«

[Endymion]

Hey everyone, I'm going to be honest, I was trying to post in the tech support forum, but I am (for no good reason I can tell) completely unable to do so. I'm mostly posting now because I've run into a problem I can't fix that seems to make a game I want to play, unplayable. It's in Mechwarrior, and I'm going to see if posting this here allows me to go post in Specific Games, as I know I should.

Long story short? I am trying to play the game, I am running WinXP SP2, on an IBM t42. I am trying to play the game in DOSBox .72; I have already reset mpu401, but the first glitch I've noticed overall is that I cannot recruit crew in the bar. Rather than the hung black screen with blinking cursor that happens after a mission, the game simply freezes, no matter what I do. As I said, I'd like to pull this out of here and put it in Troubleshooting > Specific Games, but I can't post there right now. Which is, needless to say, annoying.

Otherwise? Greetings! I'm a DOS gamer like you all, I like old machines and old games.

[arete]

Try using version 7.4 DOSbox. What settings are you using, and have you tried re-downloading the archive? It should be preinstalled, but you can run setup from within dosbox by the drag-and-drop-over-the-dosbox-shortcut trick that i always use because it's so much easier

[arete]

Try using version 7.4 DOSbox. What settings are you using, and have you tried re-downloading the archive? It should be preinstalled, but you can run setup from within dosbox by the drag-and-drop-over-the-dosbox-shortcut trick that i always use because it's so much easier

EDIT seriously, KEATS?!?! endymion was like his worst poem EVAR!

[Endymion]

Actually, I didn't select the name from Keats, but from the original myth, because of the condition under which I became involved with one of my exes. It stuck since then and I've been using it as a handle for various sites since. Thank you for the quick reply. I don't really want to put my entire dosbox.conf here, because it seems like it'd be too long.

It was preinstalled in the archive, but even trying to install it (by using md, then mounting the new directory as D didn't work. I don't particularly like the drag-n-drop method, because I do use DOSBox as a proper shell as well as for games. I like being able to play a game, go into EDIT to type something up, and, y'know, generally doing all sorts of things I did when I was on a DOS machine.

I know about the mpu401 issue, it's set to uart now, with device=default (I'm tempted to set both to none). I have it set to include 63MB of RAM, and by default it runs at 12000 CPU cycles, with XMS, EMS, and UMB enabled. I can (and do) slow it down for certain games. I also have tried loadhigh, but this doesn't change the result of the specific error.

However, the problem with recruiting seems to be a graphic one. It actually freezes the game completely, and I do not know why. Next time I load the program, I will slow it down and see what happens, and take a screenshot if possible.

I do wish that DOSBox had a fixed escape key or key combo as was set up on my old machine (though that was running DR-DOS), so that if a program screwed up, I didn't need to go to Ctrl+Alt+Delete, I could use an alternate key combo and escape to the prompt.

Oh, just a secondary note - running it straight through WinXP, without DOSBox or a VM, also produces the same error. I try to recruit someone at the bar and it freezes.

[arete]

Originally Posted by Endymion

Actually, I didn't select the name from Keats, but from the original myth, because of the condition under which I became involved with one of my exes. It stuck since then and I've been using it as a handle for various sites since. Thank you for the quick reply. I don't really want to put my entire dosbox.conf here, because it seems like it'd be too long.

It was preinstalled in the archive, but even trying to install it (by using md, then mounting the new directory as D didn't work. I don't particularly like the drag-n-drop method, because I do use DOSBox as a proper shell as well as for games. I like being able to play a game, go into EDIT to type something up, and, y'know, generally doing all sorts of things I did when I was on a DOS machine.

I know about the mpu401 issue, it's set to uart now, with device=default (I'm tempted to set both to none). I have it set to include 63MB of RAM, and by default it runs at 12000 CPU cycles, with XMS, EMS, and UMB enabled. I can (and do) slow it down for certain games. I also have tried loadhigh, but this doesn't change the result of the specific error.

However, the problem with recruiting seems to be a graphic one. It actually freezes the game completely, and I do not know why. Next time I load the program, I will slow it down and see what happens, and take a screenshot if possible.

I do wish that DOSBox had a fixed escape key or key combo as was set up on my old machine (though that was running DR-DOS), so that if a program screwed up, I didn't need to go to Ctrl+Alt+Delete, I could use an alternate key combo and escape to the prompt.

Oh, just a secondary note - running it straight through WinXP, without DOSBox or a VM, also produces the same error. I try to recruit someone at the bar and it freezes.

Are you trying to run it in Compatibilty Mode in XP when it's a dos .exe or vice versa?

Also, you talk too complicated, I go lalalalaaa!

I like verra com-pli-cat-ed documents, though.

[zirkoni]

63MB of RAM is way too much for most DOS games. In fact, some old games might refuse to run if they detect such high amounts of memory. Also, 12000 cycles is too much for Mechwarrior.

DOSBox-0.74 with the default settings (except for the mpu401=uart) should run Mechwarrior without any problems.

Originally Posted by Endymion

I do wish that DOSBox had a fixed escape key or key combo as was set up on my old machine (though that was running DR-DOS), so that if a program screwed up, I didn't need to go to Ctrl+Alt+Delete, I could use an alternate key combo and escape to the prompt.

Ctrl+F9 will kill DOSBox.

[Scatty]

Or you can press ALT+Enter to go windowed mode and simply close DosBox by clicking on that X button above.
If you like to post contents of a long file here, btw., you can simply use the spoiler tags button (that one with the gray box and three ???) above the text message area, while writing a message. It would look like this and is quite handy to cover anything long:

Just like that
that
that
that

Example

Also, about the Mechwarrior issue, some older games didn't like EMS, only XMS, so try disabling EMS in the dosbox.conf and see if that helps. It might be also that you simply have a game with corrupt files, so you'd need to download again.

[Endymion]

Alright, I disabled XMS for this test and got the same glitch. This is using DOSBox .74 with the default settings for everything except mpu401=uart and xms=false.

Here's two screenshots of what happens when I try to recruit a new pilot.
It starts like this:

And then it scrolls down until it comes out looking like this:


And in case anyone is wondering, I've also tried something slightly crazy - running each of these images through the TinEye reverse image search. 0 results in both cases.

I am going to try deleting the version I have and re-downloading, even though it seemed to come through fine, 7-Zip had no errors in opening it, etc.

UPDATE:

I believe it was either that the archive I first downloaded had an error, or, perhaps one of my settings was wrong: I usually use aspect=false, the game requires true.

[Scatty]

So, it works now that you re-downloaded it? Judging from the screens, definitely corrupt game files.
I meant disabling EMS btw., not XMS. Some games don't like EMS.