Graphics should be set to EGA or VGA for more colors.

I don't think these goldbox games have background music. However if there is an Adlib or Soundblaster option you should select one of those otherwise PC Speaker is probably the only other choice.

If you want to access the initial setup again just delete the .conf and run the game again. It will ask you to choose the options again.

I think you are right on the background music, or lack thereof. I'll just find something and stream it while playing.

Do you know if EGA or VGA is better?

Also, when you say to delete the .conf file I am guessing that once I 'run' the game again a 'new' .conf file will get generated. I.E. the .conf file I have access to is generated during that initial set-up.

(Worst case scenario I'll make a copy of it and put it in a different place that is not attached to the correct directory, that way I can put it back if I mess something up.

Still getting used to emulators and 'DOS' style programs/apps.

Thanks for the advice,

Jesse

Well deleting the .conf didn't let me change the opening settings I mentioned. I was able to run a different game with the series and was given the option at the beginning to Press 'ENTER' for previous configuraiton, or SPACE to reconfigure. (Not verbatim but I am sure you have seen this before)

I want that to come up when I run COTAB, not just POR.

I also went completely through the entire config file and I never found anything giving me the choice of CGA, EGA, or TANDY.

I did see a line in the .conf file that was set to machine=svga_s3

I tried changing it to EGA but it didn't change anything (I put it back to svga_s3

Is their a line somewhere that is disabling the ability to see the flash message about ENTER for previous, SPACE for new?

Let me know what you think.

Thanks

One other thing, when running POR the last string for launch is call START.BAT

For COTAB it is call START.EXE

Not sure who/why the difference but I do remember it was necessary to use the .BAT to get POR working properly in general, not sure if it is why I can get the option at the front of DOSBox to come up.

For older games such as this one, it's worth checking out the Amiga and Apple II versions just in case there are more features. This is quite often the case!

If you want to reset the game's options without reinstalling it, delete the file curse.cfg located in the folder where you installed it.
This time choose more carefully 😜
You probably want to select EGA as video output.

sorry, I made the mistake of assuming you were talking about the games .cfg file, i couldn't remember if it was named .conf or .cfg. Anyways I didnt mean for you to delete the dosbox config.

Don't make any changes to dosbox, just delete the .cfg file and rerun the program it will ask you again for the config you want to use.

I don't think this program will work with anything better than EGA so thats what you should pick.

As others have already said, in your Curse directory delete the curse.cfg file there. And when you run start.exe from
inside Dosbox, it will bring up the configuration options again. For the best graphics and sound pick the following options.

1: select 2 for ega graphics
2: select 2 for tandy sound
3: hit enter to leave the default save game location, unless you need to change it to a custom location.

And you should be good to go. That's as good as this dos version looks and sounds, no music and some
combat sounds. But the ega graphics aren't to bad for its time.

Someone posted a YouTube video of the intro music to COTAB with PC speaker sound, and it's pretty painful to listen to, so Tandy sound with no music is actually an improvement. (One can always put a shortcut on the desktop to the YouTube video of the C64 intro to COTAB (or POR, for that matter -- it's the same music), and run that while loading COTAB in DOSBox.)

Now I've got Curse of the Azure Bonds successfully running with EGA graphics & Tandy sound, as Tempus2 recommended. However, I tried doing a video capture of the intro & demo (as an experiment, to teach myself how to do video capture). I did successfully capture the Tandy sound, but not any graphics (blank screen in Windows Media Player). My teenage daughter is trying to help me troubleshoot, but she's new to DOSBox video capture, too (she's used Windows Movie Maker to create lyrics videos for YouTube before, though). I'm running DOSBox 0.73 & 64-bit Windows 7. Any suggestions on what I need to do? 😅

Use newer dosbox and use the built in video capture...

