UFO & DosBOX

[guderian]

So, I have the following:

 

windows xp

DOS version of X-com on cd

latest dosbox (v 60)

latest xcomutil (9.42)

 

and I can't get it to work. I am able to run x-com smoothly directly from the cd in dosbox (using ufocd.bat) - and yes, it's got that awesome 486 speed. I am also able to run x-com from the hard drive using xcomutil without dosbox, but the sound is distorted and the speed is of course hideously fast.

 

When I try to run it from the hard drive using dosbox, no luck. I don't think I'm making any of the obvious mistakes - I've got it mounted properly, cycles are set sky-high, etc. But I get a totally black screen. No sound. No text. No interface of any kind. Same results windowed or full screen. To paraphrase Bret Easton Ellis, X-com simply... is... not... there.

 

Does anyone have an idea of what I'm doing wrong?

[NKF]

I'm probably not going to be providing much useful commentary in this post, so skip to the next one if you must.

 

I'm just going to say that your situation is very peculiar indeed, and it's left me a bit baffled!

 

The 'cd' version of the game is identical in every way to the hard drive installation, except that most of the data files are on the cd and that there's only one new parameter passed to the batch file that runs the game (i.e. the letter of your cd drive). If you open up ufocd.bat in a text editor, you'll probably see it refer to another batch file with "d:" tacked onto the end (or whatever letter your cd-rom drive is). Oh, and there's an extra dummy file called cd.rom, or somesuch, but that's probably irrelevant. Anyway, if the CD version ran, why can't the harddrive installation? It should!

 

X-Comutil's runxcom.bat batch file duplicates the original one used to run UFO, but with a bit extra put in for it to do its magic whenever the game transitions between the geoscape and the battlescape. Try running X-Comutil (xcomutil.exe) in the dosbox and see if the screen that tells you the various parameters and switches shows up. If it does, then you can discount XComutil from being the problem.

 

One thing to consider: For your harddrive installation of the game, are the soundcard settings set up properly?

 

If you get the black screen again, try one of these two things:

 

Even though you cannot see anything, type 'cls' and hit enter. Or,

Type 'mode 80', hit enter, then type 'cls' if there's still nothing. This one only breaks you out of the 'big text' mode if you're unlucky enough to get stuck in the command prompt while still in the game's mode 13h resolution.

 

If this brings you back to the command prompt, then the game must have crashed while it was starting up - or while it was playing the intro. You could try running intro.exe and see if it crashes then and there.

 

If you're sure it's the intro that's causing the problem, to skip it completely, open the batch file used to run the game and look for the line with "intro.exe" in it. Go to the beginning of that line and insert the word "REM", and don't forget to put a space after it. This turns the entire line into a remark and is thus ignored. This enables you to skip the intro every time you run the game. You can undo this by removing REM afterwards.

 

To tell the truth, since I know nothing about dosbox, I'm making an attempt at striking something while being blindfolded. I'm just relating some of the things that helped me when I had a slightly similar problem while trying to run the dos version of the game in pure dos mode many years ago.

 

- NKF

[guderian]

Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much.

 

The intro and xcomutil were fine, and the problem was in fact with sound settings, though not mine or xcom's - I had to change the irq address in dosbox to 1 or 2 for the game to run. The sound's still very jumpy and distorted, but it avoids the black screen on startup, so yay! Curiously enough, the irq setting that works with xcom is different from the one that works with all of my other games in dosbox (irq 7) ... I wonder why xcom's sound setup doesn't let you specify an irq address as well as the base port & dma channel?

 

Anyways, I can play my favorite game again, and I'm sure a little more fiddling will improve the sound quality. Again, thank you.

[BladeFireLight]

If the setup does not alow for you to select the IRQ you are uning the 1.0 version of the game.. install the 1.4 and the sound will work better.. however the sounds are diferent.. so you may not like it..

 

-Blade FireLight

[guderian]

Good call, 1.4 removes the distortion. The updated alien death sound is particularly egregious, but I guess I can live with hearing sectoids grunt instead of squeal, as long as it's a nice clear grunt.