Realms Of Arkania: Star Trail Problem

[Backfish]

After a lot of time and with a lot of patience I've mangaed to make Realms of Arkania: Star Trail Work smoothly on my computer. But now I have the problem that each time I fight, everything goes fine, but after a few rounds of combat, I suddenly get a graphic error: You cannot see the characters, ennemies or any terrain features anymore, just the plain, brown tiles. Anybody experienced a similar problem? Any Idea how to solve that?

Backfish

[Apollon]

Hello,
I get the exact same error, and I have no idea how to fix it. I'm running on WinXP, DosBox 6.3.
The problem appears both in full screen and in windowed mode.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Seems to occur to many people. No real solution I know of; you might want to try VDMSound or use an actual DOS machine.

[Scorpius]

I remember that there was a readme.txt-file with the game included where it said that if a machine has more than 16MB of RAM the game encounters problems. While I never had such problem when playing the game earlier on my Pentium 100 with 48MB RAM, in DosBox it might be different because it's an emulation and emulates not all parts of an old PC.
What you could try is to set the memory in DosBox to 16MB or 14-12, and maybe that could help ;)

[Apollon]

Hello Horseman and Scorpius,
Thanks for the input, those were good ideas, and I tried them out.
Setting DosBox memory lower didn't fix the problem. I went as low as 8 MB, I even tried a higher setting (32 MB), it didn't help.
VDMSound produced a different Problem: it wouldn't cooperate with my mouse (it's a Microsoft Hardware optical mouse). Any ideas how to reconcile VDMSound with my hardware?

BTW, have you people never experienced the disappearing sprites in Star Trail?

[dragonmaster]

Use a recent cvs, perhaps the bug is fixed

[The Fifth Horseman]

I've been running it on a DX4/100 486 with 24 MB RAM without any problems. I guess that the bug might have something to do with the graphics settings or the game archive itself may be faulty.

[Guest]

Recent CVS? Please explain. Where do I get one, how do I install it? What is that, anyway? :)

A faulty archive? I got mine from here, didn't you too? Are there several different ones floating around? Where did you get yours?

Oh man, I so totally need to play this game... LOL

[Guest]

Oh, another thing... Scorpius, there was no readme.txt in my installation. Where did you get yours?

[Gamefreak]

I guess they banned him. Might have something against him...
I had also a text-file in my installation of the game, not sure if readme.txt though. I have the entire trilogy on original German CD's, so there's anything on them, manuals and all text-files.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Recent CVS? Please explain. Where do I get one, how do I install it? What is that, anyway?
I think he meant the most recent sourcecode beta from the DosBox page. You download it and compile on your own PC. Sometimes they work better, sometimes worse.
A faulty archive? I got mine from here, didn't you too? Are there several different ones floating around? Where did you get yours?
I had mine long before ST was added to Abandonia. There are always a few different releases of about any given game. As to where I got it - from a friend.
I guess they banned him. Might have something against him...
His title was changed to "another Freddy alias". Seems he was uncovered to be another attempt by a known troublemaker FreeFreddy to get back onto the forum.

[Guest]

You make a mistake there are many bugfixes in the current cvs and you dobt need to compile it by yourself.
Here you can download it:

http://home.amis.net/lkslavi/

[The Fifth Horseman]

Seems we mean two different things.
However, what you link to is not the only CVS in existence. Of course, you don't know about that, do you? Go here (http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=52551) for a full list.

What I meant was the most recent sourcecode beta - one that you need to compile by yourself, but is the most up-to-date version. There, it sometimes happens that new fixes introduce new bugs to the progam as well.

Maybe try checking up on the Patches (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=52551&atid=467234) for DosBox. One of them might hold a solution for you.

[Apollon]

Hello again,
Finally, I took the time to register (I didn't post the above message, BTW).
I managed to get Star Trail to run without DosBox. It was rathar trivial. All you need to do is to create a shortcut to STAR.EXE and check the EMS option. Of course, the patch that fixes the baby faces is also needed, as it also fixes the unresponsive mouse problem.
BUT... the problem with the sprites disappearing after a few rounds in the combat screen still persists. This means, there is no fault with DosBox. Most likely, the problem lies within the game archive itself. I downloaded it from here, as well as from Home of the Underdogs, but they both are essentially the same.

So, I have two questions for you folks:

1. Did any one play the version that is provided from Abandonia and/or HotU? Did you experience the combat bug as well?

2. Is there another source for this game available?

[Gamefreak]

You have problems with the game... :rolleyes: Play the German version, there you need no "faces patch" nor have any problems with the sprites in game. One obstacle - learning German :sneaky:

[Apollon]

Deutsch ist meine Muttersprache! ;-)
Where do I get the german version?

[Gamefreak]

For Germans here: Ebay search results (http://games.search.ebay.de/das-schwarze-auge_PC-Videospiele_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8QQsacatZ14616)

[Apollon]

I'm Austrian, so these results are off limits for me.
Isn't there a german abandonware site somewhere? Or a german version of Star Trail available for download anywhere? Google didn't produce any useful results...

[Eagle of Fire]

Moved per rule #4 (http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2606).

[Chuck the plant]

Originally posted by Apollon@Jan 8 2006, 07:15 PM
I'm Austrian, so these results are off limits for me.
Why would ebay.DE results be "off limits" for an austrian? Last time I checked, inner-european shipping and handling was not much more expensive than national s/h anymore... And there's this nifty IBAN-thingy for inner-european money orders as well... :ok:

Isn't there a german abandonware site somewhere? Or a german version of Star Trail available for download anywhere? Google didn't produce any useful results...
Since the DSA-franchise is still alive and kicking in Germany, I doubt that Fanpro will be giving the rights away just because the game is a little older. Meaning, no, there most likely WON'T be legal downloads of the german version.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I'll dig out the archive from my collection and upload it.

[Apollon]

Wow, that would be awesome! Thank you so much, the_fifth_horseman! :-)

[Chuck the plant]

Right, don't you ever waste money on a game you seem to want so desperatly... :not_ok:

[Scatty]

It's always easier just to download a game for free. Especially if someone other is going to take up the entire work. :whistle: