Has anyone tried this on real hardware? the no cd feature works, and i do get roland music(without the roland fx) but i also get no sb sound.

The issue is probably the game's SB auto-detection, which works in DOSBox but might not elsewhere. I have a solution in mind, but it will be some days before I can implement and test it.

ripsaw8080 wrote on 2024-07-12, 04:19:

The issue is probably the game's SB auto-detection, which works in DOSBox but might not elsewhere. I have a solution in mind, but it will be some days before I can implement and test it.

I imagined it was that for a simple reason: When launching the game normally i was getting a little pop as the game starts and the SB is initialized. With SKYDRV the pop was not happening. Just wondering if you'll implement something in SKYDRV itself or just patch SKY.EXE? Of course the latter is more intrusive.

carlostex wrote on 2021-01-04, 18:53:

I don't really care about emulators so SCUMMVM is really not an option for me. In fact, i loathe some SCUMMVM GOG releases which do not include certain files, making them Impossible to run on period correct hardware.

Not that it might matter to you in this case, but ScummVM is not an emulator. It's an open source (re)implementation of popular adventure game engines.

digger wrote on 2024-07-12, 12:00:

Not that it might matter to you in this case, but ScummVM is not an emulator. It's an open source (re)implementation of popular adventure game engines.

Yes sure, it runs the game engine natively and just uses the original resources. Anyway, it's not for me.

Same here.
I like playing my games on original hardware 😀

crusher wrote on 2024-07-12, 17:33:

Same here.
I like playing my games on original hardware 😀

Me too. The feeling is lot better. However I have played lately via ScummVM Lucasarts adventures FM Towns versions 😀

Dimitris1980 wrote on 2024-07-12, 19:51:

crusher wrote on 2024-07-12, 17:33:

Same here.
I like playing my games on original hardware 😀

Me too. The feeling is lot better. However I have played lately via ScummVM Lucasarts adventures FM Towns versions 😀

ScummVM is great as it is not an emulation but an implementation of the real game engine on other platforms.
Your setup looks great!
On which platform you used ScummVM?

crusher wrote on 2024-07-12, 21:22:

ScummVM is great as it is not an emulation but an implementation of the real game engine on other platforms. Your setup looks gr […]
Show full quote

Dimitris1980 wrote on 2024-07-12, 19:51:

crusher wrote on 2024-07-12, 17:33:

Same here.
I like playing my games on original hardware 😀

Me too. The feeling is lot better. However I have played lately via ScummVM Lucasarts adventures FM Towns versions 😀

ScummVM is great as it is not an emulation but an implementation of the real game engine on other platforms.
Your setup looks great!
On which platform you used ScummVM?

On Apple iMac G3 😀. The last version of ScummVM runs perfectly most of the games. The CRT is 15 inches and it has very nice sharp picture 😀

carlostex wrote on 2024-07-12, 11:41:

Just wondering if you'll implement something in SKYDRV itself or just patch SKY.EXE? Of course the latter is more intrusive.

Modifying the game code in memory rather than on disk is still intrusive, but more easily reversible, and more convenient for anyone that wants to run the game from an original CD.

I've updated SKYDRV in my first post in this thread. Please see my comment about the hardware configuration in the install program, and I hope it gets the SB sound working on your system.

Thank you ripsaw8080, i will try that and report back.

EDIT: Absolutely brilliant it works! Par excellence!

ripsaw8080 got me inspired into at least taking a look into some of the source code. What jumps immediately at first is that the devs left out a lot of code that seems to be unused. For instance: There is a routine to check if the machine is a Tandy system, it checks if its a Tandy 1000 with PSSJ or the 3 voice chip only. However i couldn't find a Tandy 3 voice chip playing routine.

I guess Tandy support was intended but never implemented.

carlostex wrote on 2024-07-12, 13:48:

digger wrote on 2024-07-12, 12:00:

Not that it might matter to you in this case, but ScummVM is not an emulator. It's an open source (re)implementation of popular adventure game engines.

Yes sure, it runs the game engine natively and just uses the original resources. Anyway, it's not for me.

I completely respect that.

If I may give just one angle that might resonate with some people:

ScummVM has been ported to many different platforms, old and new. That means that it allows for interesting hypothetical retro setups. "What could have been" nostalgia, so to speak.

To give an example:

As far as I know, the Sierra and LucasArts adventure games were never ported to the Acorn Archimedes back in the day, even though those systems would have been perfectly capable of running those games with comparable quality graphics and sound compared to competing platforms. But I just checked, and ScummVM supports RISC OS version 3.06 and up, which means that it should be possible to run it on an Acorn Archimedes A3010, basically the counterpart to the Amiga 500 and the Atari ST. The fact that a fondly remembered game that didn't originally come out for a less common platform ended up running natively on it after all is something that some people might get a kick out of. (I sure do.)

