IMPORTANT UPDATE ON PREVIOUS POST:

I've just discovered that actually, selecting Covox doesn't give you any extra sound effects. The stuff I heard with MIDI/Covox was just the MIDI being used to give something akin to a digitized sound effect. The same happens with Adlib selected for music. But it's not proper sound effects.

So, sound effects either don't work at all, or you just get nasty loud static with all SoundBlaster options. In addition, normal/dynamic core makes no difference. What is unique about Colonization that causes this (I haven't noticed this with any other games)?

jez wrote:

BTW I can attach a copy of Colonization if it's needed for testing purposes.

NO. That isn't supported here.

And, besides, I am moving your post to the DOSBox Games/Apps. section of the forum, because I don't know what it has to do with DEVELOPMENT.

El: Erm, please move it back?

Of course it's to do with development, it's to do with fixing the sound emulation in DOSbox.

As I have already told you via PM, let's hear what some DOSBox developer (Qbix, Harekiet) have to say about this.

It's a gray area as to which section of the forum this belongs. I would say development *if* there's no chance that the issue can be solved via configuration of the game or DOSBox.

Which there isn't, as I explained above.

I will just add that two other games have exactly the same problem:

Return of The Phantom
Dragon Sphere

I had a brief look at colonozation. They play the sound effect from ems mapped memory.

The location of this thread is fine in games/apps

Does anybody know if this game (or the others mentioned here) did
work on an ems card? (NOT emm386, that works differently).

These games work in dosbox with proper sound effeccts whey you boot from a hdd image with this line in config.sys:

device=c:\dos\emm386.exe frame=e000

- Return of the Phantom,
- Colonization,
- didn't check Dragon Sphere, as I think it has digitized sound effects only on a cd and i think it is not possible to use cd with hdd image in dosbox

Tests with emm386 are useless because it runs in v86 mode and
is only an ems emulator, that's why i asked whether somebody
knows if it ran with ems boards.

robertmo:

Sorry, could you clarify what you mean by that? DOSbox doesn't have a config.sys. And, I thought it already emulated EMS, what is emm386 doing?

He boots msdos inside dosbox using disk images, and of course
there the ems provided by dosbox is not available, so you have
to load emm386 in order to get ems memory.

OK, I just went to all the trouble (and it is quite a bit of trouble!) of creating and setting up a bootable hard disk image, copying useful DOS files and apps to it, as well as Colonization, setup config.sys to use himem.sys and that emm386 line, and...

The goddamn sound effects are just as b0rked as BEFORE!!! robertmo, I hope you never see me, because if so you won't be around to see much else...

😜

Use latest CVS

wd wrote:

Tests with emm386 are useless because it runs in v86 mode and
is only an ems emulator, that's why i asked whether somebody
knows if it ran with ems boards.

Dragon Sphere and Return of The Phantom work with my AST Rampage card configured to provide expanded memory in a 286 computer.

Should be working in much the same way as the ems boards for
some time now (especially the 0.65 release is supposed to work).
Thanks for the info!

I think I was just testing whether these games work, but wasn't testing with a sound card.

Dragon Sphere (floppy version) has digitized sound effects when you jump down the well.

I have managed to make my AST Rampage card configured to provide expanded memory working in a 386 and also 486 computer too.

So Colonization works too.

Although I have noticed that digitized sound effects are not played properly in all three games with ems card - You hear only a loud noice - same as it was in dosbox in the past.

Ok, though i'd have expected that colonization would work with ems cards though
as special routines on the card are mentioned for dma transfers.
Thanks for checking this out.