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[XPort]

QUOTE(harlekin @ Jan 22 2007, 10:29 AM)

I fooled arround with the mouse sensitivity as well as the joystick sensitivity, the memory settings and the config file for about an hour now, but so far had no luck getting the mouse emulation not to crash the game.
I figured that if you move the thumbstick really slow, and stop as soon as the sound starts to stutter it will prevent the game from crashing (for a while, this is in no way a permanent solution), so that you could at least watch the intro, or start the game to see that the performance of the emulation actually is pretty decent. (Sorry, I had to.. )

Btw: If you change the emulated sound card in the game settings (X on the *.exe) you slightly alter the soundquality of the speech track. I found that using SB1, although it adds some noise, is actually the one I prefer, as it covers some of the inevitable crakles. Be sure to fiddle with that too, if you got the game running.

Have you tried setting Joystick 1 and 2 to USB Only?

[typingsux]

QUOTE(robot2 @ Nov 20 2006, 09:27 PM)

[color="#009900"][/color]

forgive me if I made this more confusing then it should have been"

Not at all. If I decide to try installing it on my XBOX I'll just work through it myself.

And while I'm posting thanks Xport.

[harlekin]

QUOTE(XPort @ Jan 22 2007, 07:49 PM)

Have you tried setting Joystick 1 and 2 to USB Only?

Yes, this actually was the first thing I tried.

I can even reproduce the crash at the DOS Screen (before (or as soon as?) the game boots), when loading GK's *.exe. If I do so, it quits to the launch menue, if I crash in game I get a cryptic error message before I see the menue again. Here's a screencapture:

[robot2]

typingsux and to others

I have not yet tried the 7th guest with dosbox ver 9. Since it lets you now use the iso support (which works great) it might make my previous post/guide for running the 7th guest useless. Will try it out tomorrow and post results here

[harlekin]

Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within

I wouldn't have hoped to dream about it, but the GK2 also works on Dosxbox V9, almost full speed (even the videos) and only with a few slight sound stutters once and a while. That said, I havent tested if and how changing CD's works and won't be able to for some time.

Also the game has the exact same problem as it's predecessor: Once you use the thumbstick for mouse emulation, the game crashes, so you won't be able to play it without a USB-adapter and a mouse.

Installation:

- Put the first CD in and start install.exe (make sure it is the GK2 install exe and not one of your previous games (by deleting the savegame for INSTALL.EXE from the dosxbox savegame folder (f.e. by using the emulators utilities option, or simly via ftp or an explorer app)))
- If it doesn't start, be sure to navigate to the DVD drive in dosxbox (by typing D: in the DOS console) and start it from there (by typing install)
- Install the game (I used the installation that took up the most space) with default settings
- Type in GK2DOS to run GK2DOS.bat
- The game should start
- Exit to the menu and search for the newly created GK2DOS.bat (you should find it in the dosxbox folder under "dosfiles") and add it to you favourites (optionaly ).
- Try to start it once more (Cycles 4000 (haven't tried any other settings yet), 16MB RAM)
- If it starts, congrats! If it gives you an error message about not being able to locate the sierra folder, exit dosxbox and move the GK2DOS.bat file from */SIERRA/GK2DOS.bat to */GK2DOS.bat ((*=what ever place the Sierra folder is located on your HDD) you might as well copy it, as the *.bat isn't that big ). Once you're done with that, launch dosxbox again and navigate to utilities/savegame manager. Delete the existing save for GK2DOS.bat. Launch the *.bat from its new location (you might add it to your favourites) and keep your fingers crossed.

Visual Performance-Tweaks:
Using bilinear filtering (click on the right thumbstick while the game is running and navigate to video options) makes the movies look a whole lot better, so you should use it. That said, once I switched from point to biliniar and exited the game, the next time I started the *.bat file, the emu crashed while launching the game. If this happens to you too, start the *.bat, hit the right thumbstick while the DOS console is on screen and switch back to Point Filtering. Once the game loads (and you see the Sierra logo) switch back to bilinear. Repeat on every launch.

hf
harlekin

edit:
I uploaded a few screencaptures just for the sake of it..
Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within on DosXbox V9

[Smothermunchie]

Wow again harlekin!

