Nice rant, but very little technical information.

What OS?
Running natively?
Running in an emulator?

MiniMax wrote:

Nice rant, but very little technical information. […]
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Nice rant, but very little technical information.

What OS?
Running natively?
Running in an emulator?

Windows XP Home Edition
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor
1 Gig Ram
2 256 Nvidia Geforce 7800s running in SLI mode.
Fatal1ty ANL8SLI Motherboard

Tried running with DOSBox .70 and VDMS 2.0.1 and got the same error.

The game itself runs fine in DOSBox or with VDMS, its just that I can't transfer characters.

And in which environment do you prefer to get this to work? In WinXP or in DOSBox?

MiniMax wrote:

And in which environment do you prefer to get this to work? In WinXP or in DOSBox?

I deffinitly prefer running with DOSBox. Runs things smoother and with less issues.

Be sure you installed both games within dosbox, so the directories
relative to the mounting are what the game/save game transfer thing
expects them to be.

Anybody else know if that process of save game conversion is actually possible?

GreasyDogMeat wrote:

I deffinitly prefer running with DOSBox. Runs things smoother and with less issues.

Moved to DOSBox Games/Apps

So - how do you mount your DOSBox drives?

MiniMax wrote:

So - how do you mount your DOSBox drives?

Either by dragging the exe file on to the dosbox.exe, or by starting DOSBox and typing 'Mount C C:\HILLSFAR'.

I'm, uh, not the most familiar with DOS, as the above statement may indicate, though I've read some help files on DOS/DOSBox and the 'drag the exe file onto DOSBox' method I use is extremly simple, fast and hasn't given me any issues.

I've played the entire Pool of Radiance game using the above methods and all the save files and character files have worked flawlessly... except of course for the copy.exe process.

When you drag the EXE onto DOSBox, the EXE's folder becomes the C-drive in DOSBox. So if you drag C:\HILLSFAR\copyhill.exe onto DOSBox, DOSBox will make its C-drive = C:\HILLSFAR, and when poor copyhill.exe valiantly tries to find C:\POOLRAD and C:\HILLSFAR it is in reality looking for C:\HILLSFAR\POOLRAD and C:\HILLSFAR\HILLSFAR on your real hard-disk.

Try to put it down on a piece of paper in a 3-column table:

In left-most column put down your DOSBox mountings (either manual mounts using the mount command, or automatic mounts created by dragging EXE's).

In the middle column, write down the paths the EXE's are looking for.

And in the 3rd column, combine column 1 + 2 into where the files should be on your real harddisk.

1DOSBox mounting   Inside DOSBox   On my harddisk
2----------------- --------------- -------------------
3C: = C:\HILLSFAR  C:\POOLRAD      C:\HILLSFAR\POOLRAD

Thanks for all the help. I spent a while placing POOLRAD & HILLSFAR in another folder, so it was GAMES\POOLRAD & GAMES\HILLSFAR, then mounting the games folder but that didn't seem to help.

I was about to give up and just make new characters for Hillsfar when I dicided to simply double click on Copyhill.exe without running in VDMS or DOSBox, and voilla... it worked. I have no idea why the transfers worked this way and refuse to work in any other way.

I slapped my head wondering why I didn't try this out in the first place! Either way, thank you for your patience and help Mini and wd.

I think I've found the real reason why I've been having so much trouble transfering characters from game to game using the .exe transfers.

To transfer a character file from Pool of Radiance to Hillsfar or Curse of the Azure Bonds you need a 'charname.CHA' file. However, Pool of Radiance does not create files that end with .CHA UNLESS you remove the character from the party in one of the training rooms.

Once you complete the game and are ready to transfer from Pool of Radiance then you should go to the training hall, enter one of the 4 training rooms for fighters, thieves etc and then select the option 'Remove Character From Party' for all characters you intend to transfer.

You may then successfully use the 'copycurse.exe' or 'copyhill.exe' files to transfer characters, or simply drag and drop the 'charname.CHA' file over to Hillsfar or Curse of the Azure Bonds. With Hillsfar you would place the .CHA file inside the main 'c:\hillsfar' folder and with Curse of the Azure Bonds you would place it in the 'c:\curse\save' folder.

I really wish the manual had been more specific about actually having to remove characters from a party to make a successful transfer, because I was thinking it was some sort of techical DOSBox issue or something.