VOGONS


Might and Magic IV issues

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First post, by confusion

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Trying to get the Clouds of Xeen and Darkside to work. I've read around and people seem to be able to get it to work in win2k. At one point I remember getting it to work too. But now (using VDMSound) it just gets stuck at the title screen (with the dragon) right before sound starts. So I'm thinking sound emulation is the issue. Played around with the settings, still doesn't work. Works in DosBox but its really too slow to play. Thanks.

Athlon 1600 on ECS K7S5A
Radeon 9700 pro
Directx 9
Sound blaster live value

Reply 1 of 69, by eL_PuSHeR

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Have you tried CTRL-F12 to speed things up under DosBox?

Reply 2 of 69, by confusion

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Yea, but things get a little jerky and theres some mouse lag. It just doesn't seem to play normally.

Reply 3 of 69, by Nicht Sehr Gut

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When all else fails, configure your game to run with "no sound" or "PC Speaker" and see if you can get it running properly that way. If you can't, then you have to troubleshoot it at that point and don't try adding SoundBlaster audio until you have proper operation.

Reply 4 of 69, by Unregistered

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Yea no sound also produces the same errors. How would i go about trouble shooting it?

Reply 5 of 69, by Nicht Sehr Gut

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Originally posted by Unregistered Yea no sound also produces the same errors. How would i go about trouble shooting it?

Well, it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't play smoothly in DosBox (presuming that you gave it enough cycles before starting it).

When you ran it in DosBox, was it in "fullscreen" mode before you started? Also, in your DosBox configuration file, there should be a setting identified as "keepsmall". Is it set to "true"?

Reply 6 of 69, by Ajam

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I've the same problem. Darkside and world of xeen don't work with/without sound or with dosbox. Clouds of xeen works fine. Hm I don't understand the problem?!

Reply 7 of 69, by Nicht Sehr Gut

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Moved thread to DosBox forum.

Reply 8 of 69, by Qbix

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Weird that one game works and the other doesn't

They use the same engine i recall.

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 9 of 69, by icemann

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On my computer it runs pretty much perfect until I get to a point in the game that requires speech, at which point the game will freeze. Which I`m guessing is an issue with the soundblaster emulation.

Reply 10 of 69, by mirekluza

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Some time ago I was testing both non-CD version of World of Xeen (made from MM4:Clouds of Xeen and MM5:Darkside of Xeen) and Swords of Xeen in DOSBOX and IMHO they work ok (apart from SB issue - see below).

Athlon 1600 should be more than enough for the games.

Only problem I know about is occasionall crash/freeze when SB is used for normal sounds (use Disney Sound Source to get lower quaility speech). SB problem is known for a long time (it began to appear after one big update of SB), but unfortunately nobody was able to track it down.

CD version of World of Xeen probably does not work (I do not have it, but it was reported that it complains about CD). It seems that developers do not have it either, so it is difficult to repair.

If there are some other problems in DOSBOX, please give details here.

Mirek

Reply 11 of 69, by mirekluza

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Harekiet fixed DMA last Friday (29th August) and it seems that the SoundBlaster crash in MM4/5 was solved. 😀

Mirek

Reply 12 of 69, by icemann

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So is that in the latest cvs release? or in a yet to be released cvs version?

Great to know that thats been fixed now, as it pretty much makes mm4/mm5 fully playable to my knowledge 😀.

[Edit] *cries* Damn its still unplayable for me, so I guess its not a soundblaster issue. Everytime I go to enter a town that muscly dude appears says the "GOTA PASS?" then keeps moving his lips from then on and thats all that happens. Which is whats been happening since I first tested it on dosbox 🙁.

Last edited by icemann on 2003-09-02, 13:46. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 13 of 69, by Nicht Sehr Gut

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Is everyone using the CD-ROM version(s) here? The floppy versions seemed to run fine for me except that Might & Magic 5 locked on intro if SBPRo was chosen for Digital Audio (plain SB worked fine).

I have yet to get World of Xeen CD running. 1st, it cried for MSCDEX, then Locked up with VDMSound (SAPUCDEX no help)
DosBox kept asking for CD , then claimed I had a Music CD in the drive. Will test more later...

Reply 14 of 69, by icemann

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Well to be perfectly honest I`ve been playing a hard drive version of Darkside of Xeen, that allows you to cross over into the other game also (through pyramids or something). But as I don't yet have the other game (since I got this off a friend a longtime ago) I can only access Darkside of Xeen.

So no CD checks are done whatsoever and the game runs fine though alittle slow but thats to be expected, until I get to the town guard bit. As far as I can tell, it runs fine besides that. Though when I test the game I only run it for 2 mins to see each time if it will get past that part yet each time and stop there.

Reply 15 of 69, by mirekluza

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Where is that guard guy in the game? I did not play it, just tested at the beginning (the SB crash I was speaking about was appearing for example in Darkside Intro when there were two halves of X colliding and stars exploding around it (but there were other places as well)).

I just tested (using non-CD World of Xeen combination):
a) starting game
b) watching intro
c) choosing character
d) starting to play game (fighting one slime which appears near the starting location)
e) going into a shop (there was somebody speaking, audio was ok)

I did not play the game any longer. If this is ok for you and there is a bug somewhere further in the game, then I do not know about it.

Mirek

Reply 16 of 69, by icemann

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Could always email you my saved game or something I guess.

Anyways if you leave town, then attempt to re-enter it or enter another town a small sequence will happen where a character (for the towns its a barbarian guard who tells you to fuck off if you dont have a pass, and the other places have different guards) appears then says "GOT A PASS?" after which the game just stops there and the guards lips move indefinately after that with no more speech said. Hes supposed to say either "FUCK OFF" (seriously) if you dont have a town pass, or "OK GO AHEAD" if you do have one. But that part never happens.

No idea at all whats causing that.

Reply 17 of 69, by mirekluza

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I have just tried MM5 (Darkside of the Xeen) and it works. I left "Castleview" and when turning back and returning, an animation with a barbarian appered: "Got a pass. Fuck off." ("fuck off" was correctly said 😀 ). And I was when I was before. No crash, no freeze

Double check your sound settings (Sounblaster/220/7/1). Also: I tried it in CVS version, I do not know how it is with regular 0.58.

If it does not help, try to run without sound.

Mirek

Reply 18 of 69, by icemann

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Besides Fallout, MM5 is the one early rpg game I know of to have swearing in it.

Anyways I`ll try changing the sound settings when I get home (at work at the moment). And let ya know how it goes.

Reply 19 of 69, by icemann

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Ok I tried what you suggested and that fixed it up just fine. I had had the irq set to 5 rather than 7 which was what was causing the problem.

Now I just need to wait for some improvements with speed and I`ll be able to play it to the fullest 😀.