Does it also crash without VDMSound? Are you using LaunchPad?
V.

Doubt it'll run anyway, far too timing sensitive. One of the few freaky games that sets up timers exactly on retrace signal.
Gives a nice black screen here and the setsound tool freezes up with vdmsound.

i'm using launchpad. but it doesn't work. i think it's the memory setting. i have no sound with adlib but it runs ( 2 mins. 😀 and its jerky). if i change the soundcard in setsound i get a blackscreen after starting the game. under win 98 it runs fine with a sb16 ( i use xp) without vdm.

Demo here for those who want to test it:
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/download.php?id=50

One note that I saw on Martin Kiewitz's page: try setting the game at Medium speed, not High. You may get better results.

For future use, the only patch I can find for this game is a GUS patch - use the Pinball Dreams 2 gus.sdr file, it will work with Pinball Fantasies.
http://ftp.physics.auth.gr/pub/mirrors/ftp.pa … hes/pd2_gus.zip

Also, if worse comes to worse, remember that this was originally an Amiga game. You could emulate an Amiga to play the game.

I'm surprised there isn't a Windows re-release of Pinball Fantasies...

being a long time winuae user i can tell you pinball fantasies now runs great on winuae (amiga emulator) there were problems with the shift keys for a long while but thats been fixed now.

Stiletto wrote:

You could emulate an Amiga to play the game.

For the early "21st Century Entertainment" pinball titles, you should definitely check out the Amiga versions. The early PC versions had no features beyond the Amiga originals and the first couple of ports were a little on the "rough" side. I tried "Pinball 2000" (basically 2 tables from Pinball Fantasies that were slightly remade) and got poor performance every time.

He might also try DosBox. When I tried SoundBlaster audio in DosBox it sounded just as horrible as it did in XP (apparently the MOD player in the program doesn't like modern machines). However, when I edited the DosBox's .CONF file under the "speaker" heading to change either sinewave or tandy from "false" to "true" (and chose speaker audio for the game) I got slight distortion, but much better than a real PC-Speaker (basically, it sounded much better than the SoundBlaster option).

I'm surprised there isn't a Windows re-release of Pinball Fantasies...

I believe the last release of the "21st Century / Spidersoft" was the "Pinball Gold" pack (all 20 tables) by 3D0 in 1996. Still DOS.

Heh, I've got most (all?) of their DOS game ports. For a while I was really into pinball and I found a compilation with a bunch of pinball games in it. Indeed, they don't work in W2K, and they were still a HUGE pain in the arse to get working in W9x. I definitely think that emulating an Amiga with WinUAE and running it through that would be the best option.

Well my "Gold Pack" CD is doing little more than nothing.
Tried the "ripped" version with some success. Pretty much the same results as Pinball2000:

In XP with VDMSound:

SoundBlaster audio (sounds effects and MOD music) sounds slightly distorted. Listenable, but not very good.

MIDI audio sounds...weird. It plays properly but MOD doesn't translate to MIDI very well.

Audio seems to induce lag during play. VDMS.log reports:
@W - 12:01:13.847 - SBController
HandleTransfer: DMA updates too infrequent (unable to keep up with
desired transfer rate), requesting boost
(I increased DMA, no change)

Even when run in silence, there seems to be lag (especially when the ball is moving quickly). So this seems to be a "Hates NT" game.

In XP with DosBox v0.56:
SoundBlaster audio doesn't work. Occasional noise, nothing else.
If you enable the speaker in the .CONF file and choose speaker, you'll get the same sound as with SoundBlaster. There's some slight distortion, so you'll probably want to choose "Sound Effects" only (menu music, etc.. still plays).

Downside of DosBox is that the LED displays are garbage, which means you can't see your score, or "REALLY QUIT?" messages.

Upside is that gameplay seems consistently smooth (which also means faster gameplay).

Since the Amiga and PC versions of "Pinball Dreams" are identical (unlike some later releases), the Amiga version is probably the best bet right now.

thx guys. i'll try the amiga version.

Nicht Sehr Gut wrote:

In XP with DosBox v0.56: SoundBlaster audio doesn't work. Occasional noise, nothing else. If you enable the speaker in the .CONF […]
Show full quote

In XP with DosBox v0.56:
SoundBlaster audio doesn't work. Occasional noise, nothing else.
If you enable the speaker in the .CONF file and choose speaker, you'll get the same sound as with SoundBlaster. There's some slight distortion, so you'll probably want to choose "Sound Effects" only (menu music, etc.. still plays).

Downside of DosBox is that the LED displays are garbage, which means you can't see your score, or "REALLY QUIT?" messages.

Don't forget to submit a bug report to Harekiet. Anyhow, I'll close this thread.