I'd just get an old machine for old floppy access, likely cheaper than the usb device. A library or school probably has old systems that could be used to do a transfer to medium your current system can handle.

I seem to recall the game being very specific about where it looked for files. Anything in the wrong place caused problems.
Assuming it's been changed, as seems likely, any advice on how to get it working would depend on knowing how it's been changed, and where it is looking. Which is in the hands of the people who changed it, and potentially the people who host the site.

And that assumes that the game even works. In changing it, they might have screwed things up, or made it require some very weird and highly specific conditions.
If people downloaded it, could not get it working, then neglected to tell the site that they couldn't get it working, the site may not even know that there are problems with the game.
That seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

I had this running in DOSBox just the other day, though it might have been something unlike the version you are dealing with.

Extract the game to a folder named SW1, and then mount that folder's parent directory as C: in DOSBox, so that the game is running (within DOSBox) from C:\SW1 .

If all else fails, you can use a debug-enabled build of DOSBox (like ykhwong's) to watch what files the game is trying to access, and rename the directories appropriately.

Jorpho wrote:

I had this running in DOSBox just the other day, though it might have been something unlike the version you are dealing with.

Extract the game to a folder named SW1, and then mount that folder's parent directory as C: in DOSBox, so that the game is running (within DOSBox) from C:\SW1 .

If all else fails, you can use a debug-enabled build of DOSBox (like ykhwong's) to watch what files the game is trying to access, and rename the directories appropriately.

OK that's what I was not doing. It's working now. BTW, debug version did not help directly, but did show the file names such as FM-GRAFX.EXE that sentinel.exe was calling and could not find. I then looked at sentinel.exe in wordpad and saw that after the files names were listed such as FM-GRAFX.EXE there was "\SW1\FM" and \SW1\D with non-printable chrs in between. So this pointed me to mounting the parent dir of SW1 then c:, cd SW1, then execute play.bat which worked. Sometimes knowing too much is a problem. I have the orig install docs and along with lack of direction in the downloaded readme (ie: missing a cd command to SW1 or other info) I mounted the SW1 dir as C's root. All is well but it would have been nice is the debug would have shown the path or the error of what file it could not find - I guessed that it was the next file listed after sentinel.exe in the log and also a clearer link to the debug ver of DOSBox took me a while to find it since the link was hidden inside a forum entry and hidden behind the words (had to place mouse over the words in bold to see it was a link, which I didn't do the 1sst time I saw the entry) instead of something that looks like a URL.

...Why did you go through all that when I said you just had to mount the parent directory of a folder named SW1?

Also, you can just Google for "ykhwong dosbox" , you know.

I don't know why you'd need a modified old cvs build for the debugger capabilities, but well.

wd wrote:

I don't know why you'd need a modified old cvs build for the debugger capabilities, but well.

It is the only binary I know of that provides the debugger. Is there some other binary I should be aware of? Compiling from source is a bit of a bother.

dev forum should have debugger-enabled builds.

Does anyone know how I can resolve the unsupported 16-bit application so that I may play Sentinel Worlds on my laptop? I have the entire game including disks and manuals. It says that it is not compatible with my 64-bit system. any help would be greatly appreciated.

jjcrump wrote:

Does anyone know how I can resolve the unsupported 16-bit application so that I may play Sentinel Worlds on my laptop?

There is absolutely nothing whatsoever you can do to 64-bit Windows that will magically make it directly capable of running 16-bit applications again. An additional program such as DOSBox is necessary. (Of course, there are alternatives like XP mode or VMware and so on.)

If you need to know how to use DOSBox, please start with the 60 Seconds Guide.

ok everyone here my autoexec bit form my config files

[autoexec]

mount c "c:\sw1\fm" -label SWFM

mount y "c:\"

Y:

cd/

cd sw1

call PLAY.BAT

i figured it out using D.O.G. but you can do it under dosbox gameloader

as well. I dont know if the label has anything to do with it i just know it worked

On my 64 bit Windows7 machine... all I do is load dosbox(which has the default starting C: set to a directory of dos game folders. Just type, cd SW1 [ENTER]. cd FM [ENTER]. sentinel[ENTER] . To be honest, thats how I remember the original dos disk/game started up too.

I'd be interested if anyone knows about the copyright to this game. Who owns it? I'd like to contact them and see if they would be interested in releasing it as open source, so that I could try remaking it for windows as a source forge project... with improved graphics and user interface. (no gameplay changes).

zimxero wrote:

I'd be interested if anyone knows about the copyright to this game. Who owns it? I'd like to contact them and see if they would be interested in releasing it as open source, so that I could try remaking it for windows as a source forge project... with improved graphics and user interface. (no gameplay changes).

Mobygames says it's an Electronic Arts game. Good luck getting anything out of them.

You might get somewhere if you try tracking down the individual developers.

Even then the copyrights are with EA and so no chance to ever have that open sourced. Legally...

The only way then is to figure out the file formats and then begin coding a modern engine around that (like Exult, Pentagram, ScummVM, GemRB...)

Can anyone list step by step instructions on how to get this game to run? Even better if you know how to get it to run with Tandy sound. I have tried everything and the best I can get is the insert game disk message.

TheMatrixDragon wrote:

Can anyone list step by step instructions on how to get this game to run?

There is little point in doing so if you cannot at least tell use what you have already done. Evidently you have not "tried everything". See also the 60 Seconds Guide as well as my other posts above. If there is something in particular you don't understand, then it would probably be best to establish what that is before attempting to give you "step by step instructions".

It is of course always important to note that if you are not using original disks but instead downloaded this game from somewhere, then you might have an incomplete version that will never run anywhere.

I have tried the instructions listed here on the boards, I do have the original disks, but not floppy drive to install them with. I have tried downloading several different version of the game online, but they all give me the insert game disk message. I am not sure if I am following the instructions wrong or its the files I am downloading.

TheMatrixDragon wrote:

I do have the original disks, but not floppy drive to install them with. I have tried downloading several different version of the game online, but they all give me the insert game disk message. I am not sure if I am following the instructions wrong or its the files I am downloading.

I guess that you missed the point that Jorpho made about abandonwarez copies having problems. They are ripped, cracked or modified in other ways that create problems that the originals never had.

You need to get access to the files on your original floppies. USB floppy drives can be had cheaply enough.

TheMatrixDragon wrote:

I am not sure if I am following the instructions wrong

No one here has any way of knowing that if you don't tell us what you're doing. What folders are you mounting when you start DOSBox?

If you're trying to run the game's installation program, then there is no need to do so because a downloaded version is effectively already "installed". As per the above (you read the rest of the thread, right?), it seems you can get away with just running "sentinel" or "play.bat".