DM for PC

rob3034 · Post by **rob3034** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:17 pm

Hi, im trying to get DM for PC to run so i can use DMute to edit the characters,

so ive down loaded the DMPC files from the DM website, unpacked them and followed through the dosbox insructions to run the program. It then asks me what sound i want, what what controls etc, then it jst does nothing?! any ideas?

I did select ones with "*" as it says, not sure what to do to get it to work?

rob

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:58 pm

I've never got sound to work properly for PC-DM, and have just selected option 1 for everything to get it working!

That should be enough to get you playing, no doubt someone else will come along shortly with a more helpful answer...

rob3034 · Post by **rob3034** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:00 pm

lol, thanks george

Post by **Lunever** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:37 pm

There are 3 ways I know to play PC DM:

1) You can run it in the CMD under Win XP. However, in my experience you won't have any sound then. But at least it works.

2) You can run it under DosBox. It works on both my machines, however, on one of them I don't get the resolution work correctly, so the image is not completely filling the screen, but at least it's still big enough to play it properly. In DosBox I do have sound, albeit the startup melody is lagging a bit.

3) If you manage to get proper sound & grafics drivers for MS-DOS for your hardware and run a mouse command, you can simply play it on a MS-DOS partition or under Windows 98SE using the automatic MS-DOS restart. Getting sound drivers work properly can be difficult on some machines though. If you get DM2 play sound properly, usually you can have proper sound in DM1 too.

Ah well, and of course, if you are not looking for specific differences between ST/Amiga and the official PC version, you can simply use the DM1 batch file for CSBWin.

rob3034 · Post by **rob3034** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:45 pm

can you play DM on CSBwin then? i was always under the impression it was just chaos strikes back?!!!

oh and is there difference between ST DM and PC DM, thought they would be the same

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:50 pm

No, CSBwin plays DM and CSB and all the PC DM custom dungeons (some need converted)

Yes, there are differences between PC and ST DM as one was relesed later - for example you can drink from fountains in PC DM and you don't have the blue object outlines when in hand

Relatively minor stuff really

rob3034 · Post by **rob3034** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:53 pm

ok thanks beo

just me being dumb

soz

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:00 pm

The only major addition of DM PC was the ending where you get a little graphic sequence instead of just some text. It's kinda cute the first time you see it, but really nothign too spectacular. So I suggest you just play DM via CSBWin.

rob3034 · Post by **rob3034** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:01 pm

yeah i will do

i never realised you could!!! until 5 mins ago

why on all the dungeon master pages and stuff, it specifically talks about CSBwin as choas strikes back!! theres no mention of it being a dungeon master version of the game?! how come???....

quote...................

This program is a very exact translation of the original Atari ST program, "Chaos Strikes Back". This game, and it predecessor, "Dungeon Master" were remarkable games. They fit on a single floppy disk (before 'high density' was invented) and could be played very nicely on a machine with only 512K bytes of memory. The monsters, setting, and puzzles made it one of the best games of its type. Ever. Games like "Eye of the Beholder" attempted to duplicate the effort but came up short, in my opinion.

I played CSB on the Atari 520ST until it died. Then I was out of luck. I wanted to know how the game worked internally. I wanted to play the game to its conclusion. But I had no computer on which I could do these things.

Finally, after many years, I got my hands on the binary executable for the game. I wrote a disassembler to turn it into human-readable op-codes and proceeded to translate it to C++ using the Microsoft Version 6.0 C++ compiler. Eight hours a day for six months. About 120,000 lines of pseudo-assembly language. Crazy thing to do. But it works.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:20 pm

Because the engine IS Chaos Strikes Back engine ported to windows. It's just they barely changed anything in the engine from the DM engine so it can run DM aswell (it required some minor tweaks to do with the firestaff ending form Paul)

If you look in the root folder you will see bat files set to run DM, if you look at the custom dungeon forum list you will see that they mention PC DM being playable on CSBwin, and most importantly whenever anyone in the past has asked about playing PC DM CSBwin and RTC always get mentioned! : )

So yes, there is no mention i nthe official documentation about it merely becuase of it's originas...just like there isn't a mention of RTC simulating DM II bloody well in a few places - it didn't used to do it!

rob3034 · Post by **rob3034** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:23 pm

ok fair enough, jst seems odd the docs arent updated so "new" visitors know soon as they look

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:27 pm

The doc is describing the original program though... Paul didn't port the dungeon master engine code, just the CSB engine code

"Versions available

CSBWindows98.rar
Chaos Strikes Back for Windows Version 9.8 Executable
This version of CSBwin allows you to play both Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back on your Windows PC."

rob3034 · Post by **rob3034** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:30 pm

8-Bit Star · Post by **8-Bit Star** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 7:21 pm

George Gilbert wrote:I've never got sound to work properly for PC-DM, and have just selected option 1 for everything to get it working!

That should be enough to get you playing, no doubt someone else will come along shortly with a more helpful answer...

About the sound issues... I played DM not long ago, and did some experimenting. If you have a supported soundcard and you're not getting sound, the problem may be that your computer is running too fast.

In MS-DOS on a fairly low-end computer (500 MHz) I had the same issue of not getting any sound. Now, other DOS games have similar issues (notably most Sierra titles and the CD-ROM edition of Flashback: the Quest for Identity) so the first thing I tried was using a program to disable the CPU Cache. This instantly fixed the problem.

Of course, this is a more viable solution under DOS than in Windows.

MDNW · Post by **MDNW** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 9:19 pm

First make a send to short cut using the the Dosbox exe as the target pick a name press finish
Then goto dm.exe send this to the dosbox option then when loaded choose options in this order 1, 6, 1 works great.