I recently bought DM2 from Ebay. I managed to get the game to install by using the install icon on the CD. Then using the DOS command option from the Accessories menu I tried to start the game. However, everytime I try to get the game to start it says "Run setup program first". I have tried every DOS command I know but I can not get the set up program to work; either from the CD or the directory file on my computer. I have tried just clicking on the icon a black DOS window flashes up and then disappears. I have also tried the commands in the DOS window "Setup.exe" & "cd\setup" but it does not work.
Can anyone help me?
If not then I will have to return the game to the Ebay seller tomorrow so that I can get my money back but I really do not want to do this.
1) You should not return it to the ebay seller if the CD and its box and manual are ok, since it is not his fault if you try to run an old MS-DOS game on a probably more modern machine. Getting the proper information to make it work is in this instance your responsibility, not his.
2) I think you will get the information here if you take some time and effort. In the quick-links pull-down menu above there is a link the Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia. You will find there a general description of how to make it work either on a MS-DOS partition or by using the MS-DOS emulator DosBox that is generally recommended to play old MS-DOS games on Win2k/WinXP. You will also find a DM2 patch there that removes a couple of problems, and a tool that makes the old setup better compatible with more recent sound cards.
3) If these general information is not enough to make ot work on your machine (which may be since it IS a bit tricky), please browse through the threads about installing DM2 first that you will find in this very forum. There have been numerous people asking the same question in the past here, and most could be helped. Probably you will find answers to your questions if you browse a little here.
4) If this should not help you, because some specification on your machine is different from previous visitors or you do unwittingly something different than other forumers, I'm sure we can help you out more specifically. However, in order to allow the regulars here to help you more directly, it would help if you'd post the specifications of your machine and OS.
- what computer do you try to install DM2, how fast is it, how much menory does it have, what grafic card, sound card does it use, do you use a PS2 mouse?
- What OS are you running?
Did you create a separate MS-DOS partition to install such an old game (recommended for slower machines)? If so, did you get the proper MS-DOS sound card drivers and have them installed and tested apart from DM2 (not available for all types of sound cards though)?
Or do you use Windows98/SE and initiate a MS-DOS reboot? For you cannot start DM2 directly in Windows, not even from the CMD (probably you mean that by "DOS command option from the accessries menu").
Or do you, like most people, use a more recent OS like Win2k/WinXP that is basically incompatible to MS-DOS-based applications? In the latter case you cannot start an old game like DM2 from the CMD, you will have to install and configure the tool DosBox instead, but only fast computers get along well with it.
5) What do you mean by "but it does not work"? What is exactly happening? Does the game start but crashes? Does the intro sequence appear first, before a crash? Or do you get just some error prompt? Or doesn't happen anything at all? Do you have basic MS-DOS command knowledge or are you a user unfamilar with MS-DOS commands? Did you change the default path the proper drive and directory first? What do you mean by "cd\setup"? I hope you meant that instead of "cd" you entered the path to your CD drive, and did not actually enter "cd\setup"?
Based on the information requested above it should be possible to make DM2 run on any machine (though not necessarily with sound).
Parting is all we know from Heaven, and all we need of hell.
Just for confirmation: It took me a little while to figure it out, but today I swept the dust from my old DM1 and DM2 boxes, and installed them on my WinXPpro desktop (mainly to help a little in testing and comparing the new DM2 RTC demo).
DM1 can be - hard to believe - run perfectly from the CMD. Of course it can also be run from the DosBox.
Then I installed DosBox 6.5 from the German mirror of sourceforge.net and simply configured a couple of pathes like
mount c e:\spiele
mount a a:\
mount -cd
mount d j:\ -t cdrom -usecd 1 -ioctl
mount e g:\downloads
C:\
Then I downloaded the german language and keyboard plugins, unpacked them into the DosBox directory and copied the keyb command to my games directory. I entered once in DosBox the command "config -writeconf dosbox.conf" to change the help texts to German, then I used the editor to change the default language to German by setting language=deutsch.lng and copied the above mount commands into the [autoexec} part of the dosbox.conf file, followed by "keyb gr".
Then I started DosBox and ran the install routine of my CD:
D:\
install
the installation routine automatically changes the current directory to Intrplay\Skulkeep once, but if you want to use DosBox only to play DM2 you might as well add a "CD Intrplay\Skulkeep at the end of the [autoexec] part of the dosbox.conf file
I could without problems call up the setup by entering "setup", and even the auto-detection and the digital test did work (which they did not very well in earlier DosBox versions let alone Win9x if I remember correctly).
Then I started dm2 by entering "dm2" to call up the file dm2.bat in the skulkeep folder (do NOT use the skulkeep.exe ! ), and the game worked.
However, because I do not like the German translation of DM2 I then downloaded the English version from the Czech mirror available at the old Encyclopaedia forums. Since the English download does not have an install command and the install command of the German CD doesn't seem to copy the appropriate files even if that file was copied to and run from the english download folder, I just unpacked them straight over the German installation, and it worked unexpectingly without any problems.
