Originally posted by Heronbrook I'm having problems with getting speech to work in Dragonsphere.

OS? Processor?

Using Soundblaster 16 for digital effects (standard settings)

If SoundBlaster 16 doesn't work, try another SoundBlaster in your setup program.

Yes, Dragonsphere and Phantom of the Opera have problem (I suspect it may be the way Windows emulates DMA; VDMS1.1 uses Windows' DMA emulation in a very nonrealistic way, VDMSound 2.0.x use it more realistically and these two games break -- interestingly Rex Nebular works just fine with either).

To use VDMSound 1.1:

- in Windows directory, in SYSTEM32, locate _default (_default.pif); enable EMS in its properties, this will then apply to all default command prompts.
- run VDMSound 1.1 "vdms.exe" then the game.

IIRC neither of the two games have a lot of sound effects (DS has speaking bushes and PO has a few yells).

V.

Originally posted by vladr Yes, Dragonsphere and Phantom of the Opera have problem

I can confirm the problems with "Phantom of the Opera". Voice samples resulted only in horrible white noise squawking.

IIRC neither of the two games have a lot of sound effects (DS has speaking bushes and PO has a few yells).

That may be true for the floppy version of "Phantom of the Opera", but the CD version has a lot of voice samples in the game. All of them just generate noise at best. Haven't tried it it with the new DosBox yet. Perhaps Heronbrook could try Dragonsphere with it...

I've not managed to get it to run with VDMS 1.1 yet. Keep having EMS problems.

I'm gonna test with Dosbox 0.58, to see if it works.

These are my specs:

Win XP Pro SP1
Hercules Fortissimo II
Athlon 1 GHz
256 MB DDR
Asus A7V333
GeForce4 Ti 4200

Originally posted by Heronbrook I'm gonna test with Dosbox 0.58, to see if it works.

I finally got to test the "Phantom of the Opera" with most recent DosBox. It does appear to work, but the audio samples are still pure noise, unfortunately. I think it shares the same "engine" with Dragonsphere. If so, you'll probably get similar results.

BTW, are there other titles that require EMS that you have been able to run successfully?

I can't recall any game that specifically requires EMM, but I haven't had this problem with any game before.

I did get Dragonsphere to show the main menu while using dosbox 0.58, but it crashed when starting a new game

vlad, what exactly is the descrepancy between version 1 and version 2 for DMA polling? Would you be willing to implement a kluge to offer to use the older DMA polling?

v1 gobbles up the entire DMA buffer at once, v2 eats it up in smaller chunks (the real hardware actually eats it up byte by byte, so v2 is more realistic, in between v1 and the real thing).
Dragonsphere and Phantom for some reason corrupt the audio buffer as soon as the first DMA xfer is made. Doesn't matter with v1, because v1 will copy the entire buffer during the first transfer (after shich the game can do whatever it wants with the data, v1 doesn't care, though v2 *will* care).

I thought it was a bug in Windows' DMA, but if DosBox has the same "feature" then it is possible that Matt may be using some undocumented or non-standard stuff (though, again, Rex Nebular does not have this issue which is strange).

Funny that any of the three Matt G. games would work with DosBox, BTW -- I was pretty sure they used protected-mode.

V.

Originally posted by Heronbrook I can't recall any game that specifically requires EMM, but I haven't had this problem with any game before.

There aren't a whole lot that actually require EMS, but those that do absolutley must have it. Will try to find a small demo that you can test.

I did get Dragonsphere to show the main menu while using dosbox 0.58, but it crashed when starting a new game

I'm unable to find my CD at the moment so I can't actually test this.

Originally posted by vladr Funny that any of the three Matt G. games would work with DosBox, BTW -- I was pretty sure they used protected-mode.

Well, "Return of the Phantom" definitely runs. I did come one similar DosBox anomaly: "Lost Eden" supposedly requires a 486, but runs on DosBox (in silence, last time I checked). I simply presumed that it required the "horsepower" of a 486, but didn't use protected mode.

has anyone managed to make Dragonshere work under windows XP with speech yet?

Unregistered wrote:

has anyone managed to make Dragonshere work under windows XP with speech yet?

With VDMSound 1.x, yes. But the only speech in the game is at the entrance to the tower, where the vines ask questions.

V.

i can only play the cdrom version of the game with speech in pure dos

Unregistered wrote:

has anyone managed to make Dragonshere work under windows XP with speech yet?

Well, any News? I got the same problem 🙁

I own the original CD version of Dragonsphere.

Tried to play it using DOSBox 0.61 and got to the main menu. Trying to start a new game just freezes DOSBox. No crash, though, that's good, right? 😀

I use Windows 2000.

vladr wrote:

(has anyone managed to make Dragonshere work under windows XP with speech yet?)With VDMSound 1.x, yes.

I have only a noise with VDMSound 2.0.x and in DOSBox 0.62 including last CVS (in Dragonsphere and in Return of the Phantom as well), I can understand speech with VDMSound 1.x, but it is still corrupted by noises.

vladr wrote:

But the only speech in the game is at the entrance to the tower, where the vines ask questions.

Probably in the floppy version of Dragonsphere. But in the CD version many dialogues through the game have speech.

As I said, VDMSound 1.0 (!) will run Dragonsphere fine. VDMSound 1.0 will not conflict with 2.1.0 bu you must run 1.x manually from the command prompt just before the game.
V.