Help Request: Savage Empire In DOSBox
Actually, more specifically, this person is looking for help getting the game’s sound working in DOSBox:
Any idea how to get the original sound to work on Savage Empire using Dos Box? Been trying to figure it out. It works on Martian Dreams, just not Savage Empire. Using Windows 7. Thanks!!!
My suspicion is that this is a VDMSound-related issue, and that he’d be well-advised to get that set up for himself. However, I’m mostly just grasping at straws, and figured that some of you probably have rather more direct experience getting the game working, with sound, under everyone’s favourite DOS emulator.
So, if you have a suggestion, toss it out in the comments!
C’mon this post gives us NOTHING to work with. What dosbox version, how he installed SE, mountings in dosbox, sound settings in SE etc.
Throwing in VDMSound in the mix only makes it worse.
To clarify VDMSound is a soundblaster emulator for the NT command line environment NTVDM.
DOSBox is a DOS emulator that emulates among other things soundcards and because it is a DOS emu also looks similar to the NT command line. Dosbox is a standalone program that makes NO use of the commandline and thus no use of VDMSound.
Ages ago, when there was no DOSBox VDMSound was the only way to play old dosgames with sound on Windows NT systems. But that time is long gone so today VDMSound is best forgotten 😉
The person with the problem should best head to the Dosbox forum on Vogons and ask for help there. BUT he/she shouldn’t bother if no more information than the above is given 😉
What Dominus said.
I played SE on DOSBox a while back, sound worked just fine. Eck if it worked with Martian Dreams it should work with Savage Empire.
Perhaps there is a IRQ issue here (ie that person entered the wrong IRQ in the config or such).
And yeah VDMSound has no relation with DOSBox, though it was a good way to get sound on DOS Games with XP.
Yeah, I’ve had no problems. I always use DosBox. Use DosBox.
Alt-Z can be used to toggle music on/off in game
If music was not configured properly, run the install and set it to Roland MT-32/MIDI. Works for me.
I’m the guy that submitted the Savage Empire CD question last week (bought the game and got it running–thanks everyone). I use DOSBox 0.74 and DOSBox Game Launcher (DBGL) 0.73 (awesome front end for DOSBox). Here’s what I did to get the game running:
1. Copied files directly from CD to the folder on my HD.
2. Created an entry for the game in DBGL with the following settings:
Display tab: Output (opengl), Window Resolution (1280 x 1024)
Machine tab: Cycles (7500), Memory Size (32)
Mounting tab: Main (point at SAVAGE.EXE), Setup (point at CONFIG.EXE)
Click “OK”
3. Click “Run setup”. This will run CONFIG.EXE.
Change directory to just C: and hit Enter
Choose “Save Space” (for some reason, I ended up with graphical errors when I chose “Save Time”) and hit Enter
Choose “Mouse” and hit Enter
Decide whether to keep your current character or create a new one and hit Enter
Choose “MCGA/VGA 320×200, 256 colors” and hit Enter
Choose “Creative Labs Sound Blaster” and hit Enter
Type “Y”
Hit Escape
4. Run the game. It should work.
There are only two possible culprits in this case:
1.) The sound for Dosbox is not correctly configured, thus work in the config is needed.
2.) He didn’t bother to use the install program of the game to chose a soundcard (you wouldn’t believe how often this happens).
hahahahahaha
The one likely case in the “didn’t run the installer to configure the sound card settings” is that the user acquired his copy of SE via less-than-legal means (starts with “ab” and ends in “ware”). Often those packages are copies of a game’s directory as installed, meaning the user can start playing the game without having to run the installer on the disc (or disks) which would automatically set up the sound options after copying the files.
The problem is that if you have the files for the game on the HD, in my case it’s on my E Drive, the install application cannot see the E drive. I can run the game just fine, there’s just no sound because I cannot run the install. I tried to install it, but it does not see any drives other than C, which means that I cannot get to the point where I can choose the sound driver.
Does anyone know what file to edit or create to make a setup for the game?
If you run the install from inside DOSBox, and set the DOSBox C drive to be the game’s install directory, that will work.