Based on Thraka's detective work, here is a small program to work around Global Conquest's issue in DOSBox. With the TSR loaded, the game is always told what it wants to hear in regards to the $$$steal.me file (cute name); resulting in a turn count of 30 instead of 15, and the initial stack overflow error with multiuser games doesn't occur. Works with both the original and 2.0 patch versions. Source code is included in the archive.

Wow! Thanks!!!!!!!!!

ripsaw, would it be possible to extend your tool to take the filename as a parameter? Maybe even a list of flags to be forced upon the file?

It's certainly possible to make something more generic; perhaps with a config file as I mentioned in my earlier post. However, Global Conquest also needed the file not to be find-able, because it's supposed to be hidden. It's a much larger issue getting the emulated DOS file functions to respect the file attributes than it is to simply report them on INT 21/4300.

Got it. One would need further modifications to DOSBox itself because it does not do an internal call-back to INT 21/4300 (whatever that is - and I hope I got the wording right with the call-back thing) when it initially searches for the file.

Ah, I knew that the $$$steal.me file was the problem, but I didn't have time to find out exactly why. :-(
Being zero bytes long, "xcopy" won't copy it by default, and since it was hidden, "copy" won't see it either. So, you either change the attributes to ensure that it's copied, or you don't copy it at all. Either way, it's not the original anymore.
Nice trick.

MiniMax wrote:

Thraka - Proper handling of file attributes in DOSBox is difficult due to the need for platform independence. If DOSBox is running on say Linux there is no place in the Linux filesystem to store attributes like ARCHIVE, HIDDEN or SYSTEM.

I can understand the need for a cross-platform solution, but doesn't it make sense to support it straight across for platforms that actually have the attributes in question? On a Windows machine, what is essentially happening is DosBox uses Windows calls to read a directory get a file's attributes, then throws away the results for attributes that other platforms don't have because there is no cross platform solution.

As a suggestion for cross-platform hacks, most unixy filesystems have extended attributes that no one uses or cares about. In many cases, the kernels don't even care about them. Some of them do have effects, but are harmless enough that they could be reused. For example, the secure deletion attribute ('s') seems to me to be a good candidate for system.

As far as hidden goes, why not use the accepted method over all of unixdom, which is the prefix period. I don't know of any DOS file that starts with a period - I don't think it's possible in DOS without a sector editor. Simply have hidden files start with a period and filter it out when the name is fed to DosBox programs. Is there anything existing this could break?

You are right Kurt, it shouldn't be a big problem to make it work on Windoze-systems, but I think it is also a matter of time and interest. I am not deeply involved in the development but it seems like the current changes are concentrated on CPU-emulation, new graphics modes, and some CD related stuff.

As always, the source is there, so everyone is free to starting hacking away. If the work is good, it might become part of the official distribution.

EZ Way to Load and Run GCFIX TSR

Hi, read several posts discussing coupling GCFIX with Global Conquest (v1.0 or v2.0). If you are one of those who are so inclined and are running the game on your Windows PC, here is a method that I've used which works flawlessly for me: If you haven't already done this, either extract or copy GCFIX to the CONQUEST folder. I'm running Dosbox v.63 and D-Fend v2, so I have a profile for Global Conquest. I haven't downloaded Reloader, but am sure it will work as well. Go into the D-Fend or Reloader profile editor for the gane. Selet Autoexec. Type in the following (using the appropriately named folder if different} C:\CONQUEST\GCFIX\GCFIX.COM Click OK (or whatever Reloader uses) to save and exit the editor. Now to play Global Conquest, all you have to do is run D-Fend or Reloader and select GLobal Conquest (or whatever profile name you used). GCFIX will load and Global Conquest will start.

Apolgies if someone posted this method earlier.