Phantasie III
 

I'm having trouble getting this game to save permanantly. There are some error messages which come up during loading (see below) and the game saves while the computer is running but not after a restart.

Using main.exe or ph.bat (usually 'main', i was just experimenting with 'ph') this message comes up first, after saying 'yes' to "playing of hard drive?":
"Disk Error! A save may have been attempted on a write protected disk. Make sure the right Phantasie disk is in drive A: and press a key"

Pressing a key starts the game, seemingly as normal but, as mentioned, the game wont make a permanent save.

So the question is, how do i get the game to think there is a writable disk or file in the Phantas3 directory?

I finished this game about 20 years ago(!) and i want to finish it again, dammit! I can't leave the computer on the whole time, even hybernating, as it'll probably start on it's own at some point.

edit: i'm wondering if there is a simple fix for this sort of game like adding a 'save folder' to the game folder or something?

What you need is or:
- VPC/MsDos6 so that you can mount/switch floppies on the fly
- A real or virtual floppy dive

To save permanently you need to:
-> run the 'makedata' batch to create a 'data' floppy disk (Notice: it will expect a 'b' drive to create the data floppy.)
-> start the game from the first floppy
-> switch the first floppy with the 'data' floppy.

It's also possible to use one of the older dosbox versions that support multiple floppy image mounts.

[Edit]
Must try if you can mount the created data disk as A and save from HD to A....

Will be back later.

The obvious answer which come to mind is: have you tried to mount an A:\ save directory while playing the game?

Some very old games (or programs) never took into consideration that computers could have more than one drive in the future. That's why they are bent on asking for very specific drives like C:\ which was (and still is) default for a hard drive, A:\ which is default for a floppy and B:\ which became later on the default for a second floppy.

That's why C:\ is the standard for a HD, BTW: before HDs became the norm, very old computers had two floppies: one to boot from and the second to work with. :p

*Update*
This seems to work:
Mount your virtual C; (of course ....)

Mount the game folder directly as A:
(mount a x:\path\phantas3 -t floppy )
From A prompt run makehard
This will create a ph3 folder on your virtual C and copy/create the needed files
Now run the game from your virtual C:

If you did it all right you won't get that error message when you select 'yes' when asked if you run from harddrive, and save/load game seem to work now.
Next time no need to mount that A again.

[Edit]
....Or download this one:
PH3.zip - 0.17MB
:ninja: