I am trying to get the original Alone In The Dark to run. When I try and run the install program the screen is all garbled. I have tried changing settings with the Dfend frontend but am not totally sure what I am doing. My system specs are as follows.
Celeron 2.5Ghz
1 GIG Ram
Radeon 9250 (256mg video RAM)
RealTek '97 Soundcard
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
What version of DOSBox are you using?
Whatever the latest version is. I downloaded if from the DosBox site about an hour before posting in this forum.
-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
It's the disk version or the CD version? The CD version works great for me, in fact I beat the game in DOSbox 😀
I am using the CD version.
-Ryan P. Fialcowitz
I don't have any problems running the game itself. Is it possible your copy of Alone in the Dark is corrupted or changed?
I don't have a separate "install.exe" or "setup.exe" however. I run the game using "alone.com", which prompts me for configuration information if necessary, then executes "tatou.com."
Here's my MD5 hashes for the two executables
ALONE.COM 789 bytes :
MD5: AD4B6E647E2B89B6A0A97C00C4735213
SHA1: D53DF69386E30B70BF59425F5A93F4B42039F35D
RIPEMD: AFB3E987774B049CB88458F8D47F3739996FC6F1
TATOU.COM 3,616 bytes :
MD5: 818DC5DD7648CEADF554979BF6534F55
SHA1: 5B2725F65FD2F59B19EB2775EC31ABFEFA7DE581
RIPEMD: D3A7FEA87E7B395B84C81859E22C29011D70CDB5
Now I'm not positive what the status of my Alone in the Dark is. I own a copy of it, but I think this might have been one I grabbed off an abandonware site. (Sorry, just being honest.) Our hashes may differ simply because of that. However, they might also be different because of corruption.
I used SecEx MD5+ to generate the hashes. It's free, easy to use, and has shell integration along with automatic output to a file. You can grab it from the links below. I'd recommend having it if you've ever been concerned with the integrity of your files.
While the DOS programmers of old were good, I rather doubt that the entire game is in 4K of code, so it stands to reason that other hashes may be needed. However, if the installation procedure is what's giving you trouble that should give us a good start.
SecEx MD5+ Download
http://www.bytefusion.com/download/bin/secexmd5setup.exe
SecEx MD5+ Download Page
http://www.bytefusion.com/download/winxp/middle.htm
Small bump...
I am trying to get the GOG.com version of Alone in the Dark to run on my Pentium machine. The disk is stored as BIN / CUE file (just rename the files and edit the CUE file) and when burnt you have the installation CD.
However, just like with the OP, all the text in the Installer is garbled.
Now after installing I copied those files into a DOSBox session and the screen shows up fine. So I thought maybe it's the video card and swapped it out, but same result. I tried a S3 and a Nvidia card.
Here is a screenshot of the issue...
This is the same file (copied form the HDD that was in the Pentium) in DOSBox.
And here is what I get on the Pentium:
PC is a Pentium 133 MHz with a Sound Blaster AWE. XMS and EMS memory, Logitech Mouse driver, CD-Rom driver.
The issue is consistent with DOS 6.22 and DOS 7.1.
I'm hoping it's something simple. Code page thing or something like that?
Not sure if it will help, but can't hurt to try:
http://www.bttr-software.de/products/fix8x14/
wrote:Not sure if it will help, but can't hurt to try:
http://www.bttr-software.de/products/fix8x14/
That was the issue! Well done 😀
Funny how they removed 8x14 font support due to anticipated demand for VESA VBE 3.0, but then VESA quickly fell by the wayside as a result of Windows 95.
I just wanted to thank ripsaw8080 for the amazing help and information and also RyanFialcowitz for starting the thread.
I want to mention that this also affects Alone in the dark 2
