VOGONS


First post, by lukeman3000

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My favorite all-time game is Space Quest 2. I have always played it on dosbox and loved it. However, recently, I downloaded scummvm (yes, I know I'm posting in a "dosbox" forum), and saw that it supported AGI games, so I tried running sq2 on it just for kicks.

To my surprise, the audio in the game sounded very different! The first thing I obviously noticed was the title song that plays right when you start the game. It sounded.. "synthesized", not like it was coming out of an internal computer speaker in an old machine. In other words, the audio sounded "better" than what I heard while playing in dosbox. In fact, I even heard sweeping sounds from Roger's broom (when he's sweeping outside the space station at the first of the game) that I had never heard before!

I'm guessing that this has something to do with my sound card configuration in dosbox or something to that effect.. I'm not sure. I play other games with dosbox (like King's Quest VI) and it sounds fine... How do I get the same kind of "complex" sound from dosbox while playing space quest 2 that I heard while playing scummvm?

Reply 1 of 7, by ripsaw8080

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I think ScummVM is using the Tandy sound system for the AGI games; although it might be doing things to further enrich the sound... but I've never heard a real Tandy, so couldn't say for sure. Setting machine=tandy in the conf file is the easy way to get similar sound in DOSBox. If you don't want to use the Tandy machine type for some reason, the not-so-easy way is to set tandy=true in the conf file, and then run the game with a parameter to select tandy sound: "sierra -t" Note that tandy=true will conflict with some games that use 16-bit SoundBlaster audio, so it's best to leave it on the auto setting except in special cases.

Reply 2 of 7, by lukeman3000

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

I think ScummVM is using the Tandy sound system for the AGI games; although it might be doing things to further enrich the sound... but I've never heard a real Tandy, so couldn't say for sure. Setting machine=tandy in the conf file is the easy way to get similar sound in DOSBox. If you don't want to use the Tandy machine type for some reason, the not-so-easy way is to set tandy=true in the conf file, and then run the game with a parameter to select tandy sound: "sierra -t" Note that tandy=true will conflict with some games that use 16-bit SoundBlaster audio, so it's best to leave it on the auto setting except in special cases.

I forgot to mention, that when I play sq2 in scummvm, it's also like I'm playing a different version of the game alltogether.. I suddenly have mouse support and the menus look a little different than they do in dosbox.

When I play in dosbox, I have no mouse support whatsoever. Then again, maybe that's just a configuration I can set on my part, but it seems like an altogether different version of the game when played in scummvm for some reason...

Reply 3 of 7, by ripsaw8080

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With DOSBox you're running Sierra's original AGI interpreter, with all of its limitations. ScummVM's AGI interpreter clearly has some additional refinements, but it's still going to be pretty much the same game either way.

Reply 4 of 7, by lukeman3000

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

With DOSBox you're running Sierra's original AGI interpreter, with all of its limitations. ScummVM's AGI interpreter clearly has some additional refinements, but it's still going to be pretty much the same game either way.

Gotcha. That makes sense. Still though, when I heard that music in scummvm I was like what?!! 🤣.

Reply 5 of 7, by collector

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ScummVM inherited the flawed sound reproduction from Sarien. DOSBox has much more accurate sound in the AGI games than ScummVM. This is why I no longer provide ScummVM shortcuts for the AGI games in my new Sierra collections patches. You can, however, add mouse support to the AGI games with AGI Auto-Mouse in DOSBox.

Reply 6 of 7, by jinx2131

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I may be way off here.. but I'm pretty sure you can switch the music in SCUMMVM under the options.. but from what I remember the sound for SQ2 was PC INTERNAL SPEAKER unless you had the (superior??) TANDY sound? (Superior in Space Quest 3 - had speech at the beginning "Where am I?" 😀