You might look there. The only thing that I found was lskovlun"at"image.dk