Realms of the Haunting - Don't have it. Never played it. Can't help ya. Be patient.

System Shock 1 - Game created in the later days of DOS. These types of games are HEAVY on computer resources. The emulated NTVDM in NT4/2K/XP does not provide the ideal environment for these types of games. The IDEAL solution for SS is Real DOS or to run SS in an emulator such as Virtual PC (so far Virtual PC is the best emulator out there for ALL types of DOS games)

Gabriel Knight - Uses VCPI. Which doesn't play well with NT4/2K/XP's emulated DOS. I *think* that it may work in XP's. On NT4/2K your only option is Real DOS or VPC.

Alone in the Dark- Your probably not assigning enough memory. Probably why it's crashing. In any case try Dosbox for this game...mabye you will get better results: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox.

Vlad has spent his time creating this program that works VERY WELL for MANY people on 3 yes 3 different operating systems. MS didn't provide any sound in NTVDM until XP and even then it doesn't match the compatibility and functionality of VDMSound. This is FREE software. You don't like? It wasted your time? How is this our problem? It's YOUR time.

It's ALWAYS recommended by pretty much ANYONE on this board to run your games in REAL DOS. Unless the game is extremly simple your chances of running the game with full functionality in NT4/2K/XP NTVDM are pretty low.

VDMSound is NOT the problem. It's NT4/2K/XP's NTVDM.

BLAME MICROSOFT. NOT VDMSOUND.

Homer J wrote:

I'll probably get flamed left and right...

Well, you certainly deserve it for this post.

I am just amazed at how little actual use there is for it. I mean nothing works with it!

I'm amazed at this truly ridiculous statement. You try some games and can't get them to work properly, so obviously it's all VDMSound's fault. You, of course, must ignore everyone in every situation where it's worked just as it should.

What is this, just some kind of developer pet project where everyone is in some kind of collective self-delusion just to keep the flame lit under it, or what

Oh, yeah. that's it. It's all a big conspiracy. We're all devoting our time here to help spread a huge hoax, apparently, for the sole purpose of making your life harder.

Normally I don't say things like this, but you just invited it. Only an arrogant ass would say something like you did. Guess what that makes you?

? The whole reason I even bothered to try this thing, Realms of the Haunting, will not work.

I'm starting to wish you hadn't tried.

I started to clue in to the real situation with VDM just from the lack of response to that, I might add...

Wow. What logic. Did it occur to you that we might not have the game ourselves?, making it rather difficult to troubleshoot? If we're not familiar with the specific game, how are we supposed to know whether or not its uses DOS4GW or some other DOS extender, or if its uses EMS, or if there's a particular audio bug that we might need to be aware of? You do understand that there is no single solution for DOS games on new machines which is why the board is here.

I've been involved in hobby programming for over a decade and I can recognize vaporware hype and its variations.

Obviously not in this case. I take it you didn't follow the link to SourceForge and check Vlad's source code yourself?
I'm sure didn't or you wouldn't be making these accusations.

But fine, I digress...I figured why not try other things and see if maybe Realms is just the exception. So out came System Shock 1...again, no dice at all.

*SHOCK* Two whole games don't work! Why, that's proof positive right? And you just know that it's VDMSounds' fault right? Couldn't be anything else, right?

Then I noticed the thread on SS here, and sure enough...I'm not alone and in fact probably was luckier than most in getting what I could from it.

There were two threads on "System Shock" and if you had spent more than just a passing glance at:
showthread.php?threadid=97&pagenumber=1
You would see that this is a NT OS issue. Sherlock Holmes, you are not...

Next...Gabriel Knight. Bzzzt.

Wow! THREE whole games out of thousands. The evidence just keeps mounting doesn't it?

So I tried Scorched Earth, an old small shareware. The game started and looked promising, and I was 2 rounds into it when it crashed.

Again, this must be the fault of VDMSound, right? Of course, you have yet to back it it up with any kind of evidence, or even logic. Does it ever occur to you that it just might be something else?

Still, I was feeling encouraged by the minor success and was going to try to play some more with it, when it occured to me to try playing it without VDMSound at all. And sure enough, the game played and crashed exactly as before...🤣.

I never cease to be amazed at the most incredibly asinine statements that can come from a human being. This is stunningly stupid logic. Your own experiment [B]proved that it was the game and not VDMSound.

So VDM did absolutely nothing, NOTHING with it either..

Did you honestly expect that VDMSound magically patches all the bugs in every DOS program ever written? Especially since that it never claims to do anything like that.

No programmer with the slightest bit of sense would even think in these terms.

[B] One more attempt (and frankly this is a stretch because I don't own that many DOS games anymore...

