| Author |
Message |
The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
|
 Posted: Oct 07, 2006 00:33 Post subject: Running Dark Forces on XP |
    |
|
http://megazzt.googlepages.com/runningdarkforcesonxp
Here is my article to end all articles, which I promised in another thread.
Feel free to leave stuff here you think I should incorporate, please don't try to make it 2x as long or anything though. >.>
_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig. |
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Oct 07, 2006 03:22 Post subject: |
|
|
Short and easy to understand article. Nice work 
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Oct 07, 2006 04:44 Post subject: |
|
|
Did some minor editing to the introduction and added a bonus part on making your own CD crack (helps make playing the game easier, whether or not you use one of my guided solutions).
_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig. |
|
Jackson
Dark Trooper Phase 2
Joined: 24 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Oct 08, 2006 21:23 Post subject: |
|
|
Awesome, awesome work, Mega -- thank you!
You can now consider this fella stickified.
|
|
Fenwar
Admiral Ackbar
Joined: 15 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Oct 09, 2006 08:22 Post subject: |
|
|
Nice work, thanks for posting it
One suggestion - might be helpful to make the list of three approaches at the top into links to the relevant sections of the document.
My personal feeling is that most people would want to start with the simplest solution (VDMSound) and see if that suits them, rather than going the whole hog with emulators.
Then again my own solution to the problem is to keep my old Win98 box handy (it has a Cyrix processor, remember them?!) which has always run DF perfectly for me.
|
|
The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Oct 09, 2006 15:04 Post subject: |
|
|
Fenwar wrote:
Nice work, thanks for posting it
One suggestion - might be helpful to make the list of three approaches at the top into links to the relevant sections of the document.
My personal feeling is that most people would want to start with the simplest solution (VDMSound) and see if that suits them, rather than going the whole hog with emulators.
Then again my own solution to the problem is to keep my old Win98 box handy (it has a Cyrix processor, remember them?!) which has always run DF perfectly for me.
Anchors can't be done with the Google Pages UI, I tried. :X
Although you CAN directly edit the HTML so I'll do that, heh I forgot about that.
[Edit: Done. Although I'm going to leave the sections the way they are... I do mention they're ordered from hardest to easiest... also VMDSound, imo, does not give satisfactory results :X.]
[Edit: I just had to re-setup a Virtual Machine for Dark Forces, so I plan to add more detail to my guide... too much technical stuff that I skipped without knowing it.]
[Edit: Burning Gundam will like my changes. I added instructions for working around a bug in a MS-DOS installation CD ISO, as well as instructions for installing Virtual Machine Additions in DOS under Virtual PC. Updated other misc instructions (sound card drivers are not needed under DOS for Dark Forces). Updated warning for Virtual PC 2004 under Vista (it's much more unstable on RC2 than RC1) including link to Virtual PC 2007 beta when it becomes available in two days. Added Pros and Cons to the top of the article to clearly outline what the result of each solution will be like.]
_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig. |
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
|
Fenwar
Admiral Ackbar
Joined: 15 Sep 2003
|
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jul 15, 2008 20:16 Post subject: |
|
|
Thought I'd like to add in case anyone hasn't noticed or done this already, but you can also download this
Essentially it replaces the DOS4GW executable and apparently is supposed to help run applications that use it more faster and efficiently in DOSBox.
I tried it myself and while I don't notice a sizable difference, I could just have a setting wrong or something. Others might be able to benefit from it better.
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
Master Gremlin
Dianoga
Joined: 12 Jul 2009
|
| Posted: Jul 12, 2009 14:09 Post subject: Hello |
|
|
I have a problem concerning Dark Forces installing on XP:
1. Ok, I installed MSDosBox, mounted the in-cause drive, and then what? Ok, perhaps because I don't know how to use the damn emulator, and the tutorials are quite evasive on this specific subject.
I have, of course, done all the other steps, but how do I get the game on? Through the MSDos console or from the containing folder itself after mounting? It is obvious that I'm a noob, but I've tried to learn how to do it, and from what I understood, and did the steps - it's not working. All the other steps, as I said, are working, but I always hit on the same wall --> how do I get the game on?
Good, the MSDos console was useful for mounting. Ok, if I get the game on through it, how? What do I have to type in it to start the game?
Or, I've tried to simply play the game from the folder itself, by ...double clicking on the game icon. Ok, it starts (as I said, after mounting the drive), and it shows me the "loading level" display, and then nothing, blank. Or, sometimes, the main menu, but it's frozen, I can't do anything. With or without msdos, it did the same thing.
Clearely, I don't know how to further use MSDosBox in order to get the game started and work properly. I read this http://megazzt.googlepages.com/runningdarkforcesonxp , but it didn't really help. Why? Because it didn't tell me how to do the last steps in order to get the game on. Or perhaps I didn't get it. I'll tend to the last thought 
2. This small game is eating all my CPU when I'm trying to make it work.
Please help a poor noob 
_________________
 |
|
japh
Gamorrean
Joined: 30 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jul 12, 2009 16:50 Post subject: |
|
|
Well, I just ran it under dosbox. I remembered it to run much worse, but that was before I got a newer and slightly faster AMD box.
The trick was:
1. Copy all files from the CDROM (don't bother installing)
2. In ~/.dosboxrc (or the dosbox command line):
mount f /dosbox/dark/dark
mount g /dosbox/dark/ -t cdrom
That's right, mount two different drives, one of them as a CDROM pointed to the base, and the other as the play area.
3. chmod u+w -R /dosbox/dark/dark (that makes local.msg and a few other things writeable)
4. Fire up dosbox, go to f:, and type dark.
5. Skip the cutscenes, load secbase, and start playing! I had to use the numpad because my cursor keys didn't do anything. I couldn't be arsed to figure out why.
|
|
Master Gremlin
Dianoga
Joined: 12 Jul 2009
|
| Posted: Jul 13, 2009 06:49 Post subject: |
|
|
That's it I hope. I didin't have the cd  I'll burn the game on a cd, and I'll try.
I played this game in 1996/1997 on a 686 computer  and now I wanted to play it again. Last year I tried to play it first, but I gave up quickly 
How about the CPU going crazy while starting/playing the game? Is it normal?  I have a more than decent dualcore and this is an ancient game. Lol...
_________________
|
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jul 13, 2009 08:20 Post subject: |
|
|
Dark Forces running through DOSBox is ironically extremely resource draining. I have a 2.66 Dual Core system and the game still doesn't run 100% as well as I remember. It's a small price to pay with a little video lag at times, but well worth the nostalgia.
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jul 13, 2009 15:05 Post subject: Re: Hello |
|
|
Master Gremlin wrote:
I have a problem concerning Dark Forces installing on XP:
1. Ok, I installed MSDosBox, mounted the in-cause drive, and then what? Ok, perhaps because I don't know how to use the damn emulator, and the tutorials are quite evasive on this specific subject.
I have, of course, done all the other steps, but how do I get the game on? Through the MSDos console or from the containing folder itself after mounting? It is obvious that I'm a noob, but I've tried to learn how to do it, and from what I understood, and did the steps - it's not working. All the other steps, as I said, are working, but I always hit on the same wall --> how do I get the game on?
Good, the MSDos console was useful for mounting. Ok, if I get the game on through it, how? What do I have to type in it to start the game?
Or, I've tried to simply play the game from the folder itself, by ...double clicking on the game icon. Ok, it starts (as I said, after mounting the drive), and it shows me the "loading level" display, and then nothing, blank. Or, sometimes, the main menu, but it's frozen, I can't do anything. With or without msdos, it did the same thing.