And apart from the fact that emulators feel a bit like cheating, those wouldn't be feasible in this case anyway, since the alternative platforms would be just as old as the platforms the games originally were developed for. An Archimedes A3010 may have been able to give an Amiga 500 a run for its money, but it wasn't even close to fast enough to emulate it.

Fun fact: years ago, I played Beneath a Steel Sky on ScummVM on a Nintendo Wii. I got quite far in the game while playing it on that platform, until I eventually got stuck somewhere and stopped playing it. (I should pick it up some time. Maybe the game saves are still on my Wii, now that I think about it!) But there was something cool about playing a DOS adventure game (that I hadn't played before, except for may be a demo back in the day) on a completely different platform. And the Wii's 480p output also prevented the 320x200 resolution graphics from becoming two harshly pixelated. Granted, the Adlib music was obviously emulated, but there was still something fun and strangely appropriate about playing it on an unlikely platform that wasn't crazily overpowered for it.

I know, I know, it's still not the same as playing the original game on the original hardware for which it initially was released. I'm just saying that ScummVM tickles a different kind of nostalgic vibe. ☺️

Okay, I'll stop hijacking your thread now. 😇 (It might be deserving of its own topic...)

ScummVM is cool, i like the idea of natively implementing the game engine and just using the games resources, but the project seems to be exclusively focused on adventure games. IF in the future they implement other genres maybe i'll seriously look into it. Would totally dig playing Dynamix flight simulators without the issues and modern control enhancements. Or the great Microprose sims too, like Fleet Defender.

Wow, fantastic stuff ripsaw8080! Thanks for that 😀

I really want to try this patch but my PC is at the house where I grew up (and almost all the retro equipment: Amiga 1200, Amiga 500, Atari 1040 STF, various Macs) and I do not know when I am gonna give a visit again.

I have kept only my Imac G3 and a Philips CD-I 220/60 in the house where I live with my family and that's why I use ScummVM for some games.

I prefer the real systems but I can say that ScummVM is great. I use it only for systems that I do not own like FM Towns and Sega CD. The Secret of Monkey Island Sega version looks very nice and runs great on my Imac G3 with the ScummVM. Fast loading times, able to save (it does not use a code like the real Sega CD), brighter screen.

Digger mentioned sth about Acorn Archimedes A3010. Well, all his post was very nice, I agree. I believe that Acorn could have titles of Lucasarts and Sierra Online. Last summer I bought the original Acorn versions new in box of Simon the Sorcerer floppy and Simon the Sorcerer CD version (I didn't know that there was also an Acorn cd version until then). But, honestly, I do not have an Acorn machine and my economics are tight right now. But, although I am a player more than a collector, I really like owning these games for this special computer. Moreover, I found them in a nice price.

Yesterday evening I started downloading patches of many games, especially adventures for PCs and Macs in order to write a cd with patches and updates. The games that I want the most to test right now is Beneath a Steel Sky and Willy Beamish CD (also for Roland music in combination with Sound blaster for speech and sound effects).

For the history, my PC is a Cyrix 6x86 PR120+, 32MB ram, S3 Virge 4MB, 20GB hard drive, dvd drive, Sound blaster Vibra 16S, Roland MT-32 old generation, Roland CM-64, Roland SC55, Yamaha MU50

Sounds like a nice setup, especially for DOS adventure gaming. Enjoy! 😃

digger wrote on 2024-07-14, 22:25:

Sounds like a nice setup, especially for DOS adventure gaming. Enjoy! 😃

Thanks! 😀

Excellent that a patch finally has been made. A final issue is that the game for some reason (not a fault of the patch, the game always has done so) lowers SoundBlaster volume in DOSBox (to 4:4 in DOSBox-X and 12:12 in Daum), making sound effects almost inaudible against the MT-32 music. And the sound volume slider doesn't work with MT-32 music (there is no such slider with the MT-32 option normally). Luckily however, this can be easily circumvented by setting sbmixer=false in the DOSBox config. Setting "mixer SB 50" puts the digitised effects at a comfortable level against the music, otherwise they're too loud in my experience.

Laukku wrote on 2024-07-22, 08:15:

the game for some reason (not a fault of the patch, the game always has done so) lowers SoundBlaster volume in DOSBox

That happens with the default sbtype=sb16 setting in DOSBox, and it's more pronounced in SVN (4:4) than in 0.74 (12:12). However, instead of disabling the SB mixer (sbmixer=false), sbtype=sbpro1 or sbtype=sbpro2 should do better with the mixer levels used by the game.