Such amazing dedication. FOUR WHOLE GAMES, if only we were as dedicated as you. BTW, you heard about this Internet thing, right? Allows you to download the thousands of DOS game demos out there. Of course, searching for them would require rational thought and you're apparently running quite short of that.

[B] ...Alone in the Dark, diskette version. This one I got working and in fact was able to finish the game with sound, but it still crashed now and then...trick was to keep saving. But hardly a rousing success.

And again, it [B]MUST be VDMSound, right? You don't need to bother with lucid thought as that is too much effort, apparently.

Anyway, not to pop your collective bubble of delusion here, but the truth is,...

Well since I know for a fact that it does indeed work, I'm afraid you are the deluded one.

[B]VDMSound is a joke.

No, but your post certainly is...and a bad one at that.

[B] It's great in concept, a cute proof-of-concept but probably only a notch above early alpha in terms of useful functionality (if even that).

Preposterously stupid statement. You know that SoundFX, a commercial product, offers less and you have to cough up cash for it. You apparently don't even grasp the concept of what it's supposed to do.

You actually thought that it should take a game that crashes normally in XP and make it work. Even from the least educated computer newbie, I've never heard such a truly clueless statement.

[B]I'm amazed at how no one says the truth about it...

Tell me something. When something goes wrong for you in "real life", do you just point at the first person within visual range and blame it on them? That's precisely what you've done here.

[B]...though, although I guess there's hardly anyone here anyway, and everyone else like me, who's tried it and found out the truth the hard way,...

And here you apparently think that the board only deals with VDMSound...even though the slightest glance reveals GliDOS, OpenGlide, and numerous Emulation forums. You ever get tired making ridiculous statements?

[B]... What a joke. 😜

That's what this is all about, isn't it? A joke you're playing on us, to see if you "get a rise"? Just be a man about it and admit your post was just flamebait.

I'm amazed, though. You didn't just insult Vlad based on your own infantile logic, you had the chutzpah to called each and every one of us (who, somehow, actually got it to work) liars as well.

Well well. A kindergarten-level flaming after a bit of truth, and from a moderator, no less. What a surprise.

Since most of your idiotic novella was just one juvenile insult after another, I won't waste time reliving my grade-school flame wars with the likes of someone this immature. What I will say is, your implication is that I didn't try enough? 5 Games, and that's not enough to be conclusive? You expect a user to actually go hunting down obsolete demos to top it off, instead of using their own products, the whole reasons they would be using VDM to begin with? Oh but of course, we're meant to be testing this thing for you, I guess, not actually using it. Thanks for confirming.

Your excuse about things being "late DOS" and "heavy on resources" and "NT OS issue" and whatever else...no one gives a shit. That's exactly what an emulator/translator/whatever is supposed to work around. Suggesting things like running off DOS itself is as fucking stupid as you can possibly get, and I'd hope you wouldn't need me to point that out. I mean you don't think that's what we've been doing the whole time? Why bother with VDMSound at all then? Oh, but then that was MY point, wasn't it.

Lack of response generally means that no one knows a solution. In my case, it was an extremely easy thing to troubleshoot for experienced users...basically either I was doing something wrong or overlooking a setting, or the CD detection isn't working. No response probably means it's the latter, which means for something this basic, VDM's vaunted abilities already start looking like bullshit. Which of course, surprise...turned out to be the case.

You have the gall to mention "thousands" of games working. This I would love to see...where's the list? The compatibility list I saw didn't look too long at all, and I'd love to see where you get this kind of delusion.

Anyway, you and "everyone" else here are free to have your little bubbles of reality. Pretend VDM actually is useful in its current state and that it has a following. The bottom line is, its success rate is so low that it's practically useless, and no one is actually using it aside from a handful of vocal sheep, and even then, their actual "use" of it is probably all hype and wouldn't withstand the simplest scrutiny. It's an alpha proof-of-concept, at best. But knock yourself out...I'm out of here and long overdue. You succeeded in scamming one more tester for a couple of weeks, just like plenty of others before me I'm sure, but soon enough you'll realize how that gets you nowhere. You all could use learning more than a thing or two from successful collaborative development efforts like MAME or Linux. Development that people respect and want to contribute to, works on hard truth, not rose-colored glasses. Anyway, enjoy.

Oh well guess you found us out. Good thing you don't know about Winzip, crap....can't believe I let that slip. 😉

Another one who had something to prove. Oh, well... closing thread.

Homer J wrote:

You have the gall to mention "thousands" of games working. This I would love to see...where's the list? The compatibility list I saw didn't look too long at all, and I'd love to see where you get this kind of delusion.

http://vdmsound.sourceforge.net/compat
"Currently supporting 129 DOS applications with 164 compatibility reports!"

