[Ledz]

<rant> Right. So a few days ago, I get this sudden urge to play ST:TNG-AFU again. Being a relatively big Star Trek fan, especially of TNG, while also being an even bigger adventure game fan, this title is pretty much perfect for me, having a really strong Trekish story and some well-founded adventure game elements.

So yeah, I pull the old cd out of the drawer, which hasn't been used in some years, and pop it in. Of course I realize, being a pure DOS game, it's not just gonna run out of the box. So I try DosBox, which has been doing a pretty good job with most problematic games. Can't install game, won't let me get past the hardware detection phase because of the CD-ROM drive's speed not being detected correctly. Online we go. Find an alternate installer which overrides the problem. Install the game with maximum graphical options. Run it - intro movies work fine. I smile. Intro movies end - blank screen. I frown slightly. I go to Vogons forum, those guys usually find ways of getting things to work. All they have there are things I've already tried, (except for one thing which is using some program called dos32a to upgrade the game's DOS4GW or something, supposed to make it more stable) and all of them say it should be working, so I try tinkering with the settings, lowering the resolution and the colors and such, which is basically all that can be done really. Doesn't help. I do manage to get the blank screen to come up with audio running in the background, but still the game itself doesn't start. So, I try running it with VDMS Launchpad, that usually is a good alternative when DosBox fails. So I set it up, give it all the options it needs, run it, seems to start fine, BAM! some kind of sosDIGIsomething error, which comes up before the game even starts up. So, no go in DosBox, no go in VDMS.

Now, I could give up at this point, but I really want to play it so I download VMWare, find an old copy dos 6.22, and start setting it up. Takes me a while to remember how this dos thing works, after all it's been a while, but eventually I get cdrom support, mouse support, sound support, and enough base memory to run the game. So, I start it up, and by god it actually works. I get past the intro, ACTUALLY get into the gaming part, and then play a bit, being as happy as sunshine, laughing loudly at the computer, until the first ship combat section comes up, (only a minute or two after starting the game) and as soon as I see the tactical screen, BAM! A crash, and a VMWare error. I try again, same crash, same place. At that point, I gave up. I didn't post this to get help, I don't think it's possible to make it work anymore... I'll just have to live with the memory of how good it was when I played it way back when. I just needed an outlet for all the frustration it caused me over the past few days. Guess I'll pull out Still Life for another go, I've been getting the urge to do that after seeing n4lm's theory thread. </rant>

[cyote]

I tried to get this one working once and had no joy either... but you could check this out..
http://klingonacademy.3dactionplanet.gamespy.com/showthread.php?t=31221

I think I tried it without success.. but the instructions are so comprehensive I just kinda though there must be something in it.

cyote.

[fov]

Does the info in this thread help at all?

[Ledz]

The advice at the klingon academy link is just changing the sttng.ini settings which I've already tried in various configurations with no success...

as for the link you gave me, fov, it did seem like it might help, but I tried it and there was no difference, except the audio sounded choppier...

Thanks guys, but I'm fairly sure this is a dead horse... maybe someday a fan with some skills will make an xp installer or something... that would be awesome. Until then, looks hopeless.

[cmw]

Post edited (Original Post see below):

I've tried myself and found a setup that works perfectly fine for me:

1) Install Dosbox 0.65
2) Download these files and replace the ones in the dosbox folder with them (these are files compiled today, DOSBox is the tarball from yesterday and SDL is July 10th 1.2 tarball (1.3 SVN wouldn't compile):
http://unet.univie.ac.at/~a0501414/DOSBox.exe
http://unet.univie.ac.at/~a0501414/SDL.dll
3) Set your dosbox.conf (or a special gameconf) to use NORMAL core (core=normal)

Do not use dos32a as it will crash the game.

With normal core, overall speed is far lower then with dynamic core, but if your machine can handle it, a cycle value of sth between 20.000 and 30.000 should be more than enough to play the game without any problems.

Have fun!

Note: With this Dosbox build, network compatability is disabled (you can not use IPX emulation, also I think you cannot capture audio/video or make screenshots. I will add these features in my future compiles though^^)





I actually managed to play through a final unity with DosBox like more than year ago!

I do realize though it's quite hard to get working. With the vogons forums down atm, I just can try to give you the following tips:

Mount your cd drive as -t cdrom in dosbox (like mount d: d:\ -t cdrom)
This would also enable you to install the game with the normal installer (try this as well, maybe the alternate installer is the problem).

Alternately, copy the entire cd to a folder on your hard drive and install it from there (still try to use -t cdrom for the installer though).

Also try using a cvs version. I've setup a new system and still have to install most of my apps, so I can't compile a new one for you. But try this one, it's like 2 or 3 month old and AFAIR I compiled it for someone who wanted to play AFU and I believe he reported it to work.

http://unet.univie.ac.at/~a0501414/DOSBox.exe (just replace the dosbox.exe from the 0.65 install).

Also, try to use Gravis Ultra Sound instead of SB (and disable SB emulation at all), since I recall that I had serious sound issues with SB.

For the first battle, that's a tough one. I'm not exactly sure how I managed the problem, but two possible solutions come to mind:

a) Skip the battle with proper dialog, as I think to remember that the game would not crash on later battles (or just randomly)

b) Try to use the normal dos4gw instead of dos32a for the first battle (but after then, use dos32a again)

I can't think of much more atm, but when I finished setting up my machine, I'll try it out for myself again.

Hope that helps somehow^^

[VoodooFX]

I'm re-playing the game myself at the moment.
Most of the time it runs just fine on my Athlon 2800+, using CVS build of DosBox with some additional patches.

While previously Dos32a did wonders for this game, it now actually breaks the game, so use regular Dos4gw, like cmw suggested.

Also the mouse is very slow, so you must boost up mouse sensitivity in the config file.

Other than that, the game runs quite fine, even with VESA support enabled.