Activision Asteroids redbook audio \ VOGONS

Activision Asteroids redbook audio

Topic actions

Post a reply

First post, by rjhansen

Posted on 2020-01-13, 20:43

rjhansen Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 16
Joined: 2020-01-12, 05:03

I can get the 1998 Activision Asteroids game to run pretty well on Windows 10, even hardware acceleration works, albeit with an ugly window border and title bar around it in full screen. It doesn't work properly with dgVoodoo2 for now (there's limited functionality in software mode), but I reported the problem to Dege, so maybe we can get rid of the window border.

But I cannot get the cd audio to work. I know CD audio works with my version of Daemon Tools because I can get music in Frogger 2, though it has some glitchiness.

My DT drive is my first CD drive. I tried making it into CD drive D:. I tried opening the redbook audio in WMP 12 first to see if it would get recognized.

I suspect no music for me, but I thought I'd ping the boards in case there was some obvious solution I'm missing. The game is fun without the music anyway, but it's even better with it.

I'm going to try it in VirtualBox in software mode to see if it works there.

Any other thoughts?

Reply 1 of 8, by rjhansen

Posted on 2020-01-13, 20:50

rjhansen Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 16
Joined: 2020-01-12, 05:03

VirtualBox was a bust in a Windows 98 VM. It says it can't get the video RAM amount (using SDD 7beta and the virtual SVGA adapter).

Reply 2 of 8, by leileilol

Posted on 2020-01-14, 10:54

leileilol Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 11770
Joined: 2006-12-16, 18:03

Well yeah, you're not going to get *any* 3d acceleration in Win9x on Virtualbox no matter what. It's not supported. You could probably try an XP guest in Virtualbox though, where there's still some 3D support left remaining for the soon-deprecated driver.

long live PCem

Reply 3 of 8, by ZellSF

Posted on 2020-01-14, 17:06

ZellSF Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2414
Joined: 2006-01-01, 18:19

CD audio is very problematic in newer OS versions than Vista, you usually need one of these 4 tools:

_inmm (does not work with Asteroids)
DxWnd (seems to work with Asteroids)
ogg-winmm (seems to work with Asteroids*)
Peixoto (didn't try)

I think DxWnd might be starting to get to be the most advanced one and the recommended one.

* This is an open source tool with lots of variants, so all of them might not work.

Reply 4 of 8, by rjhansen

Posted on 2020-01-15, 21:20

rjhansen Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 16
Joined: 2020-01-12, 05:03

I think DxWnd might be starting to get to be the most advanced one and the recommended one.

Wow. That was refreshingly easy. Thank you.

Last edited by rjhansen on 2020-01-15, 22:17. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 8, by rjhansen

Posted on 2020-01-15, 22:06

rjhansen Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 16
Joined: 2020-01-12, 05:03

Okay, so here's the process I used in case anyone else wants to get this little gem running:

1. You could use DxWnd for graphics but I didn't. I used dgVoodoo because I'm more familiar with it. 2.63.1 and newer should work. Versions before 2.63.1 do not.

2. Tell DxWnd to hook nothing but "Virtual CD audio" in the advanced "Sound" tab. This means going to the "DirectX" tab and choosing the radio button "none" under the "DirectX version hook" tab.

3. Setup a simple batch file:
dxwnd /R:#

This is just to document. I know y'all know how to do this stuff. It would probably make more sense to use DxWnd for the whole thing, but I already have dgVoodoo's control panel set up and I know what I'm doing there.

Last edited by rjhansen on 2020-01-22, 15:16. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 6 of 8, by rjhansen

Posted on 2020-01-15, 22:11

rjhansen Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 16
Joined: 2020-01-12, 05:03

leileilol wrote on 2020-01-14, 10:54:

Well yeah, you're not going to get *any* 3d acceleration in Win9x on Virtualbox no matter what. It's not supported. You could probably try an XP guest in Virtualbox though, where there's still some 3D support left remaining for the soon-deprecated driver.

Right. I tried "software mode" in Windows 98. That's the error I got in software mode with SDD7 drivers installed. I tried XP for hardware acceleration later (thank you VB 5.2.34) and it choked on it. I pretty much knew that was the case because I had tried to run this one back in the day on XP.

BTW, current version of VirtualBox (6.1) does not allow you to install Direct3d guest additions (at least with the v6.1 disc). I went for version 5.2.34, which does.

I should've been clearer documenting steps.

Reply 7 of 8, by ZellSF

Posted on 2020-01-16, 08:08

ZellSF Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 2414
Joined: 2006-01-01, 18:19

rjhansen wrote on 2020-01-15, 21:20:

I think DxWnd might be starting to get to be the most advanced one and the recommended one.

Wow. That was refreshingly easy. Thank you.

If you think DxWnd is easy to use, you might be spending too much time in front of your computer.

rjhansen wrote on 2020-01-15, 22:06:

This is just to document. I know y'all know how to do this stuff. It would probably make more sense to use DxWnd for the whole thing

Not really, DxWnd (mostly) relies on legacy rendering, which is full of compatibility issues that dgVoodoo fixes. It also doesn't support resolution forcing or meaningful scaling options.

There are cases where DxWnd's DirectX emulation is better, and it's pretty much always better at windowing games (since it's the main purpose of the program and dgVoodoo's windowed support isn't great), but for the most part dgVoodoo is the better option.

Reply 8 of 8, by rjhansen

Posted on 2020-01-17, 04:56

rjhansen Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 16
Joined: 2020-01-12, 05:03

ZellSF wrote on 2020-01-16, 08:08:

If you think DxWnd is easy to use, you might be spending too much time in front of your computer.

🤣 I been around the block a few times.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to Windows

Main menu

Common searches