shadoan - Kingdom II
 

I downloaded this game through a link in the ISO cellar but have found it difficult to get going. It has to be mounted to install, first off. This I've done and now have two lots of files on the hard drive. The first lot were the installation/mounted files in the mds and mdf formats. The second lot were the installation files which came from installing and has the shadoan.bat file which the game plays from. It has to be played through Dosbox of course. So were do I go to from here? I tried playing through dos box and using the shadoan bat file but dosbox keeps asking for the CD rom. I can't burn the folder containing the mds/mdf files to a CD as it's too large, and my laptap has problems burning DVDs. But the installation instructions says I can just play it off the hard drive.
How would I set up dosbox to recognise the folder with the mds/mdf as the cd rom drive....assuming these are files which would have gone onto the cd rom drive. The other folder has the shadoan.bat and a bunch of exe files, but these are usually the ones that go onto the hard drive, aren't they?

Has anyone been successfull in getting Shadoan to play off the hard drive and how did you manage it? :idea:

Thanks muchly!

Did you ran the install in dosbox?
Your mount lines?
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Details ... details ... details .....

Hi, Wendy. Nice to see you again. :)

MDF/MDS is a disc image format. Like ISO or BIN/CUE, except those two are supported by DOSBox' IMGMOUNT. Perhaps try converting the MDF/MDS image to a BIN/CUE one and IMGMOUNT that?

Thanks for replying, guys.
No, I didn't install in Doxbox. When I mounted the installation files I was able to install seemingly fine that way.

I'm not sure what the original mount lines were as I've tried so many combinations. But the game would open on a screen asking you to register. After clicking on CONTINUe, the game would try to start, but fade to black and the CD Rom would be requested. However now I'm trying:
MOUNT C C:\INTRPLAY\SHADOAN\SHADOAN.BAT
IMGMOUNT G C:\Users\Wendy\Documents\games\shadoan\SHADOAN1\SH ADOAN1.mds
and various combinations without the second IMGMOUNT or just using the second MOUNT. But for all the combinations I've tried today I'm only getting a black screen with Z:\>

Btw, that space between 'Sh' and 'a' in the mount lines is only showing up on the screen here. for some reason, it won't edit out.

Okies, against all odds, I've got it working.

I'll give a run down in case anyone else has problems with starting this game which has a link in the ISO Cellar.

I was doing everything wrong before. To start with, you only need burn one of the images to CD rom. You're presented with an mdf and a mds file. when I examined the contents of these files in ISO Magic, I saw they both had the same files. So I burnt one of them to a CD rom. I ran the install exe by mounting the mdf file with ISO magic, I think, and this gave me another folder with the Shadoan bat file. This is the file needed to play the game. Then you run the set up exe to set your sound and vid options. It ran ok from Windows Vista.

In the Doxbox config file, I pointed the top line of the mount file instructions to the first folder containing the Shadoan bat file - as the install program had automatically installed it - like this: MOUNT C C:\INTRPLAY
and then gave the CD Rom drive letter and command on the second line of the mount file instructions.

This comes down the bottom of the dosbox config instructions - here:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
MOUNT C C:\INTRPLAY
MOUNT E E:\ -t cdrom

Hope this all makes sense.

Shadoan is a great adventure game which is well-worth a play. :)

These two files together are the CD image.
MDF contains the actual image
MDS contains media info of that image.

A bit as BIN/CUE ....

A good soft to handle CD images is the freeware and excellent ImgBurn.
http://www.imgburn.com/

And to avoid all kinds of weird problems you should install dosgames in dosbox, not in Windows.
Some games will not accept another CD drive letter, or will autodetect the win audio settings resulting in problems later.

Also as you're on Vista you really should create a folder to use as virtual C, not install the games in Windows directly on your C:\ root.
A short how to:
http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=19982

Thanks, some good tips there. I've been playing the game for a few hours, though, and so far it's still going ok using the steps I mentioned above. One weird thing is I can't get the manual.bat file to open in dosbox. The manual is needed to work out some tricks such as moving the character to new locations. But a read of online reviews revealed that a clickable map will open when you hit the tab key.

Edit:
I just discovered there's a folder called 'Manual' amongst the files burnt to CD. *g* View.exe will open nicely in dosbox.

Wendy: As I said before, DOSBox only supports ISO and BIN/CUE images.
MDF/MDS will not work with it, period.
Given how few DOS games used any form of copy protection, chances are that the same image converted to ISO or BIN/CUE will work just fine with DOSBox.

Ehm, Fifth Horseman, with all due respect, what are you talking about? Did you read what I wrote above? I got the game working perfectly in Dos Box and that involved burning the mdf file to the CD rom. I've finished playing the game, so it's history now.
But thanks. :)