«

[DonCorleone]

Are there any good reasons to put games like Gateway or Spellcasting (there are a bunch of others) into the adventure section? These games aren't adventures, are they? They are text based adventures or text-adventures. If you mix them with adventure you could merge both, adventure and roleplay sections...

Could someone please help me?

First off, I just want to say Abandonia.com is awesome. I haven't played GatewayII in a little over ten years, and it was great to find a working version for download.

Now, on to my problem. I'm having trouble with saves and/or sound, and before I get yelled at, I've read the previous posts on the matter. Now, when I start Gateway II with DosBOX it misses the intro and the ability to save. When I start it with my own MSDOS command prompt, it works beautifully, without the music. Are there any suggestions on how I can get it to save when I run with DosBOX, or to get music when I run it on plain old MSDOS (which would be my preference)?

Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Don

[The Fifth Horseman]

Are there any suggestions on how I can get it to save when I run with DosBOX,[/b]

Yes. Read post #29 in this thread - you need to edit legend.ini and put in there the current path to the game directory OR put the game to C:\gateway2 and run it from there.

or to get music when I run it on plain old MSDOS (which would be my preference)?[/b]

You'll have to run the soundcard configuration utility of the game and modify the settings to correspond with your soundcard. If it's a newer model (or an onboard one), the chances for that working are very low, however.

Unfortunately, I have read reply #29. I have the game written to c:\gateway2. I've altered the legend.ini file to read c:\gateway2\ and I've also tried c:\gateway2. Neither one results in the ability to save my games. When I run it in DOSBox, I mount c c:\gateway2. If I'm making an obvious mistake in the editing of my legend.ini file or the mounting in DOSBox, I apologise, but from my understanding, this should work.

And interestingly enough, after making it most of the way through the game, MSDOS has suddenly decided not to run Homeworld anymore. :wallbash:

My apologies folks. I figured out what I was doing wrong, and I feel pretty stupid. The game looks for c:\gateway2, but since I mount that directory to c:\ , c:\gateway2\xfile.exe becomes c:\xfile.exe, and there is no subdirectory \gateway2. So, mounted the whole of drive c:\ to c:\ in DOSBox, and it works perfectly. Music, intro, saves and restores. Thanks, and ciao. :brain:

Can anyone recommend a similar game of equal entertainment BESIDES Gateway I? Gateway II is really the only text based game I've ever played, but I find them quite interesting.

[Geitzeist]

I've read this entire thread and tried everything, but I can't get this game to play in DOSBox 0.74 without a blank screen (but with music) and an error message about the missing restart.dat file after I press escape. I installed the game in c:\gateway2. I mount the directory as a CD-ROM drive d:\ in dosbox. I've tried endless variations and get the same results. More advice needed.

Originally Posted by Geitzeist

I've read this entire thread and tried everything, but I can't get this game to play in DOSBox 0.74 without a blank screen (but with music) and an error message about the missing restart.dat file after I press escape. I installed the game in c:\gateway2. I mount the directory as a CD-ROM drive d:\ in dosbox. I've tried endless variations and get the same results. More advice needed.

NEVERMIND. Got it. Mount c as c:\ minus the gateway2 subdirectory as a CD-ROM, and the game works fine.

Originally Posted by Geitzeist

NEVERMIND. Got it. Mount c as c:\ minus the gateway2 subdirectory as a CD-ROM, and the game works fine.

One more thing I've discovered for anyone with this problem: Mount c:\ as a drive, not a CD-ROM or else you'll still get the restart.dat error and won't be able to save games.

[Japo]

First of all, please edit your previous post instead of triple- or double-posting.

It's a very bad idea to mount your real hard disk in DOSBox, you should see a warning when you do. You can mount each game folder as C: every time--unless the games needs to find itself at another particular path, see this previous post--or you may want to have a dedicated folder where you put all your DOS games and that you always mount as the virtual C:

CD-ROM stands for Compact Disk - Read Only Memory, so no wonder you can't save and get other errors. These games were to be installed on a hard disk.

Originally Posted by Japo

It's a very bad idea to mount your real hard disk in DOSBox, you should see a warning when you do.

Do you know why, by any chance? What can go wrong?

I just had to do this (mount my actual hard c drive) because after reading the entire thread, I knew it was the only thing that would work, or so I thought.

It worked, but you got me scared.

What should I be afraid that I'm may do to my system?

Thanks for any feedback.

[Japo]

Originally Posted by Guest

I knew it was the only thing that would work, or so I thought.

No, that's never the case. If the game needs to find itself at the (virtual) path "c:\gateway2\", you can of course install it at the real path "c:\gateway2\" and mount c:\ as c:\, but you can as well install the game at "c:\users\...\dos\gateway2\", and mount "c:\users\...\dos\" as c:\

It's all in the DOSBox manual. The key is understanding real and virtual, which is hard at first.

Mounting in itself doesn't do anything. The danger is in case you make a mistake afterwards, that whatever you do in DOSBox will be done to the whole disk, whereas if you mounted a particular folder as virtual hard disk, whatever you did even by error in DOSBox would be necessarily limited to the folders mounted as disks.

The most common and catastrophic scenario is when somebody has the habit to mount the whole real C: drive as virtual C: drive, and wants to install Windows 3.x or earlier in DOSBox. If he chooses the default installation path C:\Windows (and DOSBox is running with admin privileges), he will in fact overwrite his real host Windows and destroy it.

On the other hand there's no problem in mounting anything as a virtual CD, since they're read-only, and DOSBox won't change any file in a virtual CD.