Any way to do a full install of this game?

Betrayal in Antara (Sierra)
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Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

I seem to recall i never could complete it at the time i bought it since the game always crashed at the end when putting ingredients for a spell in the cauldron.

I know about your installer, but i'd like to avoid changing cd if i possibly can & having a mobile dir installation.

I'm digitalizing all my games, and besides, i'm playing on wine, that needs to delete the windows dir often.

I saw a resource.win file on the installation dir. Do i only need to copy contents of the disc and edit that to relative paths? And if so, what are the contents?
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

BTW the same deal with RAMA. I loved that that game came with a novel.
Collector
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Collector »

I have never looked into it for Antara, but RAMA is more involved than single disc SCI games. The single disc SCI games can be played entirely from the hard drive by editing the config file, but for the multi disc games have to you have to be able either concatenate the resource files or rename them to be able to have them on your hard drive and then modify the map files so the game can find the individual resources inside the larger files. I have successfully doe this with all of the multi disc SCI games except for Lighthouse and RAMA. I have incorporated this with my installers. Even though I have not been able to combine the resources for Lighthouse, the installer creates ISOs of the disc that allow the game to be played completely from the hard drive. Discs can be swapped in game by pressing Ctrl+F4. I could do the same with RAMA.
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

Everything has to be hard... BiA doesn't even have a full installation option. When i tried to copy the files to disc (just the first disc yet, didn't overwrite anything i don't think) and edit the config files to be relative it skipped the "insert cd" prompt but exited out with "cannot find 999.pal resource. If this is a cd-rom game make sure ...."

Blah. By the way i made a no cd for Blade Runner just yesterday (it has none in the net).
I leave the instructions here if you're interested:

Full install.
edit the executable (as i said in my version is the same as the "patch" but you might want to get it to be safe, it's on patches scroll. Alternatively the md5 is given below.

Original file md5:
c8ccb0d2646a72834ce8d2fc67d09764

Edit from the address 0000FFF1 -> 90 90
Edit from the address 00010028 -> 90 90

Edited file md5:
0b281cb8dfa16aa36f28dfb8d4ccc38b

It appears to work. I didn't play it all myself so no guarantees of course. I have no idea if this works with the DVD version (overwriting the executable). The data may be different.
I'm spreading this around on some forums so google searchers can find it.
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

I know that trick to mount images in dosbox, but i use for multiple cds sometimes what i consider a neater variation (or maybe not sometimes).

For broken sword 1 for example (that unfortunately has a non related bug in dosbox), you can add
mount d . -t cdrom
at the start of CIRCLE.BAT and copy the missing cd files to disc from both cd's. There is one file in special (voices) that has the same file name, but that can be avoided by editing the config file (that you have to edit anyway) to point to different named subdirs. That way you can even play on scummvm at the same time with a symlink on the right dir.

This allows me to just press enter instead of ctrl+f4 and enter when it asks for the cd. Not completly happy that it even asks, but i guess this depends on the game.
I use the image trick
imgmount d "image.cue" -t iso for games with redbook audio like syndicate wars, or games with only one cd or non configurable overlapping files.
Last edited by Serious Callers Only on Thu Jul 29, 2010 8:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

What's the problem with combining resources in rama and lighthouse?

Don't you have BiA? Is that why you never made a installer for it?
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

BTW collector if you're interested in making a installer to the last express here is a detailed no cd patch setup copied from another forum where i posted this today:
Ok, last present today, another game without a full install option.

First this game has a strange file format protection in my version (3 cd original). In cd 2 and cd 3 there are actually 2 files CD2.HPF and CD3.HPF one with 2.2kb and anothers with about 640 mb. Guess which ones are important and which ones are visible.
To copy the large files to the hardrive i had to create a ISO (really iso not bin/cue) image and open it with winrar, maybe you would have other solutions.

Any way:
1) install game maximum install, both dos and windows version is ok.
2) Delete the Ereg directory it's the interplay zombie registration program.
3) copy from cd 1 the data dir, cd1.hpf (about 501 mb - if it's not you might have that problem above) and the makingof.avi if you want.
4) from cd 2 and cd 3 copy the large cd2.hpf and cd3.hpf following the procedure above. From cd 3 you might want to copy the manual too.
5) The game is retarded and uses a library that might not exist. Thus it doesn't work on wine. Get the libs mfc42.dll and mfc42u.dll and put them in the game dir. On wine you can do winetricks mfc42 on a console and then copy them from the system32 folder on the "windows" dir.
6) Edit the _le.exe file with a hex editor.
original file md5:
89ccc685b5fcea6157ec5f7b689a2001

At offset BF4C0 edit what is there (is C:\ in binary) to
3A 5C 00 (.\ in binary).
At offset F3EF edit what is there to
90 90 90 90 90 90
At offset F3FF edit what is there to
90 90

Edited file md5:
0f6b4492164672d41da89065ddad9e59

7) to play in dosbox without cds (but not in dos) create a batch file Express.bat with this contents:
mount d . -t cdrom
Express.exe

and use it to run the program.

That's it i guess. Tell me if there is any problem.
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

I edited the last express instructions, they were wrong because of the debugger, but are right now.
Collector
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Collector »

Though I have done a couple of installers for other games, most of my efforts are directed to the Sierra games. The problem with Lighthouse is that UniSCI fails with the game. I use UniSCI for the multi-disc SCI games because it is small and I can use it through the command line via the installer. If I can't do it through NSIS or if it is not small enough (and with a free license) to pack in the installer, it is useless for my purposes. The point of my installers is to automate everything from setting the games up to fully patching them. They are intended mostly for the technically challenged, but much more advanced users take advantage of them for their ease of use.

I concentrate on the earlier games from the DOS era up to the 9x games and jafa on the 9x era. My installers are mostly not in competition with the StC installers here, but there are a couple overlaps, each with its own advantages. The StC Phantasmagoria 2 installer has better video with no interlacing and the SHP installer runs without swapping CDs. The SHP Lords 2 installer has fewer bugs, but only the StC installer has net play, even if there are no servers to connect up to, these days.

Jafa has not had time to fix any issues that come up with his installers, but his abilities with such things goes far beyond mine. I wish he had more time to get back to these games, both to fix a couple of things as well as to take on some more games. Vista and Windows 7 have broken some 9x games that were at least somewhat playable on XP.
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Re: Any way to do a full install of this game?

Post by Serious Callers Only »

Yeah but the last express fits perfectly, it's a windows 95 / dos era game that hasn't a full install option and that some are reporting on the net crashes on install/playing either on vista or even xp. It's also painful to play with cds since they speed up - slow down - speed up - slow down.

Anyway now i'm interested in a full install of RAMA and BiA.
You say the files have to be edited manually? There is a instructions or something for me to try.
I'm really incompetent at this sort of thing.
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