Enemy Unknown, TFTD and Apoc

[Incognito]

Right, now to start my long ass thread, I just hope this forum is still up and running, cause I'd really like to get these games to work.

 

To start it off, Here comes my Xcom Enemy Unknown bug.

The game itself works fine, or fine beeing a slight exagheration, it goes really slow in combat mode, but its not much of a problem more then an irritation factor. The real problem lies with the music, Ive tried several different versions but the music files are "dead" meaning no sound. Which is... taxing... I use the loader that circles the internet. Ideas?

 

TFTD,

Well I have a Geforce 4 graphics card, meaning the loader that I found on the net doesnt really work. It's been a while since last I tried though, as I moved to "better plains" and settled on the fact that it wasnt going to work. The graphics were just gliched and ****ed up really. Ideas?

 

Apoc

Now to my main problem. Ive installed Apoc without any problems, starting it without an emulator was a bad idea though, seeing as it just ended up with a black screen, once I klicked anything it just went dead. So in my wisdom I decided to download Dosbox to give it a go with that. And what do you know? it works? weee! Well... Kinda works, its slow.... really really really slow, I tried to fix the frame rate and cpu speed within dosbox but it just got stuck at max every time I started the game. It laggs... Badly, so badly that its not playable... Ideas?

 

help is appriciated...

[Bomb Bloke]

When you say combat is slow, does tweaking the speeds on the options screen help matters? I get the impression you've got the collecters' edition?

 

UFO plays its sound via MIDI, a channel which your computer can disable seperate to your WAVE output (meaning, in this case, that you'd hear everything except the music). Try playing the music files with something like WinAmp, and if that doesn't work, check your Windows Sound settings (double click on the speaker in your system tray).

 

The graphical loader for TFTD should work with any video card, AFAIK... What does it do with yours? If the worst comes to worst, disabling your video hardware acceleration should do the job instead.

 

My computer also black screens with Apoc these days, haven't had time to fix it. Microsoft changes the Dos VM on occasion, for better or worse. I'll mess with it later today and see what happens.

 

Edit: Nope. My Dos VM is dead. As in, "watch-out-you-might-need-to-hard-reboot" dead. Can't seem to run anything through it at the moment.

[Incognito]

Weeee, I figured out the music problem, for some wierd reason the midi channel was set to my motherboard instead of my soundcard... stupid windows... Anyways thats one down and 2 to go.

Actually changing the game speed doesnt help, its still slowish in combat, but thats a minor problem, one that I am more than willing enough to live with.

 

Concerning TFTD, I have to look through my old cds to try again, Ill give you an update about it later on. I knew I had some kinds of problems.

 

Apoc is the real problem though, I get it to work through Dosbox, its just so incredably laggish that its not playable, and installing windows 95 for one game is not really an option. So do you know of anyway to change the game speed in dosbox? it seems its getting "too much" causing it to lag. Or maybe another emulator?

[Incognito]

I found my old copy of TFTD after some fiddeling about at the attic. Anyhow, its the direct draw bug again, so i downloaded the loader of the net, only to get the error message, Cannot Find Patch.dll, now first of all I hate dll files. Secondly I asume its about some form of patch, which i dont have.... Where can I find it?

[Bomb Bloke]

That "patch" file is part of the loader itself. The two should be bundled together, and in later versions, other DLLs were included as well... In the end, f0dder released a loader that worked on both UFO and TFTD, and also fixed a music issue (which I've never ran into myself).

 

For whatever reason we've only got one of the older packs on our site (yet another thing that needs updating) but it should still do the job for you. If this one doesn't work, make sure your TFTD executable is called "Terror From the Deep.exe".

 

If you have a '95 disc, why not try setting that up in a Virtual Machine? It'll take up a little bit of disk space (less then a GB though, even if you run Apocalypse off a virtual disc), but it's a lot easier then setting up a seperate partition or getting another computer.

[Incognito]

Thanks again, TFTD works like a charm with the old pack ^^ thats two down and one to go

 

Ive thought about Virual Machine, it probably should make apoc work, but dont I need like a windows cd and a boot drive?

[Bomb Bloke]

Well, I got the impression you had a CD... But if you don't, there's always FreeDOS.

 

Not sure what you mean by a "boot drive"... You don't need an extra HDD or a partition on your machine to store the "virtual computer", that uses a virtual drive which is stored as a file on your current drive.

 

I believe you can allow the virtual machine to access your real drives so you can copy files across, install an OS, etc. Apparently you can get it to treat ISOs as CDs, too.

[Incognito]

Well I do, problem is, its just a xp cd... I didnt really think boot drive was a word, but it was worth a shot. Anyhow, its the disc that was necesarry with the old windows packages (win 98, Win 95) a small disc you put into your 3,5inch A: thingy. a discette! or somethin....

 

hmmm, but its worth a shot, Ill take a look around on the net

[Bomb Bloke]

You're probably thinking of a "Floppy Disk". Do you mean to say you don't have a floppy disk drive? Not sure if you need one for FreeDos or not. You certainly don't require one for Windows 95/98, though I'd recommend them regardless as to which OS you're using.