Then I downloaded the patch for DM2, available at the old Encyclopaedia forum site. I unpacked it to a different folder than the game was in, ran it from DosBox, entered in the installation dialogue the appropriate drive letter for the source drive, C for the destination drive, and then you will have to enter manually the proper path when asked; pre-configured default is
\skulkeep
but I had to enter \Intrplay\Skulkeep because that's been the default directory of my German DM2 installation CD. I ran the setup again, and it still worked fine.
Then I downloaded Tom's HMI-Update and unpacked it over the existing files, however, after that the sound and the game still worked, but the sound had slight lags, so I manually copied the older files from the czech dm2 download over it again, after that everything was fine, well except that I still have slight problems with using fullscreen in DosBox (I hope I can find a solution there), and my PC is just a bit to old for DosBox 0.65 and DM2 to run smoothly, it has slight lags, but it is still playable.
I hope that this IS detailed enough for anyone not familar with MS-DOS.
In addition I will also create a separate Win98SE and/or MS-DOS partition, I'll write a detailed report when I'll have done so, but that might take a while, for the original Win98 CD I still have is a stupi OEM version that will not allow to be installed on a machine that already has a different partition with a different Windows on it, not even if it is a hidden, inactive partition, so I'll have to see whether I can get a full retail Win98SE anywhere, like for example on ebay.
Between installing DM1 and DM2 I also installed the CSBWin-package from the Encyclopaedia along with the latest engine update from Paul's webspace (because I didn't do it since my last complete OS re-installation after a bad crash). Does work, however, as things are currently CSBWin is a bit awkward for inexperienced players to install and run, I think Paul should add a link to the full package on his webspace and somehow enable CSBWin to have a starting menu that will allow you to choose which dungeon you want to play, like RTC does.
Parting is all we know from Heaven, and all we need of hell.
I'm using DosBox 6.5 to make Dungeon Master and Dungeon Master 2 run on an Athlon 1GHz, 768 MB RAM and a 19" TFT in WinXPpro. I have configured DosBox fair enough to allow me to run these 2 games, but I got problems with resolution:
If I set fullresolution=original, as per default, my screen complains "Signal out of range" in fullscreen mode. If I set it to a fixed value, I do get a fullscreen image. Sure, on a high resolution like the 1280x1024 I'm normally using in Windows the image is tiny, if I use 640x480 it mostly fills the screen, aside from some small black stripes on top and bottom of the image.
However, even then, if I start Dungeon Master the image is suddenly only quite small, using maybe a quarter or at best a third of the screen, centered.
If I try to use 640x400 or 320x200 I do not get a fullscreen image, but a crash.
If I run it at 320x240 however, I do get an oversized DOS-command image and thus can see only a small part of it on the 19" of the TFT, but, in turn, do get an almost perfect Dungeon Master screen, only it is slightly to wide and thus a bit of the left and right border is cut off. Strangely enough, the latter ONLY works at all, if I set fulldouble=true.
Can anyone help me to determine, what resolution and other config options I should set in order to get a fitting full fullscreen DOS screen, and a fitting full fullscreen for DM as well?
My config file is as following:
[sdl]
# fullscreen -- DOSBox im Vollbildmodus starten.
# fulldouble -- Im Vollbildmodus Double Buffering benutzen.
# fullresolution -- Im Vollbildmodus benutzte Auflösung: Original oder feste Größe (z.B. 1024x768).
# windowresolution -- Vergrößert das Fenster auf diese Größe NUR, wenn die Hardware dies unterstützt.
# output -- Als Output benutzen: surface, overlay, opengl, openglnb, ddraw.
# autolock -- Automatisches Einrasten der Maus bei Klick auf Bildschirm.
# sensitiviy -- Mausempfindlichkeit einstellen.
# waitonerror -- Mit dem Schließen der Konsole warten, falls DOSBox einen Fehler ausgibt.
# priority -- Priorität von DOSBox im System: lowest, lower, normal, higher, highest.
# Der zweite Eintrag hinter dem Komma wird verwendet, wenn DOSBox nicht aktiv oder gerade minimiert ist.
# mapperfile -- Datei, in der Key- und Event-Mappings gespeichert werden.
# usescancodes -- Verhindert die Verwendung von Symboltasten (auf Nicht-US-Keyboards).
# Funktioniert nicht mit allen Betriebssystemen.
[dosbox]
# language -- Benutzte Sprachdatei.
# memsize -- Größe des für DOSBox verfügbaren Speichers (in MB).
# machine -- Emuliertes Computermodell: hercules, cga, tandy, pcjr, vga.
# captures -- Verzeichnis, in dem aufgenommene Waves, Midis und Screenshots abgelegt werden.
[render]