Okay, that's not thousands. And there's other workarounds mentioned there besides VDMS. But that's the idea, chum, use EVERYTHING you can to get a game working. Patch it, hack it, reverse-engineer it, emulate it, run a different port of it, rewrite the game's engine and run the game in that. Everything. Stupid Homer J Simpson, VDMSound can't be expected to do all of that.

Did you even read the home page?

VDMSound is a program that overcomes what has probably been the most exasperating limitation of DOS boxes since Windows NT -- sound support. VDMSound is an open, plug-in oriented platform that emulates an MPU-401 interface (for outputting high-quality MIDI music), a SoundBlaster compatible (SB16, SBPro 2, SB2, SBPro, etc.) implementation (for digital sound effects and FM/AdLib music), as well as a standard game-port interface (for playing games with joystick support). In development are improvements to the existing joystick emulation, and possibly VESA support.

Unlike all the Win9x SoundBlaster ISA 'legacy' drivers available from a variety of PCI soundcard manufacturers, VDMSound is not a mere 'wrapper' or 'bridge' to existing audio hardware. It is a self-contained, 100% software emulation program that is completely independent of your audio hardware type and settings. VDMSound works with any soundcard, and will even work on computers that have no audio hardware at all (for instance, instead of outputting sounds through your soundcard using the standard Windows drivers, VDMSound can easily output them to disk).

VDMSound works on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It does not work on Windows 95, 98 or Me.

That's all it's claiming to do. It will not magically fix your problems. Moron.

You all could use learning more than a thing or two from successful collaborative development efforts like MAME or Linux. Development that people respect and want to contribute to, works on hard truth, not rose-colored glasses. Anyway, enjoy.

Did it occur to you that Vlad has worked closely with projects such as DOSEMU and MAME and, in fact, a MAMEDEV member actually posts on this page? http://research.mame.net

Again, I say - moron. Getting cheap thrills from attempting to discourage/flame us will get you nowhere (other than possibly banned).

Anyhow, the thread's closed now. 😀

Homer J wrote:

That's exactly what an emulator/translator/whatever is supposed to work around

This phrase is still sticking in my throat. DAMN it all! Programmer, my ass, or else you'd know IT'S JUST NOT POSSIBLE to work around some of these problems that are caused by Windows NT/2000/XP!!! I'd like to see you do better!

Grrrr.... f'ng dumbass...

Oh, BTW, for Homer J's benefit: there is *no* way to work around the Windows incompatibilities without rewriting a relatively important hunk of Windows. And do remember that this DOS emulation is dwelling half in user-mode and half in kernel-mode, so forget about "patching" the NT kernel in order to support more apps. In other words, if you manage to convince MS to get its DOS emulation straight and then install VDMSound 2.0.4 on, as it is now, then all the games you are complaining about would work. Even something as simple as changing the frequency of the DOS timer is a nightmare as things stand now with Windows, and no elegant solution exists (see SPEEDSET), courtesy of Microsoft. So please refrain from posting uninformed opinions and do remember taht if something doesn't work on Windows then flame Bill, not us. FYI the VDMSound source code has contributed to both DOSEMU and DOSBOX (e.g. the undocumented E2 command).

V.

Homer J wrote:

Well well. A kindergarten-level flaming...

The guy who deliberately started a flame-thread and insulted the vast majority of the board is calling me immature.

..and from a moderator, no less. What a surprise.

Classic "I can flame all I want, you can't flame back" response.

Since most of your idiotic novella was just one juvenile insult after another,...

Each and every one earned and well deserved.

I won't waste time reliving my grade-school flame wars with the likes of someone this immature.

Again, the guy who made a baseless, broad-sweeping insult for every single person who says it works for them is calling me immature and pretending to be above flaming. Pitiful.

What I will say is, your implication is that I didn't try enough?

No, what I'm saying is that you testing less than .001% of DOS titles out there is not even close to having a basis for saying this:

I mean nothing works with it!

If you're going to use hyperbole, you better be prepared to have a real basis for it.

5 Games, and that's not enough to be conclusive?

Finally, you grasp the concept. Correct, it's NOT enough to be conclusive.

Try this on for size:

I found 5 titles that don't work with Windows 98, it's useless!
I found 5 titles that don't work with Windows 2000, it's useless!
I found 5 titles that don't work with Windows XP, it's useless!
I found 5 titles that don't work with Mandrake Linux, it's useless!

Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?

You expect a user to actually go hunting down obsolete demos to top it off, instead of using their own products,...

Again. Pay attention and READ. You had said:

One more attempt (and frankly this is a stretch because I don't own that many DOS games anymore...

, as if you were putting great effort into finding something else to test because it

took some digging

When you had thousands of others to test with the most basic of searches. You said you were testing others to see if Realms was the exception and not the rule. Remember? It was hardly a massive effort on your part.

