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well I used to play this game on a 386 with a trackball and I could drill my wells manually like 95% of the time (only the ones in the middle of the ocean were ever hard)... but now I don't even think my mouse is responding to it. It's running at about 1800 cycles. Can anyone remind me what to do to drill manually and not bust the drillhead every time?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(moosh @ Jul 2 2006, 06:38 AM) [snapback]240972[/snapback]</div>

well I used to play this game on a 386 with a trackball and I could drill my wells manually like 95% of the time (only the ones in the middle of the ocean were ever hard)... but now I don't even think my mouse is responding to it. It's running at about 1800 cycles. Can anyone remind me what to do to drill manually and not bust the drillhead every time?
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Well for anyone else having the problem, use the keyboard arrow keys and it shouldn't be too bad. Spacebar is increase pressure (drill faster), and any other key is decrease pressure.

guys i'm not good at computers! so i wanted to ask what is dosbox? i'm having the same problems with you! the game doesn't play at all!

[Icewolf]

Look here!
That tells you a lot. k:

Why is it that the Amiga version you get a better chance getting a nice contract early on and the PC version its just very rare and usually sucks?

and yeah the oil burning sequence is messed up I just let my oil burn then redrill it (not sure if i can use the auto-extinguish oil feature)

Did anony ever get this game to mork on modern day computers?

[Icewolf]

Well, I didn't try it myself, but I'm pretty certain that it's possible.
Thanks to DosBox :wub:

[The Fifth Horseman]

They did, using DosBox.

Hey people

Read this whole thread and see people struggling to get this to run.

All you need is DosBox and knowledge of how to up and down the CPU cycles.

Download the game and save to a directory on your computer.

Set DosBox to 10,000 cycles and use "mount c z:\zzz" where z:\zzz is the directory in which Oil Imperium / Black Gold is located.

Then goto "c:" in Dosbox and to run the game type OIL. Note you DO NOT need to change the batch file or run the EGA version - these won't work!

Hopefully the game should then run fine. When prompted for codes just enter any letter, press enter, another letter, press enter and you are in.

The arcade sequences need the CPU slowed down. Use CTRL-F11 to slow and CTRL-F12 to speed up. You definitely need to do the for drilling. Use SPACE to increase the pressure to max when drilling, use CURSOR KEYS to control deviation (keep central). Should take 3 days of game time.

Building a pipeline is tough - don't slow CPU too much or it won't respond to the mouse fast enough. Build a pipeline from bottom right to top left by clicking on pipe parts. Computer will still win sometimes you must plan your route be quick and have CPU set reasonably high.

Extinguishing fires - walk over and put dynamite (space) underneath each well, plan your route so you get to all in time.

MOST IMPORTANT TIP:!!! YOU CAN SAVE YOUR GAME. On the main office screen click on the logo of your company, bottom right-ish. From the menu that appears select the "PC to disk" option to save or the "Disk to PC" option to load. Then you can quit and return later.

Finally... if you suspect problems with the extinguisher game - two tips: 1) Keep a few million in reserve to pay for it to be extinguished. 2) Save regularly so if it happens you can re-load earlier game - maybe it won't happen or you can pay detectives to protect you.

IMPORTANT PLAYING THE GAME TIP: Choose an area to start in and get 4/5 expert reports first to select a first buy, then build up a map of reports before you buy. Every area will have some amazing fields (100K+ oil, below 1.2m price and 500K max running costs) whilst there will be some dreadful ones (less than 60K oil, in some cases just a few barrels a month).

GOOD LUCK PLAYING a great game and remember ctrl-f11 and ctrl-f12 to speed up and slow down, and use the save game option regularly.

install blackgold to a diretory then run dosbox and make sure the 1st dosbox line says something like this:

Z:\>mount c c:\games\strategy\blackgold then hit enter...

then type c: then hit enter again and magically the Z changes to C:

then type what .exe you need to play the game, in this case it is 'start'