[Sgt. Strike]

I am having a problem with at least the first game, I am not sure about the second one, yet. I am using a laptop with linux on it, and using Wine to run it. It isbeing running on Windows '98, I believe. When I go to input a name for my base, the game will freeze on me, or seem to. I am not sure what is going on. I would like to know what you all need to know, to help me out.

[Bomb Bloke]

Sounds like maybe the keyboard just isn't working. Are you able to type stuff into other games through Wine?

[Sgt. Strike]

Sounds like maybe the keyboard just isn't working. Are you able to type stuff into other games through Wine?

I have two other games installed, and the one, Uplink, needs some typing, so yes I can type. I think it could be the version of Wine I have, or else I need something to either speed up the sound, some, or something like that, or even an input problem. I'll look and see what I can find.

[Bomb Bloke]

On my own PC at the moment, I'm unable to type stuff into any DOS based program. It's somewhat annoying for someone who still likes to do half his programming through DOS based IDEs.

[Gimli]

Dosbox? Worked on for me on Fedora, so...

[Bomb Bloke]

As a Windows based program, yes, that's been my alternative since the problem started. It's annoying having to load it up every time when I used to be able to just execute things directly, however.

 

Also, I recently came across a DOS based program that needs to be executed under Windows... Figures.

[Sgt. Strike]

Gimli, how did you get X-Com to work in Fedora? I'm using Fedora 6, myself. I think it could be the laptop, or something. I would like to know how to do it, myself.

[Knan]

Um, as he said, use Dosbox on Fedora? What problems are you having?

[Gimli]

I typed up a long response to explain how to get Dosbox installed, only to realize what your problem was. The thing is, I already had it installed in Windows. And I assume you don't have Windows, right? Fear not, there may yet be a solution. If I am not mistaken, Apocalypse doesn't really use any of the Windows resources, the only thing it does during the installation is to copy the files in the destination folder. The only thing it might do is write the path to the CD-ROM drive in some file. However, if you choose full install, then it works without the CD, so there should be no problems.

So basically, you need to get it installed somewhere through Windows. If you have a Windows partition, then use Windows. If not, install it either on a USB stick with more than 200 MBs or an external HDD which has NTFS. From there I am not sure what to do, you can try to copy them somewhere on your ext3 Linux partition, and run from there, but I am not sure if it will work that way. Hopefully, the game will only use relative paths. If it does work, be sure to check the saves. If you save and exit the game, and then try to start the game, load the saves and they're not there, you're out of luck.

If that doesn't work, you can always start the game directly from the USB stick/external drive. I have no idea how to access the USB stick from either the Dosbox or linux for that matter. If you know how to get to it through linux, then use that path in Dosbox, hopefully it will work. For the external HDD there should be no problems, all you need to do is to mount it in Dosbox. The only question is whether you should use it's path in linux, or the one for Windows. So when mounting, it should be something like this: mount

 

where the is the drive letter of the partition where the game was installed. Of course, I am reffering to the Windows drive letter. If you are using and external disk or USB stick, be sure to remember the drive letter it had on the PC where you were installing it, and use that.

should be the one you use in linux to access the NTFS/FAT disk. For my HDD it was /dev/mnt/.

 

If you have more questions, I'll try and answer them, but this is all I can do for now.

 

While we're at it, do you know how to get Fedora to appear when booting Windows (I am using the Windows booter, not GRUB)? It's not really important, since I hardly use Fedora, but might need it in the future.

[Knan]

You mean booting linux via ntloader? That's an unnecessarily obscure hack... grub is easier.

 

But this might work:

https://www.astahost.com/info.php/using-ntl...inux_t1510.html

[Gimli]

Thanks, though I'll stay away from it unless I really need it. The problem with grub was that when I first installed Fedora it destroyed my Windows installation somehow (well, actually it's a problem with Windows, not Linux), so I was not able to make Windows boot through grub. And yes, I've tried just about everything.

[Sgt. Strike]

Ok, here's the setup. I'm on an HP Omnibook 6000, which runs an Intel processor, at about 700 mhz. i have about 128 meg of memory. This is a laptop, and I have 1 ps/2 port. I have a USB as well. The operating system is Fedora Core 6. I have Wine installed, and I can run UFO Defense and TFTD, but freezes, or seems to, when I go to type in the name, for a base, it seems to freeze. It sounds like all the sounds are playing when I do that. Could it be more sound related than game?

[Knan]

Could be. Try setting audio hardware acceleration to "emulation" in winecfg.

 

And if you're running it full-screen, try running it windowed ("Emulate a virtual desktop"). Or the other way around.

 

Wine gets better all the time, so try the newest one (0.9.40 at the moment).

[Bomb Bloke]

Could be that the keyboard just isn't working. Start a new game, and when asked to place your base, zoom right in. Then tap your space bar a few times; This should toggle the region names on and off.

[Sgt. Strike]

Ok, I think I know what the problem is. I think it's either a sound card problem, maybe software there, or it could be Wine. I'm working on downloading the newest Wine I can, so that I can update things on my laptop, as fast as possible. Did ever mention that I like jump drives? Ok, I did.

[Knan]

Wine from Git is your friend. Getting better all the time.

 

(And I kind of enjoy finding workarounds to obscure bugs that keep turning up when trying obscure games.)