[Lord Worm]

Hey everyone,
I was wondering if someone would be able to help with some problems I have getting the original Phantasmagoria and Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller to run on my comp. I'm using a P4 1.6Ghz 512 RAM with Win XP Pro. and a GeForce FX 5200. Everytime I try to load up Phantasmagoria the screen goes blank and just closes back to the desktop. Wih Hell it used to tell me that I did not have enough free Virtual Memory available to run it and more recently I believe it said I didn;t have enough expanded memory. Has anyone out there got eithe rof these games to work on their systems and if so, what did you do to ge tthem to work? I;d appreciate any help I cna get. thanks.

[Marian]

Hell a Cyberpunk Thriller apparently runs just fine with DOSBox; that would be my suggestion on that one.

[Lord Worm]

Thanks. I'll try to get that working. Now if I can just remember the DOS interface. It;s been so long since I;ve used it (damn Windows making everything simpler to use. lol). I had another question about Hell:ACT that i was wondering if you could help me with. I remember way back when the game first came out there was a part of the game near the end where it was notoriously known for crashing. If I remember correctly it was at the part with the robotic tiger or something like that. And it was this bug in the game that kept me from finishing the game. I was just wondering if that problem still exists evne when you run the game from Win XP. Thanks

[Kazmodan]

I don't have "Hell" anymore but back in the day I've completed it twice and don't recall such problems. Look on the net if there are any patches for it just in case. Btw, despite some criticism the game got, it had a certain atmosphere that kept me playing. Yes, it has a lot of problems but some things are still enjoyable.

[susto]

Originally Posted by Lord Worm

Thanks. I'll try to get that working. Now if I can just remember the DOS interface. It;s been so long since I;ve used it (damn Windows making everything simpler to use. lol). I had another question about Hell:ACT that i was wondering if you could help me with. I remember way back when the game first came out there was a part of the game near the end where it was notoriously known for crashing. If I remember correctly it was at the part with the robotic tiger or something like that. And it was this bug in the game that kept me from finishing the game. I was just wondering if that problem still exists evne when you run the game from Win XP. Thanks

Hi, Lord Worm. I just would like to clarify that DosBox is not the same thing that using the DOS operating system (sorry if you knew that, it's just that I got some doubts reading your post. You can skip this post then ). DOSBox is an emulator that runs on top of WinXP. Go to http://www.quandaryland.com and search for a link to Steve's XP Games Corner (it's on the menu to the left) if you want to know more about it.

Best regards,

Susto

[Lord Worm]

Hey Susto,
Yeah, I know it;s only an emulator, I just meant the way the interface is set up, how it;s similar to that of the old DOS command prompt. Thanks for the website, I'll have to check that out.

[plattyaj]

I got Phantasmagoria working recently. You have to copy the sierraw.exe from the CD and change the shortcut to use that instead of the sierras.exe version. I think that was about the only change but if you do a search you'll pick up a few helpful tips.

Andy.

[Catnip]

Also, there is a patch for Phantasmagoria 1, which is located here: http://dlh.net/cgi-bin/patdl.cgi?lan...t11.zip&ref=ps

There were different releases of Phantasmagoria in various boxed sets, so I'm not sure if you will need the patch or not. I didn't copy any files to get it to work in Xp, but I remember I didn't use the autoplay feature. I think I used run--setup.exe. Also, I may have played it with compatibility feature, using the compatibility feature on the actual setup file and the icon.

Good luck, and if you still can't get it running post again, and I'll try to dig up more!

[Lord Worm]

Thanks for helping me out everyone. I'm still having problems with Phantasmagoria though. Everytime I go to install the game it runs the tests for video and sound,e tc... and when it gets to the CD-ROM speed it starts the test and then I get a message that says "integer divide by 0" error message and the install closes. Also, when I run the test for the Windows version I get a "Unknown version of Windows message". Anyone know how to fix that stuff? I;d appreciate any help. Thanks again.

[plattyaj]

Originally Posted by Lord Worm

Thanks for helping me out everyone. I'm still having problems with Phantasmagoria though. Everytime I go to install the game it runs the tests for video and sound,e tc... and when it gets to the CD-ROM speed it starts the test and then I get a message that says "integer divide by 0" error message and the install closes. Also, when I run the test for the Windows version I get a "Unknown version of Windows message". Anyone know how to fix that stuff? I;d appreciate any help. Thanks again.

Two things:

a) Skip the tests. Newer machines are just too quick for them!
b) Run the installer in compatibility mode too.

Like I said before, after the installation is done you'll probably need to manually copy the sierraw.exe file and use that instead of the one the installer places on your harddrive. And put that executable in compatibility mode too.

Andy.

[Catnip]

I agree with Plattyaj. So to break it down, in case you haven't used the compatibility feature very often:

When you insert the disk, the autoplay is going to make the game start installing, but you don't want to let it happen. So, you will tell it that you don't want to install and you'll exit the Phantasmagoria install program.

After that, go to Start -- My computer -- and look at your CD-ROM drive. You should see the Phantasmagoria game listed there (might be drive D: or F: ). You will then RIGHT click on the Phantasmagoria name and choose EXPLORE. You'll see all of the files that are on the disk, then.

Now, you want to find the file that will install or setup the game. It would be the install.exe or Setup.exe file. You will RIGHT click on that file and choose PROPERTIES. Click on the COMPATIBILITY tab. I think I played this on compatibility with Windows 95, so try choosing Windows 95. I don't think I had to change the color setup. Click apply or okay. Now LEFT click that same install file, and it should start installing.

