Isis II in Dosbox

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ckGeoff
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Isis II in Dosbox

Post by ckGeoff »

Hey,

Has anyone managed to get any of the Isis II demos working under Dosbox? I get all sorts of errors and have never worked out how to do it.

Geoff
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DaVince
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Post by DaVince »

Back when I tried it it worked fine for me. I don't think I actually have the demos anymore, though.
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K1n9_Duk3
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

The Isis II demos worked fine for me when I ran them directly under windows (xp).

I just tried running one of the Isis demos in dosbox and the game crashed.
Then I fired up DOS 6.22 and then the dos-mode of win95 in Virtual PC and tried to run Isis II from there and in both dos-modes I got an error that there was no DPMI interface. But the game ran well directly under windows 95 in VPC.

So I recommend you to try it directly from windows rather than trying to get it to run in dosbox.
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ckGeoff
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Post by ckGeoff »

Thanks - it worked perfectly just under Windows XP cmd.exe.

Who would have thought! Actually, it doesn't work perfect. There is no music - can't remember if the music files were included in the demos though. Sound effects are there but don't play very well.

I've rediscovered all the old Isis files, so having a play with the old demos.

Geoff
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Post by DHeadshot »

ckGeoff wrote:Actually, it doesn't work perfect. There is no music - can't remember if the music files were included in the demos though. Sound effects are there but don't play very well.
That's because DOSBox emulates the hardware required to play the IMF music files, whereas ntvdm (what runs ODS under XP) only emulates the DOS environment - it uses your computer hardware, so if you don't have an Adlib or Soundblaster soundcard (or a compatable soundcard) the music will have nothing to run on...
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K1n9_Duk3
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Post by K1n9_Duk3 »

ckGeoff wrote:There is no music - can't remember if the music files were included in the demos though. Sound effects are there but don't play very well.
Yes, there used to be music in the demos. But the only time I heard it was when I ran it under Virtual PC. Virtual PC emulates a SoundBlaster 16 soundcard and therefore is able to play Adlib music.

Oh, and Virtual PC is freeware, so you might as well give it a try yourself, if you want to hear the music.
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ckGeoff
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Post by ckGeoff »

Thanks for the tips. I don't really need to get it working since I have all the raw files for Isis - music included.
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Post by GoldenRishi »

Oh, Issis II... The memories.

Yeah, I'd like it if we could figure a way to get Issis II running with music. That would be a nice little blast from the past.
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Post by ckGeoff »

What wouuld be even better would be to find a good, platform-independent engine that the code could be ported to, program in the AI for the remaining enemies, add the cut-scenes, and have a proper full length game that could run under Windows/Linux/Mac/iPhone/Android etc....

I've recently been looking through all the files we had for Isis, I had forgotton how much was actually done, even if not implemented in the engine!

Such a shame...
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Post by tulip »

IIRC it was written in C
so I'd recommend the CommanderGenius engine, that's the keen engine running on most platforms so far. If you got any skills at programming you're welcome to join the CommanderGenius team to add Isis II, it should make a nice bonus.
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Post by gerstrong »

Yeah, I can only agree. We also have some good aids to get the work done ;-)
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Post by ckGeoff »

Interesting idea.

I can program - not amazingly, but I can.

I don't have much time now, but it's possible if you get Galaxy series working in CG then we could tinker with adding Isis functionality - gameplay is obviously similar but there are a few big differences.

In the meantime I'll look into a few other options.
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Post by Shadow Master »

Back in the day I'd use VDMSound to run the Isis demos with sound and music on Windows' native DOS emulator. That was also the only way I managed to ever play Real Keen Player 3 (a fan game) to the end.

I just was able to run Isis demo 3 on Linux after making a few changes to the source code and compiling it -- including adding that packfile_password() call that's mentioned in the comments in Keen.c. :P No music for me though, since my software MIDI config doesn't seem to satisfy Allegro.
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