I'm just making an assumption here and I don't know for certain as I don't own this game myself...but wasn't The Last Express designed for Windows 95?

It's a DOS/W95 game. I've played it successfully in DOSBox.

twifkak: this sounds like a mounting issue. Mount your drives (virtual c:\-drive and CD-ROM as d:\), reinstall the game, and start the game using the exact same mountings you've used while installing. I think there was something special about the installation routine, but i can't remember what it was - search VOGONS for possible anwers. I'll check the installation when i have time, but that can take some time.

EDIT: the setup issue was something about certain files you have to manually copy to the install dir, i think - the filenames had something to do with colour names (i know this sounds strange). All i remember for certain is that the installation worked very well after the manual fix, and that i've found the fix via Google or VOGONS.

Sweet. Thanks. So, it's not the color files (TEAL.EGG, etc.) - those are just empty savegame slots (0 bytes) and installed fine. The missing file was HD.HPF, as I found on an archived version of the dosbox site (thank you, google, for having an outdated copy -- the magic query was [site:www.dosbox.com "last express" dosbox install] btw), and then was able to confirm from a passing blog reference and a german forum.

The recommended solution was to copy the file from a Windows install of the game, but since I don't have a windows boot handy, I was able to use unshield to extract the file from $cd/windows/data1.cab.

(Hopefully some future hapless soul will find this helpful.)

Now I just have to get the color, sound, and speed to work, but I remember seeing some archive posts about that. 😜

Oh, and for extra credit, it seems somebody has decoded the HPF format.

• original forum thread
  download site, with source code (in pascal!)

Thanks for posting that info, could be helpful for future inquiries about the game.

The comment about the messy colours on the archived DOSBox site can be ignored. I didn't notice that effect with the Windows version of DOSBox, but there are some posts from Mac users seeing the effect. The threads went nowhere, though.

Okay, I tried to record video to demonstrate the color/sound issues I saw, but the video (and audio) played back perfectly (modulo speed issues), indicating a problem with the dosbox OS drivers, and not the emulator itself. Screenshot of color problems attached. Sound was like white noise, but seemed consistent with the timing of the sound in the game, as if endianness was wrong or something.

I guess I'll be getting more intimate with DOSBox than I planned... 😦

looks like vesa mask or write problem. should be fixable if you are willing to spend some time with us investigating it.

Looks more like a palette problem to me, most likely due to other files missing.

dunno. twifkak is on PPC. Addict didn't notice it on x86

Looks colorfull, take some drugs and enjoy! Seems the colors are grouped somewhat similar though, dark is still dark, so you'd think some rgb endian shift somewhere

Sound is probably endianness related (sb16) but the colour bug looks way
more like a missing .pal file than byteswitching/shifting.

Well, the game installs only a few files on the hd, i don't think there's much possiblility for errors there (like "broken" files, etc.). I can see no graphic related files for the game on the hd, too. We had other reports (two i can remember) about Mac users with the same "colour effect", so i'd say the probability of all these people having the same or similar missing .pal file(s) (or whatever) is quite low.

Maybe this will help a bit: as i wrote, my copy of the game doesn't display strange colours in DOSBox/Windows. I have the following game files:

128.144 BLUE.EGG (MD5: 7f1350d01c06246ddece8420609abb59, probably a savegame)
21.084.437 EXPRESS.EXE (MD5: e91af142619164286c3c7325ef384e36)
3920.033 EXPRESS.EXE (MD5: a52688464cb6fcdc16e590d0bba56d01, main exe with DOS/32A embedded)
430.715.904 HD.HPF (MD5: ab940d5815008b176502f759ae753fb7, this is the single game data file)
5571 INSTALL.LOG (MD5: 4822f5b3e0d9e58dce23c059d1b205ea, content refers to the install location, so the checksum won't match for different install locations)
620.547 README.TXT (MD5: 49372337f2de411d8ad7b2080ee57ddf)
724.265 UNINSTAL.EXE (MD5: 42814ec98e2d089cdaf2b371dd0285d9)

EDIT: colour problem (fullscreen only) described in this and this thread. Both users on OS X, second one on x86.

