ToxicFrog on 21/5/2004 at 23:16
Alright, it mostly works but I'm having two problems here.
The first is that the music plays slowly - not in a choppy manner, but as though each note were being held for twice its normal value. I'm using VDMS 2.0.4 without the launchpad; using 2.0.4 with LP or 2.1.0 made the problem much worse, or simply didn't work at all. Which is a pity, because I miss the launchpad.
The other problem is that when Shock actually starts up (no longer in the menu but in the game proper), rather than seeing the entire game screen, I am shown the upper left corner (128x96 or thereabouts, I'd guess) of the screen, expanded to fill the entire screen. The game behaves perfectly normally except for that. (I really hope I don't need the VDMSLP to fix this...)
This behavior is the same regardless of whether I use dos4gw, mouse2kv, noLFB, none, or any combination thereof.
Quote:
Originally posted by Deckard_BR * All digital sound files cause the CD to spin up, resulting in a five-second freeze every time the game accesses one. Is there any way to avoid this?
The best way would probably be to copy the CD to your hard drive and edit the cdshock.bat etc. to point to the directory you copied it to.
Another option would be to create an image of CD and mount the image.
I'm not sure if there's any way to tell Shock to look locally for the sounds and just copy over the sound resfiles, though.
Deckard_BR on 24/5/2004 at 14:52
Seems logical, but I can't figure out how you'd force the game to run the sounds from the HDD rather than the CD.
By way of a progress report, I'm up to level 7 to destroy the antennae. I'll take a header to the desktop once every four hours or so of play time. One time, I got a Salt the Fries GPF error. The other times have generated no error message. Apart from that and the CD spin-up, however, the game functions perfectly normally. I am ONLY using VDMSound 2.1.0 beta, which either comes with DOS extenders, or my system already contained dos4gw 1.97. I am not using NOLFB.com or any of the other items from the FAQ. Given that I got the same CTD with the other things installed, I find it unlikely that their absence is affecting the issue, and I'm chalking it up to the fundamental incompatibility between DOS and WinXP.
ToxicFrog on 25/5/2004 at 08:22
If it thinks that the CD is actually located in F:\Games\SSHOCKCD rather than G:\ (to take the example from my system), it will load them from the hard drive.
The easiest way to do this is just to copy the entire CD to your hard drive and install from there.
If you don't want to do that, here's what you need to do:
-copy your Shock CD to the hard drive. I'll assume it's in F:\SSHOCKCD for this.
-Edit cyb.cfg so that the cd_data_dir_path line reads as so:
cd_data_dir_path F:\SSHOCKCD\cdrom\data
-Edit cdshock.bat so that the call to cdshock (typically something like G:\CDSHOCK.EXE, although you will likely have edited it to get it working) points to either the hard drive location you copied the CD to, or to another copy of CDSHOCK.EXE such as one in your Shock install dir.
-edit sshock.bat if you ever use it, similar to cdshock.bat above.
In theory, I guess you could just copy the cdrom\data directory and it would still work, but I've never tried that.
(Side note: I now have a pure DOS box. Runs UUW fine, SFC mostly fine; Shock is choppy at 640x480, though, and I just can't bring myself to reduce the eye candy level...)
Hylix Ulyx on 25/5/2004 at 09:14
Sorry for not bothering to reply ( I haven't checked this thread in awhile):
Deckard:
the new beta VDMS comes with all those files, and installs them automatically. So it's basically doing all the work for you.
me, personally, I copied the VDMS versions (of the required-to-play-ss-files) from the folder in to my sshock folder just in case, but it's obviously not necessary for you.
I'm glad you got it working.
A simpler way of getting the files to the hard drive is drop the \cdrom\data folder from the actual CD (will say your cd drive is G:\) in your SSHOCK directory (for example D:\SSHOCK ). Make sure you drop the whole CDROM folder.
When all the files are copied into that folder, then open the cyb.cfg and, like toxic suggested, change the line
cd_data_dir_path G:\SSHOCK\cdrom\data
to the directory D:\SSHOCK \cdrom\data
It should work.
