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[hultsfred]

I'm not sure if there's necessarily meant to be music, but you should be able to hear basic sounds, like gun-fire, footsteps, and background ambient noise. I'm pretty sure the monsters made noises too. In fact if you look in the Music\SB folder for Hired Guns, we can see a load of media files in there.

As for the manuals, it would be fantastic to get hold of the information from them. That would make trying to remember how the controls and interface work much easier for starters. But I'm just as keen to try and re-read the background material too. If I remember rightly one book had the installation procedures and game controls, and the rest were all "in-character" books. One contained technical readouts on the equipment (which read as if it were an arms catalogue, rather than a game manual), another had detailed dossiers on each of the character backgrounds and a good deal of universe background, and one contained the background story. The latter was completely devoid of speechmarks, which made reading it a slightly tricky experience initially.

I'm surprised I can remember all this. I recall storing the manuals aside six or seven years ago when having a clear-out. I was so taken with them I was planning a tabletop RPG project and wanted to keep them for reference. I've no idea where they ended up though. Next time I'm back at my folks place (probably next year) I'll have a dig through my boxes in the attic.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I'm afraid the only manual I've got is the most basic one, with the interface stuff only (in attachment).

Now, about sound and music... when the cycles are high, the game starts playing the in-level tune, which abruptly stops as soon as the interface loads.

EDIT: I think I've found the answer. To play digitized sound, the game also needs ct-voice.drv and ctvdsk.drv, which are normally part of the Soundblaster driver package.
The game starts up with midi music whenever the SOUND variable is other than null, regardless if correct digitized sound drivers are present in the location pointed out by it - which meens I've been trying to use wrong ones the whole time...

[hultsfred]

I see. Is that something that needs changing in the DOSBOX.conf file? I'm afraid I'm not quite literate enough with the programming language to know how to fix that.

[The Fifth Horseman]

No, you need a set of Creative Labs' sound drivers. Then do the SET SOUND= thing to point the game to their location.

[hultsfred]

I downloaded those drivers from filewatcher.com and've had a play around with them, but still no joy.

I tried putting the two in their own directory and setting the sound there and that didn't work, then I tried putting them in the SB16 directory along with sb16.adc and setting to that, and there was no luck there either.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a complete and combined package of drivers I'm meant to be setting up or actually installing? Because I just found the ct-voice.drv and ctvdsk.drv and shoved them in a directory.

Wow, I'm getting the full nostalgia experience here, including being unable to get the damn thing to work. Now I think about it, I had this problem a lot with DOS. I guess I chose to forget that bit.

[The Fifth Horseman]

http://www.oldgames.nu/forums/PC-Hired-Guns-t6233.html <= here is the bit about the drivers.

http://support.creative.com/Products...Sound+Blaster# <= here is the Creative Labs' driver page. Choose "other" and then the card model.

Still haven't managed to get it to work with sound, even though the drivers are installed and should in theory be fine. Grumble.

[hultsfred]

Neither can I. I'm thinking of following the advice in the oldgames thread and attepting the Amiga version. But I've tried Amiga emulation before, and found the ROMs too much of a headache.

Looks like this might be a project for another time.