VOGONS


The Grandest Fleet

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First post, by rosenrot

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Searches show that I'm not the only one here enjoying this old classic, but I've yet to see any details that will help me overcome my problem.

I'm running a stock Jan-2004 dell system, specs naturally well beyond what TGF should require. I'm using Dosbox 0.71 and it starts the game ok, but whenever I try to enter combat, it hangs indefinitely and I'm forced to close out.

After doing some searching here, I learned that slowing down the emulation speed might help, and it did, but now the game crashes when I'm in combat and attempting to fire on a valid target.

If anyone has gotten The Grandest Fleet to run properly on a Windows XP Professional system with DOSBox 0.71, please, speak up. I would very much be in your debt.

Reply 1 of 9, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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rosenrot wrote:

After doing some searching here, I learned that slowing down the emulation speed might help, and it did, but now the game crashes when I'm in combat and attempting to fire on a valid target.

Ah, wait. I didn't play The Grandest Fleet, but is the game supposed to play sample sound when you fire on a valid target? What IRQ does the game use for sound blaster? And is it the same with the IRQ being set in dosbox.conf? The default in dosbox.conf is IRQ 7 (common for SB/SBPro); you should check whether you set the game's IRQ to 5 when installing it (common habit for SB16 user).

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 2 of 9, by eL_PuSHeR

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[Moved]

Intel i7 5960X
Gigabye GA-X99-Gaming 5
8 GB DDR4 (2100)
8 GB GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming (Gigabyte)

Reply 3 of 9, by rosenrot

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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Ah, wait. I didn't play The Grandest Fleet, but is the game supposed to play sample sound when you fire on a valid target? What IRQ does the game use for sound blaster? And is it the same with the IRQ being set in dosbox.conf? The default in dosbox.conf is IRQ 7 (common for SB/SBPro); you should check whether you set the game's IRQ to 5 when installing it (common habit for SB16 user).

The game plays a sound when firing on a target, yes.

I didn't configure the sound system manually, auto detection said it worked. I'll attempt your suggestion.

Sometimes the game still crashes when moving into visual range of an enemy, however. I wonder what causes that?

EDIT: I reconfigured the sound device manually, but it does not give me the option to set the IRQ. I also can't find any record of what it sets to by default. I'll have to employ google. 😀

Reply 4 of 9, by rosenrot

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Thank you very much, Kreshna. My problem is solved. The sound IRQ being set to 7 in the DOSBox config was causing the crashes.

Reply 5 of 9, by taonosuke

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i have the same problem except the setup file selects midi sound. I'm on a 32bit Vista system. Everything works fine in the game until it detects an enemy unit, then freezes. The home screen also will freeze if i dont select an option (i.e. Start Game, Start Campaign, etc.) within a few seconds. I'm also using d-fend reloaded 1.0.3 on the front end and I;ve used every template it has and changed every option I could in the cpu and graphics options. REALLY wanna play!

Reply 6 of 9, by bloodbat

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Based on what rosenrot says above, you could try changing DosBox's SB IRQ to 5, maybe the game expects it there...

Reply 7 of 9, by taonosuke

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I've got it figured out. It seems to be an issue with the digital sound driver. If I run the set-up file manually and choose "no digital sound" and then select the "mp401 midi driver" the game runs w/music but no sound fx...but who wants to play that way. So I tried each digital driver one by one but none seemed to function. For some reason though, if I run the set-up file with the game running a few of the digital drivers seemed to work. I chose one, then closed the game(s) and when I restarted it seemed to function properly. It also seems to run best if I set the cpu cycles between 5000 and 5500. Hope this helps someone.

Reply 8 of 9, by bloodbat

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Which one?

Reply 9 of 9, by taonosuke

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ah...i dont remember specifically. When u run the setup file and choose a driver it will test it. The prompt will say "playing music twice" then ask if it played correctly. Some of the drivers, when chosen, returned a "failed to initialize" prompt and some of them only played once then froze. When that happened I had to restart the setup file. I imagine that the type of sound card you have will determine which one works. I just selected the first one that played music twice, but I had messed it with it for so long that I dont remember which one worked on my machine and I dont really want to re-run the setup file in case I cant get it working again 😉