Apocalypse under DosBox 0.73

[Turalyon]

Hello,

 

I installed DB 0.73 and Apoc. Installation went fine, Music runs.

 

After the intro, it crashes back to the DosBox prompt.

 

Does anyone know, what I'm doing wrong?

 

Regards

[Kret]

You need to mount a drive from the dosbox prompt that maps to the drive letter where you have the CD. And make sure you add the "-t cdrom" to the mount command.

[Turalyon]

You need to mount a drive from the dosbox prompt that maps to the drive letter where you have the CD. And make sure you add the "-t cdrom" to the mount command.

 

I did that.

 

I created an iso image of the cd and used the imgmount command to mount it as d:\ since I can't hear the videos because the cd is going at full speed the whole time.

 

This is the autoexec part:

 

mount c e:\xcoma\

mount e j:\

imgmount d e:\XcomApoc.iso -t iso

c:

[Bomb Bloke]

Eh? I don't see "-t cdrom" in your mount command...

 

Note also that you don't need to mount your J drive in DosBox to mount the image file it holds. Instead of having:

 

mount e j:\

imgmount d e:\XcomApoc.iso -t iso

You could just have:

 

imgmount d j:\XcomApoc.iso -t cdrom

If you're still not having any luck, does this crash give any error messages?

[Turalyon]

Ok, tried your approach and replaced the iso at the end with cdrom, didn't work either.

 

I don't get any error message or if there is one I can't see it because it's at the dos prompt so fast.

[Kret]

I'll look into it a bit more. You could try an alternative method:

 

In windows, install a virtual drive application. There's plenty of free ones, but if you have some burning software that came bundled with the computer or more likely the disc burner you might already have one. In any case, mount the image with that software.

In DosBox use the regular mount command to reference the letter of the virtual drive adding the "-t cdrom"

 

EDIT:

 

From the 0.73 Readme

Q: The game/application can't find its CD-ROM.

A: Be sure to mount the CD-ROM with -t cdrom switch, this will enable the

MSCDEX interface required by DOS games to interface with CD-ROMs.

Also try adding the correct label (-label LABEL) to the mount command,

where LABEL is the CD-label (volume ID) of the CD-ROM.

Under Windows you can specify -ioctl, -aspi or -noioctl. Look at the

description of the mount command in Section 4 for their meaning and the

additional audio-CD related options -ioctl_dx, ioctl_mci, ioctl_dio.

 

Try creating a CD-ROM image (preferably CUE/BIN pair) and use the

DOSBox-internal IMGMOUNT tool to mount the image (the CUE sheet).

This enables very good low-level CD-ROM support on any operating system.

Note that I don't use any other additional switches for mounting the image except the "-t cdrom" and it works for me.

 

EDIT 2:

After testing the imgmount command it works with the -t iso parameters so that's not the reason it's not working. When you installed the game, did you install it from the DoxBox command line or from the windows installer? BTW, what's the "mount e j:\" command's purpose?

[Turalyon]

I installed it from the DosBox command line.

 

I tried installing it in Windows first (I use Win XP SP3) but that caused a crash of my ati2dvag.dll (I had to shut my computer off completely for a minute because it wouldn't start again after pressing reset)

 

Before I tried DosBox, I tried Virtual PC. I have a virtual Windows 98 OS, installation worked fine, intro is running too, although the sound is a bit choppy. After the intro I see the main menu background but the options are missing (New Game, Load Game and Exit). Only when I press Escape do I see the options for a second or so before the game ends, because Escape implies Exit :-(

 

 

And as for the mount e j:\ command. j: is the lcoation of my created XcomApoc.iso while the game itself is located on the e: partition. I throught I have to mount the second partition to access the iso file with the imgmoung command.

 

Regards

[Kret]

Well, as Bomb Bloke said, that's unecessary and in fact won't work at all as the path for both mounts refers to the real drive's pathing. If you mounted it like this before, I have no idea how it could actually install the game at all as the imgmount command should of given an error unless you have a copy of the iso file in your local e drive.

 

I recommend you start from scratch. Delete the game folder completely and mount as follows

mount c e:\ -freesize 800
imgmount d j:\XcomApoc.iso -t iso

Proceed to install the game from the mounted d drive. You should be able to install without having to change any install settings except for the soundcard ones.

[Turalyon]

Dn't get me wrong. I installed the game from the CD. After the installation I changed the path to the image

 

Ok, I started anew. Deleted the folder, started DosBox. Mounted the image as you wrote.

 

Sound ok, setup finished successfully. Still no luck, game crashes back to the prompt after the intro.

[Kret]

Ok, and do you recall how you mounted the CD during the installation? The drive letter is very important. I had it installed mounted on d, if for whatever reason I mount to another letter, even if the path is the same, the game won't start, it will only work mounted on d.

 

If you write the following command

type xcom3.cfg

from the doxbox command promt, what does it say? (Note that the command must be types at the level where you would type xcomapoc to start the game.

[Turalyon]

It gives me some sort of weird symbold (looks like a club from a playing card) followed by D:\

 

Nothing else

[Kret]

Then I'm out of ideas, try reinstalling with the instructions I gave you before.

[Turalyon]

Have you made it run under DB 0.73? If yes, could you send me your dosbox.conf file?

 

Edit: Last try, the message "SHELL: Redirect output to nul" appeared in the dosbox status window. Does that mean anything?

[Kret]

The autoexec section only contais the mount for the DosBox C drive which is just a folder that contains the installed dos games. I mount or imgmount the rest manually as I need.

 

The redirect to nul is normal for those applications that want to "hide" output messages. You can actually make it happen manually by typing practically any command from the dosbox and append the following "> nul", for example "dir > nul"

[Turalyon]

Ok, little update. I downloaded a x3cdfix folder from another site and unzipped it into the apoc folder.

 

Then I used the xcom3.bat file. It skipped the intor and I can play.

 

Sadly, as long as I use sound, the game crashes everytime I click on something but where is the fun in a game with no sound :-(

 

Sound settings are:

 

Port: 200 IRQ: 7 DMA: 5 - I can't use another DMA setting, once I click on something else, dosbox crashes.

 

Oh, and it won't let me use the image, it always says at the main menu that I should put the CD back into the drive...

[Kret]

What sound card are you choosing? By default I believe that DosBox uses a Sound Blaster 16 emulation with port 220 (did you type wrong in your post?) IRQ 7 DMA 1 and HDMA 5. The soundcard settings are found in the DosBox configuration file, just search for the string [sblaster]

[Turalyon]

My soundcard is an onboard Realtek

 

Ups, made a typo, I meant Port: 220 ^^

 

And in the game, I use the card that is offered to me, SB16, Port:220, IRQ:7, DMA:5. It works when testing it and any other setting in the setup will cause a crash of the setup program. Or more likely, it crashes because it can't verify the settings.