Come on guys!! Help a fellow vogoner out 😀

Anyone who has all the Keen's working...what's your setup?

Just hoping keen is not limited to using a CRT as the last time I played keen was on a 486. Can't test it on my 2 486 rigs as they're currently in pieces again.

Could it be a speed issue? After all, you tested the games with three different VGAs, but all your machines are quite fast.
In the case of Tyrian I'd expect it to come up with runtime error 200, instead of killing VGA output...
Also, you didn't mention which LCD monitors you use.

What machines are these games programmed for? 386SX?

I do agree, I was concerned about it being a speed issue but why would games like duke nukem 1 and 2, monster bash, Jill of the jungle which were all 386/486 games run beautifully but not keen? I even tried turning off the caches which made the computers painfully slow and also tried using MoSlo with no luck at all.

With Tyrian, yes you're right. I originally had the runtime 200 errors but bypassed that using a patch I found. Now it loads the settings fine and loads the game up but all I can hear is the music playing. The screen goes black with the signal error.

The 2 LCD monitors are a Samsung 22 inch and an Asus 22 inch. I'm not at home to get the model numbers sorry.

I guess my question now is, has anyone got these games to work fine using a pentium 2 and above? And if so, with an LCD screen? Lastly, if you have, what hardware are you using?

You're right, it's not a speed issue. I've tested CK1 and CK4 on an Athlon 1400 MHz + GeForce Ti4600 and they worked fine. My monitor is a Samsung Syncmaster 2443 which has a godawful TN panel, but is rather good with DOS games.

I do remember a somewhat strange issue in CK4 where TFTs showed a red tint when connected to a Voodoo 3, but it only happened with some TFTs and it did not occur with other video cards.

Well seeing as though you got keen running using the Athlon and a Geforce4. My Pentium 2 + Geforce2 combo shouldn't have any issues. I didn't think it was a speed sensitive issue. I also have a Samsung Syncmaster 19" monitor I could try. Only thing is that even if it does work, I can't use it as it's connected to my daughters computer. Looks like it may well be a monitor issue.

What OS are you running? I'm using Windows 98 SE.

Have you tested Tyrian using this same monitor/setup?

it's weird that i'm able to play keen1 (shareware) on my mismatched system(in sig) with a 24" Benq monitor in DOSBOX as well as Dos mode in Windows XP SP2, whereas you can't. why do you think it is a monitor problem?

I have no major problems with either Commander Keen or Tyrian on my Pentium 4/Win98SE rig borgie83. Here are a few pics I took of Commander Keen:

The only issue is with the menu text in Keen 4-6, it is somewhat messed up but still readable.

Hardware-wise, it's a Pentium 4 Northwood 2.4GHz, Soyo P4I-845PE mobo w/512MB DDR333 RAM, Nvidia GeForce FX5500 256MB AGP and SB Live! Value (CT4870). OS is Windows 98SE. Monitor is an Acer S202HL 20 inch LCD, max resolution is 1600x900 @ 60Hz.

@JayCeeBee64, ok I'm getting excited seeing those pics using that hardware.

My only concern is though, are you using dosbox to play keen and tyrian? If not, have you applied any patches to these games? If so, what patches and could you provide a download link? Are you using the sb live's sound blaster emulation for sound? Could you provide your autoexec.bat and config.sys settings?

Sorry about all the questions but I want to make totally sure my issue has to do with the monitors I'm using before I go out and purchase another monitor. Something that might sound like a stupid thing to do for a few games but I love these games.

It's totally possible to run Keen 4 natively on Pentium IV-based hardware (along with certain PCI sound cards and Windows 98). The only real challenge is finding a decent video card that doesn't garble the text or stutter the scrolling. 😀

@gandhig, yes I do find it weird. I believe it's a monitor issue as I've tried several computers and 2 monitors with no luck at all. I think my monitors may have trouble supporting certain resolutions but even that doesn't make sense as if that were the case, why do all my other games, even older than keen and tyrian work fine?

I do understand that you have the games working but I prefer not to use dos emulation. The only emulator I use on my retro rigs is scummvm and that's because I love it's simplicity and the menu system. How I can have all the games in a scroll down list and just select whatever game I'd like to play. Games with speech like day of the tentacle and fate of atlantis seem to have trouble on faster computers. Even after the lucasarts patches have been applied. Dosbox also requires a more powerful cpu in order for a lot of games to run fine whereas scummvm runs great, even on the early P2 CPUs.