Yeah, I'm willing to spend some time investigating, as long as y'all tell me what to investigate. 😜

HD.HPF, EXPRESS.EXE, README.TXT, and UNINSTAL.EXE match up.

The game is VESA, FWIW. Attached is a screenshot of an mplayer playback of a DOSBox video recording (Ctrl-Alt-F5) of the game -- i.e., what it should look like.

What about starting DOSBox in windows/fullscreen modes, and then starting the game (not switching the mode while DOSBox is running)? See the two threads i've linked to for details. You could also try different screen modes (resolutions) and colour depths on the host OS. What about other (VESA) games? Can you try different OS's (other Linux distributions, OS X)?

Fullscreen doesn't make a difference; neither does overlay/surface. I haven't tried different bit depths on X, nor on OS X PPC yet.

It does work on Arch Linux on intel, except for sound (I think increasing mixer blocksize may help) and mouse -- every 10 seconds, the mouse position resets to some default position. Really annoying.

In any case, I'll try OS X PPC at some point soon (it would be nice if it was just a PPC endianness thing), but short of that, I'd also be happy if somebody knew how to fix the weird mouse bug. 😀

I got it working in OS X under Boxer, here's how
_____________________________________

The original discs appear to be hybrid Windows / Mac classic

Mounting them on a Mac (OS X) reveals 2 disc images (Windows / Mac version)

The HD.HPF file is available uncompressed on the Mac portion of the directory structure.

The Mac folder will probably be hidden on Windows. (You would need to install a utility like MacDrive to read Mac discs)

I ran the install through Boxer using the DOS installer on the first CD

Boxer created the virtual CD folder but the game did not run (cache error)

I copied some files from the CD and put them in the Boxer (DOSbox) virtual CD folder

The contents of the DOSbox virtual CD folder looks like this:

CD1.HPF
CD2.HPF
CD3.HPF
MAKINGOF.AVI
README.TXT

\DATA\
blue.egg
gold.egg
green.egg
purple.egg
red.egg
teal.egg

\DOS\
express.exe
install.exe
uninstal.exe

______________________

Then I launched Boxer, selected the game, then DOS prompt

Switched to D:\DOS and ran INSTALL.EXE

It completed without errors but the game still did not run because HD.HPF was not installed.

I put HD.HPF in the game folder and it worked

The contents of the installed game folder now looks like this:

\EXPRESS\

EXPRESS.EXE
HD.HPF
INSTALL.LOG (created by installer)
README.TXT
UNINSTAL.EXE

Since Boxer is based on DOSbox the same files should work on plain DOSbox.

You may have to restart Boxer if you modify the contents of the virtual CD folder because it will not recognize the new files immediately

There are color problems but only in full screen mode. Since the full screen mode does not fill the screen anyway I guess it does not matter

Hi, Sorry to bump this topic.

I'm trying to start the game on a MAC OSX.

I followed the above instructions and copied the files in the virtual folder "EXPRESS" created by Boxer and DosBox.

The folder now looks like:



As you can see the CD1.hpf file is present in the folder, but when I launch the game through Boxer with the command "Express.exe", the game still asks me for the Cd1:

I would be glad if you could help me.

Thanks

You probably did not mount a CD. Should work just to mount the same folder as "D", just add the "-t cdrom" parameter.

collector wrote:

You probably did not mount a CD. Should work just to mount the same folder as "D", just add the "-t cdrom" parameter.

thank you for your reply.

I mounted the .iso images of the 3 disks with Toast, but where I can mount the cd with Boxer? Where insert the command?

In the shell of DoxBox I wrote: MOUNT D EXPRESS

but the system gave me: the directory EXPRESS doesn't exist.

thanks

To mount something enter the full path, not just Express...

For questions regarding Boxer, ask the Boxer dev, not here.