Clearely, I don't know how to further use MSDosBox in order to get the game started and work properly. I read this http://megazzt.googlepages.com/runningdarkforcesonxp , but it didn't really help. Why? Because it didn't tell me how to do the last steps in order to get the game on. Or perhaps I didn't get it. I'll tend to the last thought
2. This small game is eating all my CPU when I'm trying to make it work.
Please help a poor noob
First of all, it's not "MSDosBox", it's DOSBox and it is unaffiliated with Microsoft. Mounting a drive will cause it to be accessible within DOSBox, so you can use it. If you know how to use the old MS-DOS command prompt (or the modern Windows Command Prompt), DOSBox is easy enough to use. If not, you're probably better off trying one of the DOSBox frontends available on the DOSBox site which take that aspect out of it.
I did mention part of this in the article:
Quote:
You can then use standard DOS commands to browse the mounted drive and run programs on it. Note that instruction in such things is beyond the scope of this article... if you need to do some brushing up, a standard MS-DOS introduction tutorial should be fine for learning basic commands to use in DOSBox as well.
I really didn't want to put an entire tutorial on MS-DOS in my article.
You DO need to run the game through DOSBox. If you just run it though Windows, Windows will try to run it, and if Windows could run DOS games ok we wouldn't NEED DOSBox in the first place! If it had been that easy I would have said so in the article, but I did indicate you need to use DOSBox.
I will give you a basic primer in how to use DOSBox commands to run programs because I am feeling nice.
First of all, remember that the DOSBox drive letters are different from the drive letters in Windows. Think of it as two different computers, one running inside DOSBox and your real computer. DOSBox gives the emulated computer fake drive letters that you can assign to REAL drives and folders on your computer (that's what the "mount" command does).
Now, once you mount a drive, you can change to it by typing the letter followed by a colon:
c:
To change directories (analogous to clicking folders in Explorer to move between them) you use the CD (it stands for Change Directory) command followed by the directory name.
For example, if I am at C:\ (called the drive's root) and I want to move to C:\DARK, I can type:
cd C:\DARK
Or I can shorten it to the "relative" name, that is:
cd DARK
since I'm already in "C:\" it knows to look for "DARK" right inside C:\ and then to move there.
If I'm in C:\DARK and I want to move to C:\ I can use the special ".." directory name to move one level up:
cd ..
So then I will be in C:\
To run programs, I just type the file name. If I want to run DARK.EXE, I would first CD to the folder it's in and type:
DARK.EXE
or you can shorten it to just:
DARK
Burning Gundam wrote:
Dark Forces running through DOSBox is ironically extremely resource draining. I have a 2.66 Dual Core system and the game still doesn't run 100% as well as I remember. It's a small price to pay with a little video lag at times, but well worth the nostalgia.
DOSBox is emulation, which is going to be slower than virtualization, which takes advantage of the fact that the emulated hardware is running on the same physical hardware. For that, you'd need virtual machine software (I recommend VirtualBox) and a copy of MS-DOS. Dark Forces WILL run faster than in DOSBox easily but it is much more difficult to set up.
Of course you may not need to be so drastic. The default DOSBox settings are quite slow for Dark Forces, as it won't automatically use all your CPU power. You can change them in dosbox.conf (Try "auto" for the cpu type and cycles; if you have games that don't like those values use "dynamic" and "max" respectively.
_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig. |
|
The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Sep 06, 2009 21:15 Post subject: |
|
|
I've updated the article to adjust for some inaccuracies I've noticed as well as to integrate my above post.
_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig. |
|
coe
Dianoga
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
|
| Posted: Jul 14, 2010 21:45 Post subject: |
|
|
Hello! I'm just having a little problem trying to run DF on the DOSBox. Everything is fine until I try to actually run the game, at which point I get a little pop-up entitled "16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem." The box says:
Command Prompt - dark
This system does not support fullscreen mode. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application.
If I try to "ignore" the message, it just dings at me and pops up again. Is there a simple way to solve this?
|
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jul 15, 2010 00:27 Post subject: |
|
|
Are you sure you're running that through DOSBox? It seems to me like you're running the game directly from command prompt, since I run it fullscreen at all times and have never seen that message pop up.
