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sierra games????

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First post, by Unregistered

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i have these sierra games(kings quest, liesuresuit larry, quest for glory, space quest...etc) on cd and wanna play them on my new Dell inspiron 8200 laptop. Problem is, i have windows xp os..and i don't want to start a partition. I've downloaded vdmsound and the launchpad which allowed me to hear music for the space quest 3 game i tried to play. There was no picture to speak of, just as it goes into the dos window, there is no picture, yet i was able to type in the keys to exit the game to close out the window. That means the game works, but i'm not getting a picture! It's been driving me nuts and i don't have much skill in the programming department, so i was wondering if anyone had a suggestion on getting around my problem. please help me if you can, thanks

Reply 1 of 43, by vladr

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Unregistered wrote:

i have these sierra games(kings quest, liesuresuit larry, quest for glory, space quest...etc) on cd and wanna play them on my new Dell inspiron 8200 laptop. Problem is, i have windows xp os..and i don't want to start a partition. I've downloaded vdmsound and the launchpad which allowed me to hear music for the space quest 3 game i tried to play. There was no picture to speak of, just as it goes into the dos window, there is no picture, yet i was able to type in the keys to exit the game to close out the window. That means the game works, but i'm not getting a picture! It's been driving me nuts and i don't have much skill in the programming department, so i was wondering if anyone had a suggestion on getting around my problem. please help me if you can, thanks

Could be an issue with your video chipset or with that particular game -- do any other games' graphics (especially similar, e.g. Sierra games) work when in full-screen? I know for sure SQ3 works with sound + VDMSound since I finished it with VDMSound on Win2k. If your un the game without VDMSound do you get graphics? Have you tried to find another copy of the game on the web (in case yours is badly cracked/corrupt)? Also try DosBox, though it may have some problems with Video in some Sierra games (because of the Tandy emulation).

V.

Reply 2 of 43, by Unregistered

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I've tried dosbox already and badically got the same results. When i tried the game without vdmsound i had no luck in graphics display or sound. at least with vdmsound i got to hear the game. With dosbox, the system crashed at a certain point and didn't really work out all that well. As for a corrupt version of the game, i used it on the the old computer in the past and i had no problems at all(that computer is with its maker at the moment...moment of silence.....). If it is a problem with my chipset, does that mean i'm basically out of luck?

Reply 3 of 43, by Stiletto

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Don't forget the "interpreters" FreeSCI and Sarien:
FreeSCI - http://freesci.linuxgames.com/
Sarien - http://sarien.sourceforge.net/

Oh, there's one called NAGI too - http://www.agidev.com/nagi.html

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 4 of 43, by Snover

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Make sure that the games start up full-screen. (This can be achieved most easily through the VDMSound Launchpad, which has a checkbox labeled "Enable basic VESA support.") Otherwise, since this IS a laptop, it may be your video card/LCD manufacturer cutting costs by not providing ultra-low-resolutions (below 640x480 -- LCD monitors have to interpolate resolutions under 1024x768, and have to scroll at resolutions above it, because they aren't multi-scan like CRT monitors and, as such, can only natively display the resolution correspondent to the actual number of LEDs the monitor was built with.)

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 5 of 43, by vladr

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Unregistered wrote:

I've tried dosbox already and badically got the same results.

How do you mean? Black screen? Even though DosBox (by default) runs the game in a window 9or did you try to go full-screen in DosBox as well?)

When i tried the game without vdmsound i had no luck in graphics display or sound. at least with vdmsound i got to hear the game. With dosbox, the system crashed at a certain point and didn't really work out all that well. As for a corrupt version of the game, i used it on the the old computer in the past and i had no problems at all(that computer is with its maker at the moment...moment of silence.....). If it is a problem with my chipset, does that mean i'm basically out of luck?



