Police Quest Collection \ VOGONS

Police Quest Collection

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First post, by skttrbrain

Posted on 2009-06-04, 21:45

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Hello...

This is my first post so go easy on me...

DOSBOX is amazing....
its got me tracking down CD ROM collections of classic 90s PC games and now have bought the brilliant Police Quest Collection but but er its not so brilliant... its very nice of Sierra to let me buy these old games but this package seems a bit badly put together... for example the PQ manual on the disk is actually the Kings Quest manual... 🙁 anyway...

My main issue is that I want to change the sound on PQ1VGA and PQ2. Both these games only have beeps for sound... is there a sound setup programme/config file I am supposed to be running... I know PQ1VGA is a remake of an earlier game but did they only update the graphics and not the sound... at least basic Sound Blaster would be better than this... I can only handle beeps when the graphics are EGA not VGA 😉

Finally is there a way of getting to the games on the CD without having to go through the Sierra installer?? I know I can just copy them out of the Sierra folder under programme files... but I like to keep a tight control on my DOSBOX installations... if someone can answer these questions it will be much appreciated...

Reply 1 of 10, by HunterZ

Posted on 2009-06-04, 21:54

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Mount the CD drive and your games folder on your hard drive inside of DOSBox. Run the Sierra installer from the CD from inside of DOSBox and tell it to install the games of your choice to the mounted games folder. Once that's done you shouldn't need the CD any more.

Most SCI-based Sierra games have an INSTALL.EXE utility that can be run from the hard drive (from inside of DOSBox of course) after the game is installed to change the video, sound, input, etc. configuration.

The older (*really* old) AGI-based Sierra games only had PC speaker sound and auto-detected your video hardware.

Edit: I haven't tried this myself so it may not work 😜 Worst case you can do the mounting and run the installers from the individual game folders on the CD (again, from inside of DOSBox!) and hopefully they'll think you're trying to install from the original floppies or whatever.

Reply 2 of 10, by skttrbrain

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:15

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Thanks for the reply...
I have done a little more messing around...
The Sierra installer is an XP programme... it sticks an old version of DOSBOX... 0.63 I think and extracts 4 folders for each of the games... though I can just copy these folders to my own 0.73 shiny new DOS directory I would really like to do this in the future without Sierras god awful installer...

Anyway I have got the sound working fine now... there is a resources.cfg file in the PQ1VGA... changed it to genmidi for sound and audblaster (Soundblaster 1) for audio... why Sierra could not have done this is beyond me... happy now anyway 😀

Reply 3 of 10, by HunterZ

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:29

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Wow it sucks that they set it up that way.

Reply 4 of 10, by DosFreak

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:35

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I think Collector maintains new installers and such for the Sierra collections. Haven't really looked at them myself but they are supposed to be pretty good.

Last edited by DosFreak on 2009-06-04, 23:03. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 5 of 10, by DosFreak

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:37

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skttrbrain wrote:

why Sierra could not have done this is beyond me... happy now anyway 😀

These latest collections were pretty piss poor (It was mentioned alot when they were released). They didn't even bother to let us know about it or ask us any questions about it. Frankly I was suprised they bothered to put DOSBox in there at all. (If they hadn't they wouldn't have been able to claim it as Windows compatible)

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Reply 6 of 10, by skttrbrain

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:44

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Dosfreak what do you mean by "Collector creats"... is there a better Sierra game collection about?

Also just played a little PQ2... oh dear has copy protection... not gonna get far with only a King Quest manual on the CD... 😀

Reply 7 of 10, by MiniMax

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:47

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Collectors work: http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/DOS … Installers.html

Reply 8 of 10, by skttrbrain

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:47

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Though I am not complaining about copy protection in its self as I am a bit of a purest and enjoy in some weird way inputting words from the manual... but but at least give me the manual Sierra.... aaarrggghhh

Reply 9 of 10, by skttrbrain

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:50

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Wow theres alot of love for Sierra to go to all this trouble... i'll try the installer... but I do enjoy picking the directoys out manually and setiing it up myself...

Reply 10 of 10, by skttrbrain

Posted on 2009-06-04, 22:52

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I have the SQ nad KQ collections on order... are these just as bad?

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