Toxic: Sorry for not bothering to reply ( I haven't checked this thread in awhile), but it seems you've remedied the problem on your own. I might take your advice and make my own real dos box.
Just an aside, the problem you were having with you screen view sounds like a conflict with your graphics card driver's legacy support (like vesa and vga) and the dos extender. ATI (as an example, I don't know what card you have) only remedied thier piss poor vesa support recently in thier drivers. Before that, I was experiencing all kinds of wacky things, which got worse or better (used loosely) depending on the extender. VDMS can also cause some conflicts with your drivers, especially if they don't support any vesa modes, since VDSM will emulate that for you. Of course, then, you wouldn't see anything at all.
But, I guess the point's moot now. I'm glad you're able to play.
Deckard_BR on 25/5/2004 at 14:52
Sounds great! I'll try it tonight.
I suspect my Salt the Fries errors are related to my running ViruScan in the background during gameplay. Probably screws it up six ways to Sunday.
ToxicFrog on 26/5/2004 at 02:31
Quote Posted by Hylix Ulyx
Toxic: Sorry for not bothering to reply ( I haven't checked this thread in awhile), but it seems you've remedied the problem on your own. I might take your advice and make my own real dos box.
It's not actually playable yet at 640x480; I need to dig up a P266 from somewhere. Deck 8 is so close I can almost taste the energy mines.
Quote Posted by Hylix Ulyx
Just an aside, the problem you were having with you screen view sounds like a conflict with your graphics card driver's legacy support (like vesa and vga) and the dos extender. ATI (as an example, I don't know what card you have) only remedied thier piss poor vesa support recently in thier drivers.
That would most likely be the problem, since I've got an ATI card and I'm a few driver minor-versions behind the curve. Thanks for the info.
Deckard_BR on 26/5/2004 at 15:43
Curses.
Now I'm getting Salt the Fries errors within ten minutes of playing. Wonder what the fudge is going on? It's level 7.
Oh, and the data trick didn't fly. Game wouldn't load (though I may just need to tweak the "FILES=" parameter).
Hylix Ulyx on 27/5/2004 at 09:07
Deckard,
Are you certain you're putting the right folder in the right place?
After up click and drag the entire CDROM folder from the CD into the install directory, when you open your SShock folder you should see four inside:
CDROM
DATA
GEN
SOUND
then in the cyb.cfg the line should be
cd_data_dir_path C(or whatever the pathname is):SSHOCK\cdrom\data
I don't think your stupid, I just re-read my post, and am not sure if I was clear.
Deckard_BR on 27/5/2004 at 14:27
Ahhhh, see, the way it read, it looked like "copy over the \CDROM\DATA folder from the CD into the c:\SSHOCK\DATA folder," rather than the entire CDROM folder into a separate subdirectory branch.
Guess I'll give that a whirl. :)
(UPDATE: Worked great. Still taking little dives to the desktop, but I've just about popped antenna number 4, so at least I can get off the frackin' Engineering level finally.)
ethered on 9/6/2004 at 04:49
I've looked around and haven't found my question answered well enough for me to fix it. :|
Salt the fries error 2004 (resource error/ couldn't find palette).
Set files=30
I've read on Vogons that this means the cd couldn't be found?
I am pretty sure I have followed the Guide to the letter.
So I have tried burning my downloaded copy to a CD, and changing the cyb file to E:\CDROM\DATA
then a directory on my harddrive, changing the CYB file appropriately trying it in caps, lowercase and proper text.
I tried putting the cdrom file into my install directory and changing the cyb.cfg
I also tried the dosbox and got the same thing, although I couldn't understand most of the readme.
Right now I think I am using dos4gw.197.2 I have also tried a few other dos4gws that didn't work.
My specs:
Aopen AK79D-400VN 2200+ 512 RAM
Radeon 9800Pro 4.4 cat
onboard soundcard
Aopen Cd/dvd combo
DX9.0b
updated drivers etc.
:confused:
