WC1 & 2 - Dosbox problems.

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Greetings! To start with, yes I've read the sticky thread on how to run WC in DOSbox, and followed all the steps there.

My problem with DOSbox is that, despite selecting Soundblaster, I get no sound at all in-game. Video-wise, the game runs beautifully, but is utterly silent.

So I tried running the game, alternately, under Virtual PC (I have Win98 as a virtual machine; my real OS is Win2kPro). Virtual PC has the problem that there is no slowdown (my CPU being a 2ghz Duron, the game is unplayably fast); I could run moslo for this, but I detest moslo as it usually gives a really sludgy feeling to gameplay rather than a smooth framerate. At least Virtual PC has the sound right.

So I attempted to run DOSbox *within* my Virtual PC Win98 machine. This resulted in the game playing at the correct speed, with beautiful video, *and with sound* - but the sound skips. Like a scratched LP or something. The sound is all there, but it sounds awful. Grrr. Also, I can't fullscreen it because apparently it hurts my PC's brain to run fullscreen DOSbox inside fullscreen Virtual PC.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to rustle up my old MS-DOS 6.0 install floppies and create a true DOS Virtual Machine. If that doesn't work, I'm all out of options. Any suggestions on how to stop the sound skipping would be greatly appreciated.

-Kasreyn
kasreyn@gmail.com

P.S. Virtual PC is excellent for getting WC:P to run! Of course, the glide wrapper won't work so I'm stuck with software rendering, but at least it plays (and with no video skipping). However, I just got to disc 3 and found my old Prophecy disc 3 is scratched. Does anyone know where a person who legitimately owns a copy can get an ISO? Failing that, where can one get a new copy of WC:P?
 
Why would you run dosbox in Virtual PC instead of XP?

I would try getting it running in dosbox in XP first I think. Make sure that you set the sound up right. Dosbox defaults to IRQ 7 unless you change it so make sure that you choose the right IRQ when installing the game. As far as stuttering, If that doesn't go away when you increase the cycles in dosbox then you could try adjusting the hardware acceleration settings in windows.

Do you get sound with other games in dosbox under XP?
 
Unregistered said:
Greetings! To start with, yes I've read the sticky thread on how to run WC in DOSbox, and followed all the steps there.

My problem with DOSbox is that, despite selecting Soundblaster, I get no sound at all in-game. Video-wise, the game runs beautifully, but is utterly silent.
Click to expand...

DOSBox is pretty solid when it comes to that kind of stuff. Is this happening in WC1 or WC2? What IRQ is your DOSBox set to and your WC installations configured to look for?

Unregistered said:
P.S. Virtual PC is excellent for getting WC:P to run! Of course, the glide wrapper won't work so I'm stuck with software rendering, but at least it plays (and with no video skipping).
Click to expand...

Video skipping should be easily fixed by adjusting sound acceleration or applying HCl's patch. It's certainly worthwhile to try those methods to take advantage of D3D or 3dfx modes.

Unregistered said:
I just got to disc 3 and found my old Prophecy disc 3 is scratched. Does anyone know where a person who legitimately owns a copy can get an ISO? Failing that, where can one get a new copy of WC:P?
Click to expand...

eBay.
 
AD said:
Why would you run dosbox in Virtual PC instead of XP?

I would try getting it running in dosbox in XP first I think. Make sure that you set the sound up right. Dosbox defaults to IRQ 7 unless you change it so make sure that you choose the right IRQ when installing the game. As far as stuttering, If that doesn't go away when you increase the cycles in dosbox then you could try adjusting the hardware acceleration settings in windows.

Do you get sound with other games in dosbox under XP?
Click to expand...

Well, I appreciate the advice, but you don't seem to have read my post very well. I'm running Win2k, not XP. And I did attempt to run DOSbox directly under my OS; sound did not play whatsoever (game was silent). Since Virtual PC has a virtual SB16 "sound card", it seems to trick WC into playing the music.

You and ChisReid both mention selecting the IRQ when configuring the game. Where is this option available? When I run WC1's install program (install.exe), it allows me to select a sound card type (No sound, PC speaker only, Adlib, SB, and Roland are my options). When I select one, it then asks for confirmation (y/n). When I press y, I'm returned to DOS with the message "type wc to play". The program never asks me to set IRQ. (Though I seem to have a vague recollection of being able to do so way back in the day). Note that of the options listed, I have tried them all, and only SB gets sound running (with skips), and that only under Virtual PC.

In which direction should I adjust Windows' hardware acceleration settings? Because the cycle change doesn't work. When I increase DOSbox's cycles, the game becomes unplayably fast by 12000 cycles, and the music continues to skip up to 18000 and beyond. (I typically run DOSBox at 3000-4000.)

As for WC1 or 2, let's just deal with WC1 for now. My problems with WC2 are almost exactly the same, with minor differences, so let's ignore WC2 for now and hope that a fix to my WC1 problem will fix WC2 as well. :)

Cheers,

-Kasreyn
kasreyn@gmail.com
 
Oh. And my DOSbox is configured to use IRQ 5 and DMA 1, as these are the ones my Virtual PC's fake SB16 uses. However, I've also tried it with IRQ 7 (default), and this gets me the same (skipping) sound.

-Kasreyn
kasreyn@gmail.com
 
Yeah, I missed the win2k part. What kind of sound card do you actually have? Is it some kind of built in one? Have you tried updating the drivers for it in win2k?
 
sound card is some cheapie C-Media thing on my motherboard. Driver dates to 2003. Could this really make a difference to a 16-year-old game?
 
OK! I've managed to get WC1 running perfectly (no sound skipping) in DOSbox under Win2k. The solution was to set DOSbox's sound IRQ setting equal to that of my C-Media sound card (IRQ 22).

However, when I attempt to run WC2's install program off my WC2 CD under DOSbox, it says the Wing Commander 2 game was not found and quits out. It also doesn't seem to have an option to select IRQ 22.

So, WC1 is running, but WC2 is not.

-Kasreyn
kasreyn@gmail.com
 
DosBox isn't very good at emulating CD's. Try running installation directly from Windows and then run the game itself in DosBox.
 
Mike-L said:
DosBox isn't very good at emulating CD's. Try running installation directly from Windows and then run the game itself in DosBox.
Click to expand...

What might be better is to copy the contents of the wing2 directory onto your hardrive and install the game in dosbox from there... though If the intaller works straight in win2k there's no reason not to do that... you just have to make sure you choose dosbox's IRqs and what not and not windows. If you go to the system panel in win2k control panel you might be able to make windows force the onboard sound to a different interupt... or you might be able to do this from the BIOS after a reboot.
 
> DOSbox's sound IRQ setting equal to that of my C-Media sound card (IRQ 22).

DOSBox doesn't care about the settings of your real sound card. 22 is an invalid setting here which causes it to default to irq 7.
There is also no difference for an application inside DOSBox if it's ran on 2000 or XP. It completely shields off the hardware and software of your host computer.
 
Unregistered said:
>DOSBox doesn't care about the settings of your real sound card. 22 is an invalid setting here which causes it to default to irq 7.
Click to expand...

Well, sound suddenly started working when I set it to 22, and it had been set to 7 previously when sound was not working at all. I don't understand why it works, though I'm happy it does. :)

P.S. Kurosawa 2. Grrr. I know this is the tech thread, but - is this mission beatable AT ALL??

-Kasreyn
kasreyn@gmail.com
 
Unregistered said:
> DOSbox's sound IRQ setting equal to that of my C-Media sound card (IRQ 22).

DOSBox doesn't care about the settings of your real sound card. 22 is an invalid setting here which causes it to default to irq 7.
Click to expand...

actually dosbox takes the setting for granted, but it doesn't raise any irqs at all. This can be good or bad. If the game doesn't care for the irqs then it is good.
If it uses the irq to put new sound effects on the soundcard then it bad.

It's not a situation that could happen on a real dos pc though, but emulation gives you this freedom ;)
 
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