This one has some quirks. GOLD.EXE started life as a batch file and was converted to a program with BATtoCOM by Clockwork Software (which you can see inside the file).

It is looking specifically for an environment variable of "OS=DR" for some reason... DrDos? Anyway, if you do a "SET OS=DR" before running it, you can get around that problem.

Once you select the audio and video choices it bails back to the prompt. This is because it failed to execute a program using INT 2E, which DOSBox does not support. A little more about that here: int 2e (exec comspec) support -- Oh Devs, here is a game that uses INT 2E. 😉

Even though it bails out, you will notice that some environment vars have been set for your audio and video choices if you do a SET command. You can manually run the game at this point. For VGA/Adlib the command it tries to run is "ega_8086 a". I guess you can run the other video-specific executables accordingly, with either "a" for Adlib, "r" for Roland, or "i" for internal speaker.

neat int 2e, finally 😀 Although that env variable makes little sense.

I agree, it's weird. It might be interesting to debug it more thoroughly. It does some odd looking version detection with INT 21/30... not odd that it uses that service, but what it's looking for as a response seems strange. It may get around to looking for that environment variable after it is confused by something else.

Yes, ripsaw8080, I have already converted gold.exe to gold.com using UNP.

I didn't know this game was using INT 2Eh because I am not a programmer, but I have read the other related thread. Interesting.

UNP also reports some other files (without extension) as executables. Packed them with UPX and the game stopped working.

So if you build and run my code from the other thread, then you should be able to run the game without any modification. Or can I build the code and post the binary? It is permitted?

dosbox should be adapted to provide int2e for those matters.
Besides that, the "environment" check that they're doing relies on the exact
offset of the int2e vector, and some additional check that seems to indicate
a true msdos (to them).

Okay, but until DOSBox is fixed, shall I post a binary that will work (including patching int 2e in a way that they like, etc)?

I don't know if somebody really wants to play that game, but feel free to put
a diff somewhere (not the whole modified executable).

I've tracked the environment problem, they're doing a lot of table walking
(for pretty much nothing, but well), so the only part to get this working as
far as i see is the int2e itself.

And that awkward little launcher program doesn't appear to be necessary to play the game, anyway.

It's required to set the sound and graphics cards.
Also another problem: parent PSP is always in UMB, even when UMBs are disabled, and it does not have an MCB. That's what is confusing the loader. It can't find the memory block with the global environment.

Anyway... rock'n'roll. :-) Here is source and binary TSR to fix the problem.

Great, but as I said, it's not really necessary. You can simply run the video specific executable with a parameter for the sound option. e.g. "ega_8086 a" for VGA/Adlib. That's all the launcher ultimately does is build up the command and then execute it.

Yes, you can do that, if you know the right option, but that's not the way for newbies like me.

peterferrie wrote:

It's required to set the sound and graphics cards.
Also another problem: parent PSP is always in UMB, even when UMBs are disabled, and it does not have an MCB. That's what is confusing the loader. It can't find the memory block with the global environment.

Anyway... rock'n'roll. 😀 Here is source and binary TSR to fix the problem.

thought we had those things correct at one point.

No it's not fully correct, but having command.com psp/env in upper memory
is not wrong either. Anyways as i've already said i've got it working.

I do happen to have this game (code wheel and all!), and I have to wonder why on earth anyone would want to play it 😀

OT:

Some people say it's not that bad, but they also say that Silmarils' Le Fetiche Maya is better.

I haven't played neither of them.

We want to play it because we haven't played it yet.
Then maybe we find out why we were wrong.

Sorry for the necrotic post, but I wanted to thank you Peter for posting that fix above. While running the options from the command line technically works, I had a specific need to run the gold.exe file, and this was my only means of doing so. Now if I could only get past the second screen...🤣.