Perhaps it is only writing to a floppy disk because it does some unusual low level stuff to the disk. Have you tried mounting a floppy disk image instead?

No i haven't tried that. How can i create an empty floppy disk image?

(i dont even own a real floppy disk drive... do they still exist?)

They do. I've uploaded a ZIPped 1.44MB disk image. Because it's empty, it compresses down to a nice 2k.

Thank you, i'll give it a try and let you know if save/load works for me.

The game only saves on a floppy disk, so i've created an "ADrive" folder and told dosbox to mount that directory as a floppy disk

Did you use the "-t floppy" switch when you mounted the directory as a floppy?

Kippesoep, unfortunately the floppy image had the same results as the mounted directory. Maybe the floppy emunation doesn't support low level access?

DosFreak, yes i've always used the -t floppy parameter.

Could you provide some information (maybe +savegame)
how saving/loading *should* work in this game?

Thats the tricky part.

The game doesn't seem to save into a file. While it says that the game was saved successfuly, it probably does some low level write on the disk.

I can do a few screenshots if you are interested or anything elsed that would help.

There were no entries about loading/saving the game,
so i thought there might be missing some files in the
game directory.
Screenshots (especially how/where to save) might help 😀

My copy WORKS FINE. Runnning inside a folder. It created LEAGUE.SAV which i loaded afterwards.

Forgot to say I was using DOSBox 0.63, sound configured for Sound Blaster.

Weird, i dont understand why it doesn't work here. I've got the "new" version of the game as well as the "old" one. The newer one comes on CD, published by bitmap brothers (though i dont think they are different in any way).

Here is what i run in my config:

1mount A "C:\Program Files\DOSBOX-0.63\ADrive" -t floppy
2#imgmount A "C:\Program Files\DOSBOX-0.63\ADrive-images\sb2saves.img" -t floppy
3mount C "C:\Program Files\DOSBOX-0.63\CDrive"
4C:
5CLS

I've tried both the image file and a plain directory. They are both empty.

One important thing to note, is that i can't quit the game. I save the game, but then i have to do CTRL-ESC to get back to Windows (at which point dosbox crashes or quits automaticaly). Maybe that causes the game to not write the save game or delete it because the file is still open?

I'll do a few screenshots for you.

Here are a few screenshots of the process, notice the corruption (weird black box at the bottom).

I found another lead to this problem.

Apparently, my SB2 saves the savegames into its current directory, because i found a LEAGE.SAV and a CUP.SAV in there.

Though it saves them in the current dir, i think it tries to load them from the A drive.

Could someone post the contents of their SB2.INI please?

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

My copy WORKS FINE. Runnning inside a folder. It created LEAGUE.SAV which i loaded afterwards.

Forgot to say I was using DOSBox 0.63, sound configured for Sound Blaster.

Could you please try to save/load a CUP and not a league?

I'm also using 0.63.

Thank you.

Howdy.

My sb2.ini looks like this...

Sound Blaster
Colour VGA
Keyboard

Saving from CUP also works just fine for me. Here is my CUP.SAV

By the way... You cannot exit SB2 normally because many Bitmap Brothers games have CTRL-F1 to exit (stupid keystrokes if I am asked). Just use CTRL-F9 to exit from DOSBox.

Further testing exitting the game and reloading CUP.SAV also works properly. I have the game installed at C:\TEMP2 and the only thing I have inside [autoexec] in DOSBox is:

mount c c:\
c:
cd

I usually enter manually all commands at DOSBox prompt.

Unfortunately, it still doesn't work for me. I tried your savegame, but when i load, it appears i'm playing against myself, as if i haven't loaded a game.

I installed dosbox under my Fedora Core 4 (via rpm), and tried the game there as well. No difference, i can save (.SAV file appears in current directory) but i can't load or the savegame file is corrupt (probably not since your savegame can't be loaded properly either).

my sb2.ini looks like:

1Sound Blaster
2Colour VGA
3Joystick

the MD5 hash for SB2.EXE is: 7b68d140b094660d6f5f6d11dfec9c09

I'm out of guesses 🙁

PS:
i found out that the installation/setup program can't be used because it doesn't listen to keyboard strokes. Do you also have this problem?

Yes, I have the same problem.

thank you all for your help, problem solved. Its a game related bug, nothing to do with dosbox.

though the problem with the setup.com (or install.com if you have the cdrom version) still exists. no big deal, i can just edit the sb2.ini by hand.

As for keys not working on setup.com I have found out that it uses ms-dos INT 21h funtions 08h (keyboard input without echo) and function 0Bh (check if a keypress is ready). I don't know why it doesn't work under DOSBox. Maybe that functions aren't implemented. Anyone? Qbix?

I have also found out that the keys responsiveness inside the game isn't good at all either. That was using normal core. Have to check both full and dynamic.