Running old DOS AGS games

Nostradamus · Mon 28/08/2006 22:32:19

So I have decided to play again all AGS games I have from the beginning (of time), You know the Rob Blanc, Larry Vales etc. era (ahhhh the good old days) till today. Problem is I have XP and the old games that came with the old dos Adventure Creator (ac.exe) like Larry Vales work but can't play music and smear the graphics when you move the mouse when there's a conversation box. Some games, like the Rob Blanc series, had been released with win mode. But now I want to play Larry Vales and can't play the music. So I tryed different things. VDMsound makes scratchy noises and weird horrid noises when trying to emulate the old sound blaster music. DOSbox doesn't work well with ags games for some reason. I tryed for the long shot and right-clicked the larryvtd.exe-->options-->compatiblity-->win95 compatiblity mode, still didn't play the music.
So is there any way to play the old dos AC games with music under XP?

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Mon 28/08/2006 22:55:52

The only thing you seem not to have tried, and ain't really sure to work, is to go to the Bycycle for Slugs acrhive and find old builds of AGS. Find the most recent one that'll work with the games in question, and rename the game's EXE file to "ac2game.ags", and then run the downloaded AGS' "acwin.exe" file.

Not guaranteed to work, but you sound like you've tried everything else.

Gilbert · Tue 29/08/2006 01:58:38

Also, if you're running an really old game with an really old engine, try renaming it to ac2game.dat instead of ac2game.ags, the extension .ags was only used by newer versions (since V2.4, though it's long time ago already) and may not be recognized by older engines. (actually as far as I know, newer engines recognize both .dat and .ags files)

Nostradamus · Tue 29/08/2006 07:57:24

Rui Pires - that's the kinda answer I was looking for because although I'm here for 6 years I have never tryed to progrma anything in AGS (no creativity for game making) so I don't know the versions of the interpreter. So which one would work with a year 2000 AC game?

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Tue 29/08/2006 11:19:48

Right, that's where it gets tricky... well, the AGSWIKI *might* have some information relating the years to the AGS builds. You could use that to help you. If not, you'll have to go the hard way, and download every single one, from a really old one that plain tell you it don't work and going up until you either find what you need or hit a "This engine only runs newer games than this, you foo'!" message.

I'll be honest - I did this with "DG's Search for Batteries", because it didn't work for me, but I didn't bother to do this with Ace Duswell (I'm also playing 'em all

). I just played it without sound.

Gilbert · Tue 29/08/2006 12:19:08

Try typing:

acdos.exe -?
(or gamename.exe -? if it's compiled with the game)

in a command prompt to find out the interpreter's version.

Nostradamus · Tue 29/08/2006 13:10:10

ok this version of larry vales is made with AC version 2.07.069

Does that help with naming the latest version of interpreter that can load it (with music)?

I don't see a list of downloadable old versions in AGSwiki
(and why the hell is it hosted by americangirlscouts.org lmao?)

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Tue 29/08/2006 13:33:50

No, no, Bycycle for Slugs. http://aafiles.bicycle-for-slugs.org/ags/

I've had a looksie. http://aafiles.bicycle-for-slugs.org/ags/ags_214_sr5.zip is the earliest one with WIN support. I couldn't use it to run Larry Vales. You might be just out of luck...

SSH · Tue 29/08/2006 13:34:19

http://americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/index.php/AGS_Version_history

American Girl Scouts has the same acronym, thats why...

Nostradamus · Tue 29/08/2006 19:59:21

It works!

I tryed to use ags_214_sr5 by changing the name of larryvtd.exe to ac2game.dat. Didn't run on acwin. I entered setup and chose GENERAL MIDI as music source, ran acdos.exe and the music worked however the game gets stuck mid-intro. The interpreter must be too new.
So I went back to the vales1 folder with its original AC v2.07.069, copied the CSWDPMI.exe there, changed larryvtd.exe to ac2game.dat and entered setup through DOSbox (cswdpmi and renaming required to run setup) and again changed the music source setting to GENERAL MIDI... and it worked!! there's music and it doesn't get stuck at the intro!

I wonder how I didn't think about that previously ... $:-\$

Thanks for helping guys.
Maybe this thread should be sticky or just the way to run music on old dos AC games under XP should be entered into the FAQ or wherever to help people who will encounter this problem in the future.

FamousAdventurer77 · Fri 01/09/2006 08:48:13

Oh, I had this SAME EXACT problem when I ran Quest For Glory 4 1/2-- using DosBox/D-Fend won't work with these, but using VDMsound requires some tweaking with it. Here's what I did and I recommend this for

1) Go the game main exe's Properties window and set the compatability for Windows 95. In my experience this made it run smoother 95% of the time.

2) Select the program to run with VDMS if you haven't already done so. Accept the defaults for now, quit the game.

3) Now you'll see the VDMS Shortcut for that DOS exe in that folder. Right-click it to go its Properties.

4) Sometimes, just changing the sound driver from General MIDI to Roland MT-32 actually works believe it or not! It was precisely how I got my old copy of Kyrandia 2 to work. (Though I can't get Kyrandia 3 to work for the life of me it ALWAYS says it cant find the westwood001 file though it's sitting right there...okay, to go back to topic--) When I had General MIDI selected it made these gross croaky noises with no sound or music, but I changed it to Roland and suddenly it ran beautifully. So change the driver to Roland or leave it at MIDI, just see what works and/or if the sound changes and sounds better or worse.

5) The next is all tweaking and experimenting, just seeing what works the best-- click on the "Advanced" thing in the VDMS Shortcut Properties. You can try to raise the numbers in "Compatability", and change MIDI mapping devices if need be. Sometimes trying to get reduced CPU usage as well can also work-- pretty much, just tweak those and see what works.

I thought I'd NEVER get QFG 4.5 to have sound and music but I did with that method.

Nostradamus · Sat 02/09/2006 06:19:03

Well running setup to change to general midi, even a file ranming is involved, seems easier to me than all this trial and error with VDMsound. General Midi should work for most people, but I guess each sound card has its own compatiblity. For me those weird noises happened with VDMsound. Last evening I tryed using a WIN95 version game that was made in acwin 2.21 with compatability for win95 and it worked too slow and instead of music there was just random sounds. I'm sure some early acwin games would work under win95 compatibnlity mode but it doesn't work with all.

Esseb · Sat 02/09/2006 08:06:18

You can give VMware a try, if VDMsound and DOSBox doesn't work for you.

Huw Dawson · Sat 02/09/2006 09:53:16

And, if your REALLY desperate and have a shiny new computer, you could just install Windows 98 as a secondary OS. I wouldn't recommend it though. Ask your local computer nerd (LCN) for more info. :

- Huw

Nostradamus · Sun 03/09/2006 08:35:11

actually that's easy, just set your OTHER hard drive (not the XP hard drive) as primary master in BIOS and install win98 on it, and you can change it which of them is primary master depending on which system you want to load.
But why the hell would you that anyway when all you need to do as said above is run the setup program