VOGONS


First post, by MyFeetHurt

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I am trying to get Wizardry 7/Crusaders of the Dark Savant to run in dosbox (or out of dosbox, for that matter....) when I try to run it I get this:

Write 0 to rom at ffc00
Write 0 to rom at ffc02
.
.
.
Write 0 to rom at ffc2e

I've tried experimenting with combinations of ems/xms=true/false, and large and little amounts of memory. No change.

I'm aware that the Wiz installer writes the directory tree, so I just installed to C:\DSAVANT and mounted the dosbox c: to the real c:. (Wizardry is important enough to go in the root directory.)

I googled for this error and found a few references to it, but no solutions. None of the people were running Wiz 7. I know that a lot of people have sucessfully run Wiz 7 in Dosbox.

I'm using the official Dosbox build, .63.

My Crusaders version is one I haven't seen mentioned here: Wizardry Trilogy, which was Wiz5/6/7 on 1.38M floppies. These may not be the same floppy images used in the original releases, which probably used smaller floppies. My Wiz 7 is two 1.38 floppies. This is a legit, uncracked, version, and I ran it with MoSlo on my old laptop. (Win 95)

I can't help but notice that ff ffff is the top of a segment, or some other damn DOS thing. Some vague hateful memory in my mind makes me think of adding 0x00XX XX00 to 0x0000 YYYY. Probably I have it wrong. I also read somewhere that old 1 MEG dos actually wrapped some addresses above ff ff-something down to 00 00-something. I hadn't known this about DOS, but I know some of the old Apple II's did this, and that some blankety-blank games used that as copy protection. Bad idea when you're using segmented memory...

Anyone who has any suggestions will earn my undying gratitude, which is of course, worth exactly what you think it is. 😊

Reply 1 of 3, by HunterZ

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I think I've run both the floppy version (I have copies of the original floppies I think) and the Ultimate Wizardry Archive version in DOSBox. The game can use EMS if you give it some, but doesn't require it. You might try installing patches from:
http://dlh.net and/or
http://www.iosphere.net/~eric/wizardry/index.htm

Also, try the normal or full core with the cycles set pretty low (like 3000 or so).

You may also want to try a CVS build of DOSBox, which contains many fixes and features added since 0.63. See the development forum for some good info.

Reply 2 of 3, by MyFeetHurt

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You have earned my undying gratitude. 😁 One of those patches worked. The sound even works! I guess it was some sleazy exploit of a pre-Pentium "feature."

Reply 3 of 3, by HunterZ

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Note that you'll want to pick PC Speaker for sound effects, as DOSBox's Sound Blaster emulation has trouble with the nasty way the Wiz7 plays sounds. It will have pops in PC Speaker mode, but at least you'll be able to make out the sounds pretty well. Adlib/Sound Blaster is a good choice for music unless you have an MT-32 (or similar) synth or emulator, in which case LAPC-I is the recommended setting.