First post, by rfnagel
- Rank
- Oldbie
I was extremely tickled to death to see C&C:TD for DOS running again 😀 The game runs superbly under DOSBox, and with my new(er) PC with a Sound Blaster Live, the stereo sound effects are great in conjunction with the SBLive's EAX reverb and CMSS surround.
Anyhow, this is so trivial, I'm almost embarrased to mention it. Most of the time when the cutscenes play, the border is colored. Normally the borders should be black, but sometimes they are green or red. This doesn't happen all of the time, occasionally they will be black like they should.
Attached is two pics detailing what I'm refering to. Heh, in actuality, the screenshots came out *correctly* even though when I took them, I could actually *see* the green borders in-game... after exiting the game, the resulting screenshots had the proper black border; I had to edit them to display what I'm refering to (strange).
Anyways, like I said, really trivial. Just a-wondering if there may be any sort of fix for it? If not, no biggie... I'm quite happy just being able to play C&C again 😀
Oh, and sort of OT - for anyone wondering about 'stereo' sound in C&C... something that I posted elsewhere a few years ago:
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How to enable stereo sound effects in Command and Conquer for DOS
Something that drove me nutz throughout the years was that the original Command and Conquer (for DOS) didn't support stereo sound effects.
Years ago I stumbled upon the graphics within one of C&C's MIX files that seemed to indicate that Westwood had indeed thought about supporting stereo sound effects, but prolly canned the idea before the game's release. When running the game's sound setup program ("SETUP.EXE") and testing your sound device selection, EVA has a graphic for (and says) "Center". But, in the "SETUP.MIX" file there are similar graphics for "Left" and "Right" (as well as audio files of Eva saying the same) <G>.
The sound setup program for Command and Conquer for DOS has no choices for a stereo sound device when selecting the sound card of your PC. In actuality, the game does indeed support stereo sound effects, but your "CONQUER.INI" configuration file must be manually edited to enable a stereo sound device.
When running Command and Conquer's sound setup program ("SETUP.EXE"), take note of the sound card that you have selected. Then using your hex editor of choice, open the game's sound device driver file "HMIDRV.386".
Text search through the file for a stereo version of your selected sound card, and then take note of the two hex values located eight hex offsets before (to the left of) the "HMI DMA Driver" text portion of the sound device name.
These two bytes are the byte-swapped hex values that are used in the "Card=" line (located under the "[Sound]" heading) of the game's "CONQUER.INI." configuration file.
In example, if you selected "Sound Blaster Pro/Pro2" within the game's sound setup program for your sound card, the name of the sound device contained in the game's sound device driver file "HMIDRV.386" will be "HMI DMA Driver For Sound Blaster Pro 8 Mono". Using your hex editor, note that the hex values of the two bytes located eight hex offsets before the "HMI DMA Driver" text are "0f" and "e0". These two byte-swapped hex values in the game's "CONQUER.INI" configuration file will be listed in the "Card=" line as "Card=e00f".
Now using your hex editor, text search for the stereo version of this sound card, which will be "HMI DMA Driver For SBPRO 8 Stereo". Note that the two bytes located eight hex offsets before the "HMA DMA Driver" text are "01" and "e0". Then using your text editor of choice, simply open the game's "CONQUER.INI" configuration file, and edit the "Card=" line to read "Card=e001".
Bingo! Stereo sound effects in Command and Conquer for DOS, even though the game's sound setup program doesn't natively have options for stereo sound devices! Note that you may also have to text edit the "Reverse=0" line in the game's "CONQUER.INI" configuration file to read "Reverse=1" if the stereo sound effects seem to be backwards within the game.
Lastly, note that the "Channels=" line (located under the "[Sound]" heading) of the game's "CONQUER.INI" configuration file sets the total number of sound effects that can be played simultaneously within the game. Text edit this to a higher value (such as "Channels=8" or "Channels=16") to have more simultaneously played sound effects for a fuller sound within the game.
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P.S. The entries that I use in my CONQUER.INI file for use with DOSBox (configured for a Sound Blaster 16):
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[Sound]
Name=119
Card=e018
Port=220
IRQ=5
DMA=5
BitsPerSample=16
Channels=32
Reverse=0
Speed=1
Subtitles=0
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Rich ¥Weeds¥ Nagel
http://www.richnagel.net