Sounds like a hardware or driver limitation on the laptop. Can you boot DOS (just for test) on the laptop? Can you start up a game (from a DOS diskette, in real DOS) with graphics? Just to see if it's a hardware or Windows driver prob. In ny case, DosBox should be fine since it doesn't need to run in full-screen. If DosBox screws up in window mode as well then there is something wrong with the driver (and/or chipset, but it's probably the driver then).

V.

Reply 6 of 43, by Unregistered

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i can't boost the dos on the laptop, it's completely a nt kernel. When i said the screen went black, i meant that once the batch file is executed, and the screen goes into full screen mode, there is no sound or picture and the winow must be shut down via taskmanager. With VDMsound i had music and sound from the game itself, but the picture still wouldn't pop up. In dosbox i had the game emulating, but after a certain point it would keep crashing, where it must be shut down (taskmanager again). I don't know if anyone else has these problems with windows XP and ms-dos type games. As for NAGI..i've looked through it and it looks promising, but i dont know how to apply it exactly. Do i need a program to run nagi? any info on this would be very helpful!!! thanks

Reply 7 of 43, by vladr

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Unregistered wrote:

i can't boost the dos on the laptop, it's completely a nt kernel. When i said the screen went black, i meant that once the batch file is executed, and the screen goes into full screen mode, there is no sound or picture and the winow must be shut down via taskmanager. With VDMsound i had music and sound from the game itself, but the picture still wouldn't pop up. In dosbox i had the game emulating, but after a certain point it would keep crashing, where it must be shut down (taskmanager again). I don't know if anyone else has these problems with windows XP and ms-dos type games. As for NAGI..i've looked through it and it looks promising, but i dont know how to apply it exactly. Do i need a program to run nagi? any info on this would be very helpful!!! thanks

Try to make a DOS boot disk. Also try the latest (v0.50) version of DosBox from https://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/ . DosBox is your best bet in the long run.

V.

Reply 8 of 43, by Unregistered

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hey,
I tried making a dos boot disk, but it didn't help me with running these games. as for dosbox...the newer version of dosbox (0.5) is good, but only allows me to play one game from a series...and again, it crashes eventually in the same manner as before. i was starting to look into nagi and sci studio...but i have no clue how to work either of them. I'm computer literate to an extent, but i haven't figured out how to run either program. Nagi kept crashed on me(stalled) each time i started it, and scistudio's didn't open the files it should have? Does anyone have any idea how to run these programs?..oh..and how do i tie vdmsound into it too?

Reply 9 of 43, by vladr

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Unregistered wrote:

hey,
I tried making a dos boot disk, but it didn't help me with running these games. as for dosbox...the newer version of dosbox (0.5) is good, but only allows me to play one game from a series...and again, it crashes eventually in the same manner as before. i was starting to look into nagi and sci studio...but i have no clue how to work either of them. I'm computer literate to an extent, but i haven't figured out how to run either program. Nagi kept crashed on me(stalled) each time i started it, and scistudio's didn't open the files it should have? Does anyone have any idea how to run these programs?..oh..and how do i tie vdmsound into it too?

Download FreeSci (do a search on the web, or try http://freesci.cx/ ). Once you unzip FreeSci somewhere, IIRC, you just open a DOS box and give freesci.exe the name of the directory where the game resides, and it will know what files it should look at etc. I think FreeSci supports Tandy sound (but not MT-32 or AdLib, though it's been a while).

Reply 10 of 43, by Nick Sonneveld

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Hi,

Sierra actually used two "engines" to create their games. AGI was their first one and it had blocky graphics and a parser at the bottom of the screen (most of the time). SCI had a parser initially and then branched out into mouse games as well.

Anyway.. the interpereter clones NAGI (which I wrote) and Sarien only work with AGI games. If you have trouble running NAGI, try editing nagi.ini and changing the graphics driver to windib.

FreeSCI works great with most early sci games.. the VGA sci games don't work yet.