When you have an icon on the desktop, you will want to RIGHT click on the icon and choose PROPERTIES and COMPATIBILITY, and then Win 95. Then hopefully you can launch the game through that desktop icon. If the icon didn't appear on the desktop, you can go to start -- All Programs -- Sierra -- and then find the icon there and do the compatibility settings on the icon there. If that doesn't work for you, you might have to copy the file as Platty said. I didn't do that, but I'm not sure if we have the same version (assuming the versions are different).

Good luck, and let us know if this works!!

[Lord Worm]

Thanks a bunch, the game is running fine now. Now if I cna only ge tHell: ACT to run thanks again for the help.

[Catnip]

I'm glad you got it working! I really like the game a lot. There are several different ending sequences, so when you get to the last chapter be sure to save a few times, and then you can try different things. Have fun!!

[lastninja]

I'd seen this post since trying to get it running myself and thought I would sign up to enlighten future peoples!! Had this game a long time but it has also taken me a long time to get around to getting good at running Dosbox!!

Here is a guide to not only install and run Hell, but also to get it running off your hard disk, so you don't need to have your precious install disc in the drive all the time (meaning it runs faster also off the hdd rather than CD drive).. also in general for old games videos, I find you need to install old versions of DivX sometimes, like for a windows 95 era game I needed to install divx v5 to get it to run..

Also this guide will show how to make a dosbox configuration file and game shortcut so you can run it everytime from that, easy and no dosbox hassle!

Instructions:
1. Open CD drive (for me it is U:\ )
2. Run Install.exe (NO COMPATIBILITY SETTINGS REQUIRED FOR XP)
3. Select 'Full Install' to the folder of your choice, ie 'H:\GAMES\HELL\'
4. Make sure to set your CD correctly in the config screen to whichever you used to install it, for me it was 'U'
5. For audio options, in example, I have set - SOUND: select SOUNDBLASTER, IO 220, DMA 1, IRQ 7; MUSIC: SOUNDBLASTER/SBPRO
6. Exit the config and go to windows explorer, copy the entire CD contents to a directory such as 'H:\GAMES\HELLCD'
7. Create a dosbox configuration file with notepad, with the following in it and saving as 'dosbox.conf' and putting this file into the H:\GAMES\HELL folder :

[sdl]
output= overlay
fullresolution=0x0
windowresolution= 3x
fullscreen= true
autolock= false

[dosbox]
machine= svga_s3
captures= "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\DOSBox\capture"

imgmount d "x:\path\name.cue" -t iso

[render]
aspect=true
scaler= normal3x

[cpu]
core= normal
cycles= 12000

[autoexec]
cls
@ECHO OFF

mount h "H:\"
mount u "H:\GAMES\HELLCD" -t cdrom
H:
cd GAMES
cd HELL
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T3 P330 H3
HECK.BAT
EXIT
______________

8. Change any directory or drive as needed, for example I set 'U:\' as the CD drive since this is what I installed from
9. Download and configure DOSBox (set any required options for DOSBox such as display resolution, full screen etc)
10. Go into the 'HELL' folder, right click on 'HELL.CFG', select 'edit' and make sure the letter there is the drive you installed from. If not, change it to the right letter
11. Right click on the HELL folder and select 'New - Shortcut', for the location, copy the following (modifying any drive/directories as necessary)

"C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.73\dosbox.exe" -conf "H:\GAMES\HELL\dosbox.conf" -noconsole

For the name, you could put something like: Hell - A Cyberpunk Thriller

12. Right click on the new shortcut and select 'Properties' - change the icon if you wish.

13. Right click on the new shortcut and copy and now paste it to your desktop, again to your start menu or anywhere else you would like to place a copy.

14. Run the shortcut and hopefully the game should load up with full dialog audio and music. Now enjoy!!

p.s. now you have done the hard work once, in future you can just copy and paste the .conf file and the shortcut to other Dosbox installs and just modify them instead of making them from scratch again. In doing this, note that the default cycles in the conf file is 9000, I set 12000 for Hell because it ran a bit slow for me on 9000.

[Collector]

An old thread, but if doesn't hurt to have another guide for how to get an old game to work on modern machines.

A couple of notes about your dosbox.conf. It is good that you are using an abbreviated conf file. This makes it much easier to keep track of the settings that deviate from the defaults. Anything not specified will use the defaults for DOSBox. It is also less likely that there will be issues if you update your DOSBox. This is one major failing of GOG. They use a full conf from an outdated version of DOSBox, which often causes problems with their releases.

1) Your captures entry is:

captures= "CDocuments and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\DOSBox\capture"

This would only apply for someone logged into the main Administrator account on XP or earlier. The right entry will depend on both the account name and Windows version. As mentioned, if this entry is left out, DOSBox will just use its default and will automatically go to the right folder.

2) You are using the imgmount command when it looks like you are not really mounting any disc image. This would also normally be under the [autoexec] section. It looks like something left over from experimenting and pasted in from the README.

3) You can drop the machine=svga_s3 as this is the default and svga_s3 will be used without the entry.

4) Drop the Blaster settings in the [autoexec] section. Any changes that you want to make to the blaster settings should be made in the [sblaster] section.

5) Some of your settings do not apply if you are running full screen, but don't hurt to be left in. If someone "Alt+Enter"s out of full screen, then the Window settings would apply.

There are some of these extra settings that might appear in the dosbox.conf files that are created by my installers, but they are generated by a script to work on a wide variety of PCs and for a number of different games for people with different tastes who may or may not be using the latest DOSBox.