If you're absolutely sure that there is not away around to playing these two games using the Xbox controller, I'll probably end up going to Gamestop and buying the USB keyboard and mouse.

Hopefully they'll also have a copy of Gabriel Knight 2 for sale as well even though it's not listed on their website.

Cheers.  )

[robot2]

DOSBOX VERSION 9:
 the 7th guest USING the image/iso format for both discs

1. copy both isos for disc 1 and 2 to your xbox hdd
2.  open dosbox and load DISC 2 (using the image file option). Disc 2 is the installation disc and once done you will not need it again
     pretty much everything is kept as default, but if you want to play it safe change these
      core- simple
      memory 16mb
NOTE: should you get the "cannot find sound driver error" just reinstall it once again.

dosbox will bring you to a general dos screen with the z: type in D: and this will switch it to the d:
Next type in "install" (it will look like this "d:\install")

it will do the general install. If it ask, select the c drive. It will then try to test sound. I stuck with selecting soundblaster pro 2. You may not actually hear any sound but blips instead. This is ok

once installed it will make a directory in dosbox called ID\t7g

and it  will go to a screen saying to type in the "t7g" and hit enter. DO NOT hit enter, exit the game at this point


PART 2
now load up disc1 (using the dosbox image option) and configure dosbox with the following settings:
1. C drive - D:\dosfiles\ID\t7g
2. mount cdrom - (have it point to disc 1 of the 7th guest)
3. core- simple
4 memory 16mb
5. cycles - 5820 (you can go a little higher if you choose, but going too high made it stutter/skip as did going too low)
6. frameskip- 0
7. sblaster type - sbpro2

once loaded it will bring you to the familar z: dos screen. At z: type in "c:". This will now make the directory c:\ . At c: type in t7g and hit enter (c:\t7g).

Have fun playing your game

[robot2]

The board would not let me edit my previous post.
SO:

Found out something interesting. If for whatever reason you want to play the windows version of the 7th guest. Install the game using the dos version like I mentioned in the previous post.

open dosbox and browse to D:\dosfiles\ID\t7g. Inside this directory highlight the file t7g.bat. Put in your original 7th guest disc 1 WINDOWS cd. Now while t7g.bat is highlighted, hit X for configure. Change the mount cd to "real cd".  The 7th guest game will load up directly off the windows disc. Enjoy--

be sure to keep the same settings as you would the dos version in the configure options, obviously with the load real cd choice being changed

[harlekin]

Just followed your instruction to install "7th Guest" and noticed, that the "cannot find sound driver error" occurs because the *.ini path does lead to c:/id/t7g instead of c:/ (thats directory the installed files get mounted to upon setting up the iso (X menu)).

So follow robot2's instruction, but before you finally start the game, change the ProgDirection in the Groovie.ini file (found in the same dir as t7g.bat ) from c:/id/t7g/ to c:/ (allthough you installed the game to c:/id/t7g the dir gets mounted as c:/ in dosxbox). After that the game will run fine (a little slow though, even at 5820 cycles, with a lot of tearing).

I've one question to add, because I can't remeber if it's meant to be that way, but once I start a new game, the whole intro (the house, the logo, the credits, ...) is without sound, up until the book opens and the first videos are shown. Is this "normal", or is there a problem with my sound settings, or my ISO?

[robot2]

harlekin

  I still do not have to change the groovie.ini at all. I just had disc 2 reinstall over the previous and it worked like a charm (because doing a second reinstall, the game sees the sounblaster pro 2 driver after that). I still have the c drivee pointing to the directroy of d:\dosfiles\id\t7g, and the cdrom option pointing to my disc 1 image. Works fine, but if changing the directory to a flat C works for you then so be it.

