VOGONS


First post, by DigDog

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Hi there,

I'm Martin - lover of old stuff - from Germany 😉

The Game Talisman ( https://www.mobygames.com/game/talisman_ ) just came to my mind again these days and I want to play it again.

And if I may believe this: https://www.dosbox.com//comp_list.php?showID=3283&letter=T , the Game should run with DOSBox ...

But it doesn't ... Well kind of, it does - but this doesn't realy help playing the game.

I have fresh DOSBox 0.74-3 installation and added these lines to the autoexec part:

mount c g:\
mount a i:\ -t cdrom
c:

g:\ is my harddisk with a folder for DOSBox and my "DOSGames" folder.
i:\ is a virtual cd drive with the talisman.bin/.cue mounted to it (via VCD)

What - kind of - works:
1) If I run the "Talisman.exe" from cd (a:\talisman\ talisman.exe) the game starts just normal (Software 2000 Logo, Talisman title screen, intro video, the actual game)- BUT without sound or save games.
I think because it's a CDRom for DOSBox it wouldn't write any changes made to the setup.exe or create savegames.
2) I can install the game from cd (a:\install.exe) to any folder in g:\.
After this the setup from the (new) folder [any_path]\talisman\ starts and I can setup a sound card. Returning to the setup.exe, the selected sound card is still set, so changes are written to the files.

So far, so good ...

But what NOT works:
If I start the installed "Talisman.exe", the game starts, I see the animated Software 2000 Logo and that's it.
The game freezes at this point. This happens too, if I skip the animation with Return or Escape - the screen then freezes mid-animation.
DOSBox is still working at this time - I can lock/unlock the mouse, set frame skipping and so on - it's just the game itself.

So .. any Ideas why the game runs "properly" from mounted CDs or Images (same behavior when I mount the cui/bin within DOSBox), but not frfom it's install folder?

Last edited by DigDog on 2020-08-08, 22:59. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 7, by Jorpho

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DigDog wrote on 2020-07-31, 17:53:

I have fresh DOSBox 0.74-3 installation and added these lines to the autoexec part:

mount c g:\
mount a i:\ -t cdrom
c:

It's quite likely the program never expected the CD-ROM to be assigned to drive letter A. Try using D.

Reply 2 of 7, by DigDog

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Already tried other letters, too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Doesn't matter which letter the game and/or the cd dirctory have - i can play "from cd" (without sound and saves) but not the installed one (well, not further than the logo..) -_-

Reply 3 of 7, by Jorpho

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DigDog wrote on 2020-07-31, 17:53:
After this the setup from the (new) folder [any_path]\talisman\ starts and I can setup a sound card. Returning to the setup.exe, […]
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After this the setup from the (new) folder [any_path]\talisman\ starts and I can setup a sound card. Returning to the setup.exe, the selected sound card is still set, so changes are written to the files.

So far, so good ...

But what NOT works:
If I start the installed "Talisman.exe", the game starts, I see the animated Software 2000 Logo and that's it.

What exactly are you typing to start the game (and run setup)? Are you typing

cd [any_path]\talisman
talisman.exe

or are you typing

[anypath]\talisman\talisman.exe

?

Reply 4 of 7, by DigDog

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I go to the talisman folder by "cd [any_path]\talisman" and start the game or the setup in this folder by "setup", "talisman", "setup.exe" or "talisman.exe".
Depends if I'm lazy and just type "ta" and "Tab" the rest of it (leads to "talisman.exe") or type the word "talisman" myself.

-~ €dit ~-
If I try to start the game from another directory I get:

C:\>talisman\talisman.exe Stub exec failed: dos4gw.exe No such file or directory […]
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C:\>talisman\talisman.exe
Stub exec failed:
dos4gw.exe
No such file or directory

C:\>_

If i change from C:\ to C:\talisman\ with "cd talisman" I can start the game from there and it behaves like mentioned before (freezing at the logo).

Reply 5 of 7, by Jorpho

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Well, that's the obvious stuff, then.

At this point I might suggest using the debug-enabled version of DOSBox from DOSBox debugger . This can be used to show which files the program is trying to access and might provide a clue as to what is going on.

Reply 7 of 7, by Akuma

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What is the source image type you use in VCD ? because iso's and bin/cue can be mounted in dosbox natively as explained here: https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/IMGMOUNT

imgmount d "C:\MyISO.iso" -t iso
imgmount d "C:\cdimg.cue" -t iso -fs iso

Then I would highly recommend using dos32a from http://dos32a.narechk.net/index_en.html
then run your files like this:

dos32a setup.exe
dos32a talisman.exe

Happy tinkering 😁