...but of course, we're meant to be testing this thing for you, I guess, not actually using it. Thanks for confirming.

No. Smarmy remarks like this don't work when you don't even comprehend what I wrote.

Your excuse about things being "late DOS" and "heavy on resources" and "NT OS issue" and whatever else...

It's not an excuse. It's called accurate data.

...no one gives a sh*t.

Again, you act as if you have some form of omniscience that allows you to read everyone's minds. Nobody else has come forth with this "it didn't work for me so obviously it's a hoax" nonsense. They've shown courtesy and asked questions. They didn't start flame-threads.

That's exactly what an emulator/translator/whatever is supposed to work around.

Get it through your thick skull, it's an AUDIO emulator, NOT a PC emulator. It won't work with programs that the OS refuses to run IN THE FIRST PLACE. It won't do it for the same reason that replacing your stereo won't fix your TV screen.

Suggesting things like running off DOS itself is as f*cking stupid as you can possibly get,...

No. Again this is called logic, IOW meeting the original, specified requirements. People can set up a dual-boot, or simply set up a FAT/FAT32 drive and access with a boot disk (floppy). I guess you never heard of these.

[B]I mean you don't think that's what we've been doing the whole time?

No, that's NOT what you've been doing. THERE IS NO DOS IN XP or any other NT OS. He's referring to actual DOS or the Win9x series of OS's based on DOS.

The fact that you don't realize this is a good example of you not knowing what you're talking about.

[B]Lack of response generally means that no one knows a solution.

Wow. A reasonable thought. Let me savor the moment.

[B]In my case, it was an extremely easy thing to troubleshoot for experienced users...

And now, the moment has passed. Again, if we don't have the game ourselves it's far from easy. It's the equivalent of calling a car mechanic on the phone and trying to repair your car over the phone instead of bringing it to the garage.

[B]basically either I was doing something wrong or overlooking a setting, or the CD detection isn't working.
No response probably means it's the latter,

Actually you did get a response, just not an answer. In any case it's almost certainly the OS not detecting the CD. We needed you to test without any audio enabled to confirm this. You never replied to that.

...which means for something this basic, VDM's vaunted abilities already start looking like bullsh*t.

Actually, Vlad hasn't "hyped" his program, he's quite understated compared to numerous shareware authors out there and he's extremely courteous. Any hype has come from satisfied users. The ones you claim are delusional. Your lack of knowledge about the subject is source of the feces here.

You have the gall to mention "thousands" of games working.

Actually no, what I said was this...
Wow! THREE whole games out of thousands. IOW, Out of thousands of games available you found a few that didn't work on your PC and irrationally jumped to conclusion that

nothing works with it!

What I said is pretty obvious if you actually think while you read.

The compatibility list I saw didn't look too long at all, and I'd love to see where you get this kind of delusion.

When it works, people have a tendency to just go ahead and play and not bother with submitting a compatibility update.

Anyway, you and "everyone" else here are free to have your little bubbles of reality.

More condescension from the guy who doesn’t even understand what he's running. I just tested "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego v2.2" in XP. Under XP, it fails to detect the native emulation and uses the PC speaker instead. Using VDMSound it works fine playing digital audio and MIDI music using XP's GS-Wavetable. Apparently my "reality bubble" has a higher compatibility rate.

Perhaps your "reality bubble" needs a patch for it's various logic bugs.

[B]The bottom line is, its success rate is so low that it's practically useless, and no one is actually using it...

Based on your pitiful excuse for logic.

[B]...aside from a handful of vocal sheep,...

I thought you were going to be "mature" about this?

[B]...and even then, their actual "use" of it is probably all hype and wouldn't withstand the simplest scrutiny.

Again, you play the part of the clairvoyant. Claiming to know that which you can't possibly know.

...I'm out of here and long overdue.

Sure hope so.

You succeeded in scamming one more tester for a couple of weeks,...

Yet another victim in our conspiracy to waste other people's time. You really need mood music to play the part of victim here. Perhaps a sad violin solo.

...just like plenty of others before me I'm sure,...

Again with the clairvoyance, you must make a killing on the stock market with your mystic powers.

You all could use learning more than a thing or two from successful collaborative development efforts like MAME or Linux.

Downright funny as Vlad has actually worked with MAME developers. This is what arrogant assumption does for you. The people you praise have exchanged code with Vlad, and here you are telling him how he needs be like them.

I will say that I have made one mistake. I shouldn't have flamed back. I should have purged this thread and then submitted a ban request to the Admin.

OK, people. Game over. Thanks for the support, but this thread is CLOSED! Let whoever reads this thread draw his/her own conclusions.
V.