AGI game examples: Kingsquest 1-3, Police Quest 1, Manhunter, GoldRush, Larry 1
SCI game examples: Quest for Glory, later Kings Quest, Pepper's Adventures through Time 😀

- Nick (sonneveld@hotmail.com)

Reply 12 of 43, by Stiletto

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Nick Sonneveld wrote:
Hi, […]
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Hi,

Sierra actually used two "engines" to create their games. AGI was their first one and it had blocky graphics and a parser at the bottom of the screen (most of the time). SCI had a parser initially and then branched out into mouse games as well.

Anyway.. the interpereter clones NAGI (which I wrote) and Sarien only work with AGI games. If you have trouble running NAGI, try editing nagi.ini and changing the graphics driver to windib.

FreeSCI works great with most early sci games.. the VGA sci games don't work yet.

AGI game examples: Kingsquest 1-3, Police Quest 1, Manhunter, GoldRush, Larry 1
SCI game examples: Quest for Glory, later Kings Quest, Pepper's Adventures through Time 😀

- Nick (sonneveld@hotmail.com)

We're honored, sir. 😀

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 13 of 43, by Nick Sonneveld

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Hi,

assume you wish you install NAGI in the directory c:\nagi\

- unzip the nagi zip and the sdl runtime library zip into c:\nagi\

by default nagi will look in the current directory and one directory level up to search for games. so if you wish, install your games like this:

c:\nagi\
c:\nagi\larry\
c:\nagi\timequest\
c:\nagi\kingsquest4\
c:\nagi\v\

and then run n.exe from c:\nagi. NAGI will display a menu of all detected agi games.

Now, if you wish to run nagi in full screen, in cga mode or anything like that, you will have to edit the nagi.ini file. It's pretty well documented so it shouldn't be too scary. it won't delete any files so if you stuff up, you can always unzip nagi.ini from the zip file again.

One thing to watch out for NT computers, it doesn't like directx so much.. so if you have trouble, right at the bottom of the ini file, change [sdl] drv_video to "windib" instead of directx.

I hope that helps.

- Nick

Reply 14 of 43, by Nick Sonneveld

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Sorry, hate to be obvious:

file format for agi:
OBJECT,LOGDIR, VIEWDIR, PICDIR, LOGDIR, VOL.0, VOL.1, VOL.2....

file format for sci:
RESOURCE.000, RESOURCE.001, RESOURCE.002

If you want to play sci games under FreeSCI, you'll need the original interpreter files as well (since it uses it to determine which version to emulate) but NAGI can play well enough without them.

- Nick

Reply 15 of 43, by Unregistered

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Nick,
I took your advice and changed the sdl video drv..to windib in the nagi.ini and copied the files you suggested (object, sndriv, etc...) into the appropriate folder under nagi. It actually worked!!!! This has been tormenting me for over a month and one suggestion cracked the ice for me with these games again! Thank you very much!!! One other question, if you don't mind though. Is there a way to make the nagi box full screen? other than that question, it seems to be running perfectly. once again, THANK YOU!!!

Reply 16 of 43, by Snover

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Nick, if you'd like to write up a formal instructional bit on using NAGI with old titles, I'd love to be able to put the utility and said documentation up in Deep Thought.

Also, this isn't a VDMSound issue, so it's moving to the Guide.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 17 of 43, by sonneveld

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to get fullscreen:
edit nagi.ini. there's actually a lot of cool stuff in there you could play around with. the correct bit to change is under the [vid] section. change "full_screen"s value to 1.

um.. you're welcome. 😀

Snover:
I'd be happy to help you, could you let me know the details over email? NAGI only applies for AGI games though.

- Nick

Reply 18 of 43, by Stiletto

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Someone may as well do a write-up on Sarien and FreeSCI and many of the other "interpreters" out there for all sorts of games, Colin... but of the authors of them, only Nick seems to be a reader... (How'd that happen?)

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 19 of 43, by Snover

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I welcome anyone else to do write-ups for Deep Thought. It just seems better to have the authors write them. (That said, it's not like there aren't any entries not by the author.)

Yes, it’s my fault.