I was using the built-in video capture in DOSBox 0.73, but wasn't looking at the instructions in the DOSBox Wiki when I did -- so I didn't "install movie codec" before attempting to view the captured video. I just attempted to "install movie codec" this morning, and got this message:
"An error occurred whil copying file zmbv.inf. Cannot copy file to destination directory." Retry didn't work; Cancel gave me "Do you want to continue Setup without copying this file?" When I clicked Yes, I got this message:
"Setup cannot copy the file zmbv.dll. Ensure that the location specified below is correct, or change it & insert '(Unknown)' in the drive you specify." The file location showing was C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.73\zmbv. Retry didn't work; Cancel got me "Installation failed." In the zmbv folder I found README.txt (same as "Video Instructions" elsewhere), zmbv.dll, and zmbv.inf (this last file can be viewed in Notepad).
Assuming something's fouled up within my 0.73 zmbv folder, I suppose I could try installing DOSBox 0.74 instead and see if that helps. 😅

Yes, please use 0.74. Why do you insist on using an outdated version?

Try as Admin

Why 0.73 until now? Because it worked (at least for everything but video capture).
I just installed DOSBox 0.74 this morning, and got the same error messages as before. Then I tried "Run as administrator," didn't get error messages this time, and am at least getting some graphics now (a square "album cover"-type graphic of the title screen), but still just the sound otherwise. (At least it's still playing the Tandy sound I set up this game with, even though I hadn't recorded it in DOSBox 0.74.)
On the other hand, it looks like I'll have to enable Tandy sound within the DOSBox configuration file again (I just looked up Qbix's instructions from when I had to do it before), in order to run Curse of the Azure Bonds with Tandy sound under DOSBox 0.74.
Got Tandy sound changed from tandy=auto to tandy=on, so Tandy sound works again in the game. 😀
Now I can get back to troubleshooting video capture! (Maybe I can start by rerecording the same sequence, but running under DOSBox 0.74 this time.)

Curse of the azure bonds appears to only support sound effects, and no music. As far as I can remember, there's very little music in ANY of the SSI gold box games apart from the introduction.

Deleting the .cfg file from the game folder and then re-running start.exe (or st.bat or something along those lines) is how you reconfigure the older ones.

Some, like Dark Queen of Krynn, support VGA and use CONFIGUR.EXE to set game options.

Generally I've found the most pleasing configuration to be Tandy music/audio.

There's no graphical difference between EGA and Tandy.

if you want to play the video, be sure to install the codec that comes with it.

I didn't need "run as administrator" to install DOSBox 0.74, of course, just to install the video codec (from the Video folder of the Extras folder when opening the DOSBox 0.74 folder from the Programs list of the Start menu). That's how I got to the point where the square "album cover" title screen art displayed while the audio portion of the video capture ran, but not the graphics of the COTAB intro/demo. If there's a video codec specific to Curse of the Azure Bonds other than the one I found already, I have yet to find it. (Or I could try re-recording it from within DOSBox 0.74, to see if that makes any difference.)
I know video capture of this game can be done; I'm just trying to learn how -- and probably making dumb mistakes due to inexperience & ignorance. 😅

I went back to the DOSBox Wiki article on video capture, and decided to download one of the alternative media players recommended there (I chose VideoLAN). The COTAB intro/demo test video capture I had done ran beautifully under VideoLAN, so I think I'm all set for now. 😎 It still doesn't run properly under Windows Media Player (still just the "album cover" title screen graphic), and I'm not sure why, but at least I found some way to view my video capture. 😀

My teenage daughter (who doesn't know much about DOSBox video capture, but who does have experience with Windows Movie Maker) took one look at the .AVI extension on my video capture file, and informed me that I needed to convert it to a .WMV file in order to be able to view it in Windows Media Player (or Windows Movie Maker). I found a popular AVI to WMV converter in the CNET downloads section (a source I trust for malware-free downloads), got the file converted (while retaining the original AVI version, at least for now), and can now view my COTAB intro/demo video capture in Windows Media Player as well. 😎