DOS Games Discussion

Upon finding out that dos emulators exist (I had been told previously by my computer tech. and apps. teacher that no such thing existed, dashing my hopes of ever playing catacombs or heretic again) I was pretty excited to download and use it. The DOSBox download went fine and, as far as I can tell, the program works as it should be. My problem lies mostly with installing the unzipped games, getting 16 bit error messages, and using D-fend v2. If anyone could help an obvious noob like myself it would be greatly appreciated.

you could begin here:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5443
And if you have problems , elaborate please a bit more , be specific , Questions as ' i have problems ' are only replyable by writing a whole encyclopedia.
State first you system specs:
CPU? OS ?
Many answers depends what system you are on , XP ? ME? W98 ?

Are you trying to install those games through dosbox ? ......etcetera.....
Ask questions a smart way and you will get a respons.yes ?

Good idea. Well to elaborate on my problem whenever I attempt to install any game (I've tried multiple ones to see if it was just that one game) it gives me the error message:

C:WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not sutiable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications.

My specs are:
-Windows XP
- DOSBox 0.63
-D-Fend v2 (That I have no idea how to use, but then again the same could be said about DOSBox)
-RADEON 9000

I don't know how much this will help but it's a little less vague than my original post.

"The system file is not sutiable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications."
You can use that to google , and you get plenty of hits to repair it.Also on this board you can find many topics about this .BUT repairing it will not get you gaming.

You will need dosbox to install / play the games .Certainly on XP.
Have you read the topic i provided the link ?
For starters replace the keen-stuff by your heretic.
Unzip heretic to x:\games\heretic (the <x> can be your <c> or your games partition, if you have one)
As i own myself a copy of heretic i've never use the one of dosgames , so i don't know if you must install it . You have to find out for yourself or ask again here . I will suppose the game itself doesn't need installing , but you will need to setup the sound param's:
Mount your x:\games onto dosbox as described , and:
cd heretic<enter>
setup<enter>
Choose for soundblaster, A= 220 IRQ=7 DMA=1.
choose save and exit.
At the prompt type:
heretic<enter> and here you should be going .
Ingame hit <ALT>+<ENTER> for fullscreen.
Good luck.
If it doesn't work , please be a specific as possible when you ask for help.

Though progress was made I'm sorry to report I'm still having issues with it. I don't know what you mean by entering cd heretic and then setup for I entered it in bolth the notepad document and in DOSBox but it seemed to do nothing . But, as far as DOSBox goes I did make some sort of progress, after changing the mount to C:\Games\Heretic I typed C: in DOSBox and then INSTALL.BAT. Two bars were shown and after asking me the directory I would like to save it to and whatnot the two bars indicated that it had downloaded, or so I think. After this a list of text came up such as INFLATING: FILE ID.DIZ etc. etc. Then it just stopped, I didn't know what to make of this so after a few minutes of waiting I exited and proceeded to do the same thing over again with the same result, only after a list of (y/n) questions as to if I wanted to replace the files that were already there . When this failed again and I recieved an error message I went into the Heretic folder and found that it was not installed at all. A folder was made but nothing in it was executable, everything in it was just text documents I've read the articles you refered to and I don't remember them covering this sort of thing but I could be wrong. I'll try it with another game and see if that works.


Edit: I installed another game with sucess but it failed to load and my computer froze.

Ok then, let's get some things clear:
1)in dosbox you don't mount a directory , you mount a root.
so :mounting the heretic directory or input it into the dosbox conf :NO.Or you wan't be able to install / play another game !
2)You only mount your root , when you start dosbox and have your root mounted , then type cd heretic to get into your directory heretic.
So you have to change your dosbox configuration ,by hitting the 'notepad' document that dosbox start up into
C:
Then type while dosbox is running!! on the dosprompt:
cd heretic<enter>
your prompt should change to c:/heretic.
from there you can run the install and game.

You say you got nothing else then textdocuments ?
Are you looking through explorer? You need dosbox running and start the install or playing THROUGH dosbox, not windows !

You have to understand some things:
The c: in dosbox is in fact the x:\games , MOUNTED as virtual c:
In explorer you will see: x:\games\heretic
Dosbox will see it as : c:\heretic
If you install other games into THEIR OWN subdir x:\games\whatever
dosbox will regard it as c:\whatever , on condition your x:\games is mounted as c: root.

Thanks, got it to work but it is very, very choppy to the point where it is far to slow to play; do you know how to fix this? Also, do you remember if it had music? I seem to remember music played in the begining but I'm not sure, the sound effects are not a problem and work fine. Thanks for your help.

Nice you got so far already.

Now for dosbox , you must understand some more thingy's.
Dosbox itself isn't not that demanding on memory , but on the otherhand demanding on cpu power.
The more free cpu-time (cpucycles ) the more performing dosbox will be .
So look what's running on the background and shut that down .
(internet-msn-also 'active desktop'.....everything you don't need) allow only your security progs running.
For the music : on the dosprompt in your heretic folder type
setup<enter>
choose "music card' ( or somethging simular , i'm doing this from memory..)dosbox support 'general midi' at 330.
For fx sound the default setting on dosbox is:
Soundblaster / IRQ- 7 A- 220 DMA- 1 On my pc i can choose 8 channels ,you also can try this , but if it's to demanding lower to 4 channels.

Now we gonna look to the cpu-cycles.Once again on my pc heretic was running fine on 20 000 cycles ,but that can be less on yours, depending of your system.
When you look onto the window you will see 'cpucycles , you can rise them with CTRL+F12 , and lower them with CTRL+F11 ,You will have to try it out what's best on your system.
Also remember that if you can't get the game running smoothly you d'better disable the music , and only allow the fx sound.

Another thing are the frameskip, you can rise those with CTRL+F8 and lower them with CTRL+F7.
Don't set the frameskip to high , or your game will become jerky.
Let the frameskip to begin on the default = 0.
Go to fullscreen mode hitting
ALT+ENTER. Should also been helping to run better.

It is useless to overclock your cpu , you can control this by hitting CTRL+ALT+ENTER once, you will get taskmonitor , at the left you will see cpu usage in %, going up to 100 % is useless. You can use the taskmon to check your system if you don't get the game running smootly.If by rising the cpucycles to 15 000 , and the gameplay isn't smoothly , and your cpu is at 100% ,then you have reach the max on your sytem.

This may sound a bit complicated at first ,but only needed t'ill you know the possibilitys of your system.
Also i have to say that heretic is a demanding game ,most 'after' doom games are. If it should occur that you don't get it running smoothly try a earlier game, likely it will run smoothly.

Good luck, and if all go swell ,let us know.And may you have problems ,let us also know.
Good luck.

To make it simpler for you: DosBox defaultly emulates slower pcs - great for running really old games, but even ones from the early ninties will run slowly. CTRL+f12 will increase your CPUcycles, making your emulation faster. Bump your cycles up to 10k for starters. Also, make sure to hit alt-enter, so you run the game in full screen.

Got it to work the other night but didn't get the chance to post back, thanks for helping me get DOSBox working.