VOGONS


First post, by Silas

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Hi,

I've searched the forum for this and nobody seems to be having this precise problem.

Machine is IBM X30 laptop (not sure about the innards, can find out if important, it's about 1.2GHz or so with 1GB RAM and "Intel Extreme Graphics"). Running Windows XP SP2.

I have 1.20 fix for CaveWars (which seems to address the framebuffer issues that other people were having, I don't even have to use NOLFB to get the game to run) and DOSBox 0.63.

The main problem: when starting a new "Random" game, DOSBox complains of either illegal reads, writes, or "illegal descriptor 0 of int 8" or something like that -- I can get exact text of any of these if that would help -- the precise message seems to depend on what cpu setting I have: I get the "int 8" message for simple, and illegal read/write locations for all others.

When starting a "non-random" game on a preset map, or loading an old game, CaveWars plays 100% fine. I suspect that either CaveWars' random map code is simply BUGGY, in which case there's nothing DOSBox or anyone else can do, or else it's doing something that DOSBox doesn't emulate quite right, or <insert some other logical explanation>.

I've played around with practically every setting that didn't render the game unusable, including replacing DOS4GW.EXE with DOS/32a (0.72 IIRC). No luck, starting Random map crashes every time.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated!

Reply 1 of 2, by Silas

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Found the solution to my problem!

There was a little note in the 1.20 patch: "make sure LEVELS.FDG is in the DLGS directory". On a whim, I checked -- no file.

So, in case anyone else is pulling their hair out trying to figure out why this gem crashes in DOSBox for Random games, here's why:

The file LEVELS.FDG is missing from the DLGS directory. If you've downloaded from HoTU, you will run into this problem -- get the patch from avalonhill.com and extract it from there.

Thanks to all the DOSBox developers for making such a nice product -- making my oldies goodies again! 😁