cosurgi on 19/11/2007 at 14:36

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Hello,

during past days I've been trying to run SS1 under linux. I almost gave up, but finally I succeeded. Long story short:

1. dosbox: sound works, 640x480 resolution is crappy slow. 320x200 has acceptable speed, but this low resolution beats me. I don't want to play 2 weeks with this setup.

2. qemu: thanks to many posts on those forums I was able to install dos 6.22 and run SS1 in it. Only MIDI sound works. No speech or fight noises. Under 640x480 it is a bit too slow.

But then I saw "System Shock Portable" (on this forum several posts below this one) - awesome stuff. This one works.

Exact instructions:

1. you need a working linux installation :)

2. install qemu, and kqemu packages (I used version 0.9, off-the-shelf debian packages), remember to 'modprobe kqemu' module, so that it will work.

3. get win98.iso file with your serial numbers.

4. pick some directory for your qemu stuff, put there your install cd image

5. qemu-img create -f qcow qemu_98 4G

6. qemu -hda ./qemu_98 -cdrom ./win98.iso -boot d -soundhw all

7. watch out for any qemu errors "cannot get /dev/dsp" If so, you gotta sound problems. For me, it always got fixed when I closed all my web browsers: galeon, firefox and opera. Perhaps flash player is using sound card too much? Run qemu being sure that it can grab the sound card /dev/dsp et al.

8. now, install win98 when instalation is finished - close qemu

9. get System Shock Portable and SSP_windows9x.7z from (http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,211.0.html)

10. get VDMSound for win98 from (http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=900)

11 get vcredist.exe from (http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/vdmsound/vcredist.exe)

12. you can unpack SSP_windows9x.7z using linux package p7zip

13. put them all in some subdir, eg. ./ssp/

14. qemu -hda ./qemu_98 -hdc fat:./ssp/ -boot c -soundhw all

15. You will have a D:\ with all this stuff placed in ./ssp dir

16. Install all of this according to instructions written on those websites from points 9. and 10.

17. remember to run C:\VDMSOUND\VXDSBOOM.EXE and C:\VDMSOUND\DOSDRV.BAT each time before you play (or write a .BAT script for this ;)

18. play game using files from SSP_windows9x.7z - 1024x768.bat and dgvesa_shock.bat

I'm attaching a single screenshot:

(http://geo.hmg.inpg.fr/~janek/ss1.jpg)

Note - this won't work with win2k or winXP under qemu. Only with win98. The FPS is great under 640x480 and reasonably good under 1024x768. I wouldn't even suppose that it was possible, given my bad experience with qemu + dos622 (and not working sound). After all those days I feel really good that finally I have a working System Shock 1 under qemu, linux with win98 (not dosbox, or dos622 !) and with working sound.

Now maybe you can answer one question - is it possible to have bigger letters in 1024x768 ? See that font on the screenshot... it is too small.

If it's not possible, then I maybe I'll rather play under 640x480, fullscreen. I just need to add this resolution to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Or maybe someone knows how to scale up 2x qemu window? Then it would be possible to play inside a window (where 640x480 times two is 1280x960)

Also I noticed that email texts are not the same as text said in speech (eg. that one on the screenshot). This confuses a bit, during listening/reading of such message.. Anybody tried to fix that (by replacing text messages)?

All TTLG posts were really helpful for me. Thank you very much for this. I decided to post here my solution, becase so far nobody succeeded to have SS1 working with sound on linux - as I can tell from several days of googling for help.

Best regards

cosurgi on 19/11/2007 at 19:19

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yes, I've googled this too. But this project is currently suspended for few years for now. Last screenshot is from 2003. So why do you ask? If you wanted me to join it... well I wish I had time for this - it requires more time and commitment than just playing the game ;)

Kolya on 20/11/2007 at 17:21

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I'm not very versed with Linux, but since you need windows 98 anyway for your method, wouldn't it be easier and faster, to install win98/XP to a separate partition? Besides the fact that you could run lots of other games that way.

cosmicnut on 21/11/2007 at 08:18

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Basically all this is doing is running a windows virtual machine.
I had tried this but could never get sound to work properly so GOOD ONE!

The problem with installing Win98 is that there are very few drivers around for it for some of the modern hardware.

Add to that, SS1 is a DOS mode game and you would need DOS mode drivers....

No one developed a driver for the Creative audigy let alone Xi-Fi that I have. I'm not sure how VESA 1.0 complient my new 8800GTX is...

In theory you could create a virtual PC like this and run any Win98 / DOS game