Remember, unless you have a frontend program that can run DOS applications directly from the application, you have to open the program through DOSBox the old-fashioned way.
Open DosBox and mount the drive where your DF folder is located (most likely C Drive)
I think it goes something like this:
mount c c:\
c:
cd c:\dark
type in -dark and it should open without issue. It will default to windowed mode but if you press alt-return it will send it to fullscreen. To get exactly what you want you'll have to tweak the settings in the config file.
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
coe
Dianoga
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
|
|
sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan
Joined: 01 Apr 2008
|
| Posted: Jul 23, 2010 15:07 Post subject: |
|
|
You can either mount the CD on drive D: (not recommended) or follow this short tutorial on the DF-21 Articles page on how to run it without a cd. It should be about halfway down the page, the title isn't bolded or anything, so just look for it.
|
|
coe
Dianoga
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
|
| Posted: Jul 23, 2010 21:35 Post subject: |
|
|
sheepandshepherd wrote:
You can either mount the CD on drive D: (not recommended) or follow this short tutorial on the DF-21 Articles page on how to run it without a cd. It should be about halfway down the page, the title isn't bolded or anything, so just look for it.
So it says, "Create a file in the root directory of your hard drive" for the CD.ID file; I don't really know how to do that.
It all seemed so much simpler ten years ago...
|
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jul 23, 2010 23:52 Post subject: |
|
|
you could just drop the CD.ID file from the disc to the main directory of C drive and leave it there. It hasn't caused problems for me at all.
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
coe
Dianoga
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
|
|
sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan
Joined: 01 Apr 2008
|
| Posted: Jul 25, 2010 18:22 Post subject: |
|
|
Wow, I've never seen that error before. Did you do a full install? It seems to be missing some random file.
EDIT: By the way, I'd ignore what it says about using a boot disk. There's likely a more complete solution; I've never heard of anyone actually making a boot disk for DF in this day and age. I'll take a quick look into my DF folders and see if I have that file anywhere. Maybe then I'll know what's going on.
EDIT2: Yep, Helnum.fnt is in DARK.GOB, one of the main GOB archives for DF. Check to see if it's in your DARK folder, along with dark.exe. If not, either copy it (and all the rest of the GOB files) from the CD, or reinstall the game using the "Full Install" option.
If it IS already in your DARK folder, then I'm lost on how to deal with it . . .
|
|
coe
Dianoga
Joined: 13 Jul 2010
|
| Posted: Jul 25, 2010 22:03 Post subject: Success!!! |
|
|
sheepandshepherd wrote:
Wow, I've never seen that error before. Did you do a full install? It seems to be missing some random file.
EDIT: By the way, I'd ignore what it says about using a boot disk. There's likely a more complete solution; I've never heard of anyone actually making a boot disk for DF in this day and age. I'll take a quick look into my DF folders and see if I have that file anywhere. Maybe then I'll know what's going on.
EDIT2: Yep, Helnum.fnt is in DARK.GOB, one of the main GOB archives for DF. Check to see if it's in your DARK folder, along with dark.exe. If not, either copy it (and all the rest of the GOB files) from the CD, or reinstall the game using the "Full Install" option.
If it IS already in your DARK folder, then I'm lost on how to deal with it . . .
There were three GOB files missing, so I added those (which wouldn't have occurred to me, as I thought that I had done the full install; actually, I think I just chose the one that wasn't custom install. Well, whatever). Then there was no sound, so I installed VDMSound per the instructions on the page that sheepandshepherd linked to, fiddled with the settings, and it all works! Yessssssssss
Thanks for all the help! There's no way I would've gotten that running on my own...
|
|
The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jul 31, 2010 14:58 Post subject: |
|
|
Yeah if you do a no-cd crack without doing a full install it's not going to work quite right lol. 
_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig. |
|
|
