Couple of question about Noctropolis. I installed this game last night and played through the opening, to the comic book, the following dream and the little girl at the door. There are voices in the intro, a growl in the dream sequence and then the little girl's voice.

Is this a game where there are only intermittent voices? All I get is text most of the time when the main character looks at stuff, etc.

Also tried to install it on my Optiplex in both DOS 6.22 and DOS 7.0 and both times was immediately knocked back to the D:\ prompt with a message that the game exited successfully. I suspect it's a hardware conflict as this happens in both partitions but on the same system. Playing with the sound configuration only succeeds in freezing the game at the first glimpse of a cursor. It runs fine on my WIN 98se laptop though it's one of those game where the sound has a hiss to it.

(BTW it runs crystal clear on an old 386 but way to sloooooow to ever play....) If only I had a 486...hmmm....

I played it on a 486/133 with an SB16 card (one of the later ones with a Vibra chip) in DOS mode of Win 95b. The first day I played it it had no voices and since there was text I thought that was how it was supposed to be. The next day I played it I was amazed that I now had voices. I replayed from the beginning and found that if I ran the intro before the game, I usually wouldn't get the voices. But if I loaded a save from the beginning of the game I probably WOULD get the voices. I never solved the mystery of the intermittent voices. I'm sure you're supposed to be able to get the voices all the way through, because I did manage to - only I had to exit the game and reload if I wasn't getting them.

It might run better on a 486 with DOS 6.22 on it than in DOS mode. I only tested it on that one computer. I'm not sure what causes the hiss. What kind of sound card did you have in the 386?

The hiss comes from my PIII 800Mhz lap top with the Maestro card. It's done this before on these early cd-rom/DOS only games and I doubt there's anything I can do. I've tried all the possible sound configs already. The hiss is actually pretty bad.

I have a Value PnP SB16 in the 386 DX/33. I found it last month still shrinkwrapped in its retail box for 2.00. It had all manuals and drivers and was brand spanking new. What a difference setting it up was. Took like 5 minutes and runs like a dream. My 386 mobo is actually upgradeable to 486 if I even care enough to bother.

I saved when I exited but haven't loaded a save yet. Will take a look today.

Additional data....

I just fired up my system, running a Sound Blaster Live! Value card, from a boot disk built with the DOS from Win98SE.

Here's what the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files look like:

@ECHO OFF
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET CTSYN=C:\WINDOWS
LH /L:1,32384 C:\CDROM\MSCDEX.EXE /D:12345678 /L:P
C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV\SBEINIT.COM
PROMPT $P$G
PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\;C:\CDROM;C:\BRCD\BIN;C:\BRCD\COMMAND;D:\XY4;D:\XY
LH /L:0 C:\CDROM\MOUSE.EXE

DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE NOEMS HIGHSCAN
BUFFERS=40,0
FILES=40
DOS=UMB
LASTDRIVE=Z
FCBS=4,0
REM DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF /M:1
DEVICEHIGH /L:1,40800 =C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:12345678
rem DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
DOS=HIGH
STACKS=9,256

Made sure Noctropolis was loaded on a FAT16 partition. Not sure that it matters, but why take the risk?

Once my system was at the A:>, I switched to the NOCTROP directory and ran INSTALL. Told INSTALL that I was running a Sound Blaster Pro for both music and sound.

Port 220H
INT 7
DMA 1

Started Noctropolis with DARK.EXE.

Things seem to be running fine. Even the EA logo showed up on schedule with its musical sting in sync.

Aside from voices in the video sequences, there are only 50 audio voice files. So, yeah, intermittent probably covers it.

Tried it again and selected the Sound Blaster 16 for sound and music. Took all the default settings. Sounds absolutely wonderful. No stutter and no hiss.

Looks like the answer was, of all things, a clean DOS boot disk. DOH!

I've never had any luck with boot disks. Did you use a boot disk utility that scans your system or did you build it manually? Also, if you used a FAT 16 partition what was your OS? tanks..

Scout, is your Optiplex the Optiplex GXPro with the SB16 onboard sound? Or is it a later Optiplex? I have the GXPro and if you have the same I'll see if I can get Noctropolis to work on it.

Jenny,

It's the GXpro 200mhz with the Vibra16 onboard. . The video card is a S3 Trio+, Vesa 2 compliant. For some reason there's a big conflict with this particular system and Noctopolis. Maybe IRQ? I recently found an IBM PS/1 Consultant 486 DX2 66mhz, with a SB AWE 32 and onboard Cirrus video for a whopping 14.95. (What was the original list price on this???) and Noctropolis runs great on it right out of the box. But with the Optiplex it won't go, zilch. I kinda remember other games, DOS games on cd-rom circa 1995 that don't like the Optiplex either. Then again other games like Synnergist loved it. Maybe a 486 vs very early Pentium?? I think the cpu on the Optiplex is just pre MMX by a month or sot if that makes a difference.

That's the Optiplex I have. I think that S3 Trio is standard with that model. Since you've already got the other computer, should I not bother trying to get Noctropolis working on the Optiplex?

That's a good deal on the 486/66 - a ready-to-go gaming machine for $14.95. Congratulations. Are you getting the voices along with the text now?

It was a boot disk I built manually for Sam and Max. Actually followed the detailed instructions that LucasArts provided, IIRC, on the Sam and Max CD for exactly that purpose.

My OS is Win98SE. I've got a mix of FAT16 and FAT32 partitions.

I've found that partitions can act like firewalls if something nasty winds up on the hard drive. A worm, for example, is not likely to jump from one partition to another.

Jenny,

Yeah, it's running like a dream now on the 486, voices and all, no distortion,so unless you're feeling like you're in Optiplex research mode don't bother. Thanks though. (BTW, I don't think there are voices with ALL the text. I haven't been able to get an answer from anyone on this but I think there is only voice dialouge when the little FMV window appears.)

That 486 is so fast for only 66 mhz, I can't believe it. The computer was in perfect shape too. I couldn't resist. I had to replace a single ribbon cable which cost me more than the whole computer. Heh.

(It still bugs me why the Optiplex won't take Noctropolis though. So odd because the Optiplex is usually so compatible hardware-wise. Huh.)

MrLipid,

I've got Sam and Max complete. I'll peruse the LucasArts documentation. I've learned everything I know (no jokes please) about DOS from early LucasArts and Sierra configuration instructions. They really did a good job of walking you through the stuff, I thought. Maybe I'll finally figure out boot disks. So far I've never gotten one to work right. I usually just do a f8 boot but no joy this time.

Scout,

We can dig into the arcane science of boot disks at a later date. For now, enjoy Noctropolis!

MrLipid, did you ever play Synnergist? (Boy talk about a finicky game to try and launch...) Noctropolis reminds me a lot of Synnergist, esp. the writing. Noctropolis is going to be a nifty little number, I think. I just hit the part with the timed poision and all the great underground cypts. Heeelllpppp I'm dyinggggg.. aaaggggaiinnnn.

I'm not going to worry about the boot disk. As long as I can play Noctropolis on one of my computers I'm happy. No pressure from this end.