@leileilol, if this were the case then my geforce2 should be fine considering that JayCeeBee64's FX5500 has no issues besides text. Regarding pci sound dos emulation, sound cards being used are a sb16 ct1740 with db50xg, an awe32 ct3900 with scb-55 and a awe64 gold. All isa cards obviously. Unfortunately, due to the games not running, I can't comment on sound at this stage but don't believe I'll have an issue with that.

Do you have Fastvid installed, with Write combining for the VGA memory range? If so, then don't.

Nope, don't have fastvid installed. Only things I've got being loaded are the sound blaster, cd rom and mouse. As well as emm386 and himem. I did try univbe at one stage but that didn't fix anything.

@borgie83, I'll try to answer your questions one at a time:

- No, I'm not using Dosbox. In fact, Dosbox is not installed at all - both Keen and Tyrian are working in a real DOS environment. Besides, games played in Dosbox look very different.

These pics were taken while running Dosbox in my Core i5 main rig.

- The only patch applied was to correct the runtime 200 error in Tyrian (I used ctbppat.zip).

- Unfortunately, the SB Live!'s Sound Blaster emulation doesn't work with the Soyo board; Keen just used the PC Speaker, while Tyrian just ran without sound. That's fine with me though - I built my P4 rig to play Windows games only, not DOS games.

- Here are the settings of my autoexec.bat and config.sys files:

autoexec.bat
@ECHO OFF
PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\PROGRA~1\ULTRAEDT;D:\GAMES\CWXCED
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY.COM
SET DIRCMD=/O
SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
SET TMP=C:\TEMP
CLS

config.sys
FILES=40
BUFFERS=40

As you can see, they have minimal content; this reflects another quirk of the Soyo board - EMM386 can't create an EMS page when loaded, so I don't bother using it (this also prevents Sound Blaster emulation from fully working in a DOS window).

Still, I was quite surprised to see both Commander Keen and Tyrian actually run in less than ideal conditions. I also noticed that I was using DVI output instead of VGA, so I switched video cables and tried again:

Once again, Keen just works. Tyrian also worked just fine:

DVI output

VGA output

That you are having so much trouble with two different LCD monitors is indeed quite perplexing, and can only suggest trying either a video card with DVI and VGA outputs or yet another monitor (either LCD or CRT).

@JayCeeBee64, thanks heaps for all of your effort 😀

That is the same patch I used with Tyrian. Regarding your sb live card. I got excited for a second thinking that you somehow managed to get sb emulation working in dos using a pentium 4 board. That was another totally separate issue I was having on my s478 p4 rig. Shame you couldn't get it to work either.

Looks like I don't have to change graphics cards as I just connected my daughters Samsung Syncmaster 931BW monitor and presto!! Keen 1 through to 6 as well as Tyrian now work! My issue was obviously my 2 monitors. Very annoying. Looks like I'm taking her monitor and swapping it over for one of mine. Shame as hers is 6-7 years old now whereas mine is just over a year old.

My only issue now is that for some reason keen 1-3 won't play sound using my awe32 ct3900 instead opting for the pc speaker. Keen 4-6 detect the sound blaster and let me select it but play no sound at all 🙁 any ideas? Anyone?

I do have sound working with Keen4 on P4 though with a SB PCI128... and it sounds fricking hilarious 🤣

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

As you can see, they have minimal content; this reflects another quirk of the Soyo board - EMM386 can't create an EMS page when loaded, so I don't bother using it (this also prevents Sound Blaster emulation from fully working in a DOS window).

Have you tried EMS Magic?
http://www.emsmagic.com/

borgie83 wrote:

My issue was obviously my 2 monitors.

Care to share the model numbers of your monitors, so other people can avoid them for DOS games?

My only issue now is that for some reason keen 1-3 won't play sound using my awe32 ct3900 instead opting for the pc speaker. Keen 4-6 detect the sound blaster and let me select it but play no sound at all 🙁 any ideas? Anyone?

Keen 1-3 only support PC speaker. As for Keen4-6: Do other AdLib games work? Mixer settings OK? AWEUTIL /S executed at some point before playing the game?