At anyrate my disc as well had no music during the credits or intro. If it helps, the windows (and dos) version I was able to get working on this had the same issue. Perhaps it is something with dosbox? I know the windows version had a full cd audio soundtrack, I cannot verify that about the dos edition

[harlekin]

Thanks for the confirmation on the missing Intro sound.

As for the "vanished" sound drivers, there is a path in the *.ini file that is wrong for the settings you described, simply because you are mounting \dosfiles\ID\t7g\ as C drive, so there is no ID and no t7g folder, but only the content from the t7g folder available (in C:\ ). When you run install.exe (for the first time) it creates the ID and the t7g folder on C:\ (or rather in the dosfiles folder) and writes an *.ini entry, that tells the game, that the installed files are in this folder ( C:\ID\t7g\ ). Later on, because you mount \dosfiles\ID\t7g\ instead of \dosfiles\ as C:\, this path isn't correct anymore, and the game tells you, that it can't find the sound drivers (/the installed files).

I guess if you then run install.exe (from C:\ (= dosfiles\ID\t7g\, were it gets installed during the first install) and NOT from the 2nd cd image) it corrects the path, and sets it to the location it has been executed (C:\ ).
So I guess you could choose to edit the *.ini file manually, or let install.exe do it for you.

Either way, editing the *.ini file worked fine for me, so if you're experiencing problems with robot2's method, you might wan't to give my workarround a try.

[harlekin]

As you might have noticed, Xport released v10 of Doxbox, which now has Multi-CD(Iso) support as well as a fix for the joystick/crash problem in Gabriel Knight.

I start out with confirming, that the joystick movement indeed doesn't seem to crash Gabriel Knight anymore (haven't tested it with GK2 yet), so thank you very much for that, I am sure a lot of people will appreciate this, but unfortionatly I'm not one of them... And that's why: In Dosxbox v10 all of a sudden the movement of my USB-Mouse got jaggy up until the point, where games are not playable anymore. This does not affect Gabriel Knight only, but all the Games I tested. Increasing the sensitivity (from 25 to 100(max)) improves the performance but only slightly.

So please, PLEASE, make the "Gabriel Knight-Fix" optional as for now thats why I have to stick with v9.

I appreciate all the work you've put into this and the incredible fast response to our problems and am looking forward to see more of your exeptional releases.
-

I also have two more questions regarding the rename option:
If the file is f.e. an *.exe, the new filename must have an .exe at the and too, am I right? (If it's a *.bat, .bat... The short time I was on v10 couldn't get it to work and just realised after  had removed v10 from my HDD that that might have been the problem. (Or it might have been that I tried to use ":" in the filename, as i deleted NAME.dos, i realized it doesn't show up in the filename.))

Where ist the path to the new file located at, so you could change the name manually, without having to delete your savefile?

[XPort]

Post problems here.

[Retroplay]

Lollypop - Works fine (use DOSXbox v10 or later)
Pinball Dreams II - Works fine
Turrican II - Works fine (use DOSXbox v9 or later)
Tyrian - Works fine (slowdowns can occur, but nothing serious)
Tyrian 2000 - Works fine (slowdowns can occur, but nothing serious)

You need to make a new turri2.bat file for Turrican II and add following lines in it.

CODE

@echo off
set t2dir=C:\
t2.exe

Copy all files from CFG dir to main dir.
In T2 setup use Soundblaster PRO, SB16 doesn't work.
Launch game with new turri2.bat and voila it works.
Btw the version I'm referring to is the one found at the Underdogs.

[Retroplay]

Crazy Cars III - Works fine (v11)
Lost Vikings II (CD) - Works fine, there can occur some hiccups but it's playable, set 16mb of RAM and set CPU cycles to 5000-7000 (both work, but I prefer 7000). (v11)