# frameskip -- Anzahl der von DOSBox übersprungenen Frames.
# aspect -- Seitenverhältnis korrigieren. Wenn die Ausgabemethode dies nicht unterstützt,
# ist das Ergebnis eine extrem langsame Bildschirmdarstellung!
# scaler -- Modus zum Strecken/Verbessern niedriger Auflösungen: none, normal2x, normal3x, advmame2x,
# advmame3x, advinterp2x, advinterp3x, tv2x, tv3x, rgb2x, rgb3x, scan2x, scan3x.
frameskip=0
aspect=false
scaler=normalx4
[cpu]
# core -- für Emulation benutzte Prozessorleistung: simple, normal, full, dynamic.
# cycles -- Von DOSBox emulierte Anzahl von Berechnungen pro Millisekunde
# Vorsicht: Es ist ungut, diesen Wert höher setzen, als es Ihr Rechner verträgt!
# Durch Setzen von "auto" kann man DOSBox diese Wert zu bestimmen versuchen lassen. Experimentelles Feature!
# cycleup/cycledown -- Anzahl der Cycles, die mit Strg-F11/F12 hinzugefügt/abgezogen werden sollen.
# Wenn diese Zahl niedriger als 100 ist, wird sie als prozentuale Angabe interpretiert.
core=dynamic
cycles=3000
cycleup=500
cycledown=20
[mixer]
# nosound -- Mixer stummschalten; Sound wird aber trotzdem emuliert.
# rate -- Sampling-Rate des Mixers; werden Geräte auf einen höheren Wert als diesen gesetzt,
# leidet wahrscheinlich deren Soundqualität.
# blocksize -- Blockgröße des Mixers; größere Blöcke helfen gegen stockenden Sound, dafür kann
# es zu Verzögerungen kommen.
# prebuffer -- Größe des "Vorpuffers" in Millisekunden.
[midi]
# mpu401 -- MPU-401-Emulation aktivieren: none, uart oder intelligent.
# device -- Gerät, das die MIDI-Daten von MPU-401 empfängt: default, alsa, oss, win32, coreaudio, none.
# config -- spezielle Geräte-Einstellungen. In Windows sollte man die ID des Geräts eintragen.
# Siehe auch README_DE.txt für Details.
mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=
[sblaster]
# sbtype -- zu emulierender SoundBlaster-Typ: none, sb1, sb2, sbpro1, sbpro2, sb16.
# sbbase,irq,dma,hdma -- IO/IRQ/DMA/High DMA-Adressen des SoundBlasters.
# mixer -- Dem SoundBlaster-Mixer erlauben, den DOSBox-Mixer zu ändern: true, false.
# oplmode -- Art der OPL-Emulation: auto, cms, opl2, dualopl2, opl3.
# Bei "auto" richtet sich der Modus nach dem SoundBlaster-Typ; alle OPL-Modi nach Adlib-Standard, außer für CMS.
# oplrate -- Sampling-Rate der OPL-Musik-Emulation.
[gus]
# gus -- Gravis Ultrasound-Emulation aktivieren.
# gusbase, irq1, irq2, dma1, dma2 -- Die IO/IRQ/DMA-Adressen für Gravis Ultrasound (IRQ=DMA möglich)
# gusrate -- Sampling-Rate der Ultrasound-Emulation.
# ultradir -- Pfad zum Ultrasound-Verzeichnis; In diesem Verzeichnis sollte es ein Verzeichnis MIDI geben,
# in der sich die Patchdateien für die GUS-Wiedergabe befinden. Patches für Timidity müssten funktionieren.
[speaker]
# pcspeaker -- PC-Lautsprecher-Emulation aktivieren.
# pcrate -- Sampling-Rate der PC-Lautsprecher-Emulation.
# tandy -- Sampling-Rate der Tandy 3-Emulation: off, on, auto.
# Wenn auto gesetzt ist, dann wird Tandysound-Emulation nur verwendet,wenn die Maschine auf Tandy gesetzt ist.
# tandyrate -- Sampling-Rate der Tandy 3-Stimmen Generation.
# disney -- Disney Sound Source-Emulation aktivieren.
[bios]
# joysticktype -- Typ des zu emulierenden Joysticks: none, 2axis, 4axis, fcs (Thrustmaster), ch (CH Flightstick).
# None deaktiviert die Emulation. 2axis ist der Ausgangswert und unterstützt zwei Joysticks.
joysticktype=2axis
[serial]
# serial1-4 -- Setzt den Gerätetyp, der mit dem COM-Port verbunden ist: disabled, dummy, modem, directserial.
# Zusätzliche Parameter müssen sich in derselben Zeile befinden, in der Form von Parameter:Wert.
# Parameter für alle Typen sind: irq, startbps, bytesize, stopbits, parity (alles optional).
# Für directserial gilt: realport (benötigt).
# Für modem gilt: listenport (optional).
# Beispiel: serial1=modem listenport:5000
[ipx]
# ipx -- Aktiviert die "IPX over UDP/IP"-Emulation.
ipx=false
[autoexec]
# Zeilen in diesem Abschnitt werden beim Start von DOSBox ausgeführt.
mount C E:\Spiele
mount A A:\
mount -cd
mount D J:\ -T cdrom -usecd 0 -ioctl
mount E "G:\Setup-Archiv\Setup-Archiv XP\Spiele Download\\Dungeon Download\DM2"
C:
Parting is all we know from Heaven, and all we need of hell.
