Kyrandia 1 Sound Problems

I have The Legend of Kyrandia installed on two different computers, one with Windows 98 and the other with Windows XP, but I can't figure out how to make it work properly on either one. I've managed to get them to run, but I don't know how to set up the sound so that I can hear the voices when I play it. I've tried SoundBlaster on both, but it always crashes on Win98 and lets out these painfully loud screeches every few seconds when I try to run it on XP. The other sound options don’t seem to work either. Is there any way to fix this on either one, or if not at least manage to get text for the opening cut scene?

I see that the game you're trying to play is a very old DOS game... if you're having a lot of trouble getting it to run properly, even on the Windows 98 machine, one option you have is to use a DOS emulator program like DOSBox:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d...r.exe?download

I recently used this program myself to play a DOS game I really wanted to play and it worked very well.

What processor do you have installed in each computer? The performance of the game you're trying to play in DOSBox will be almost entirely dependent on how fast the processor is, since the program emulates almost every piece of hardware that the game will use and that requires a lot of CPU time. I have an Intel P4 2.4 Ghz processor in my machine and even when I maxed out how much time DOSBox uses, I still didn't have very good performance in the game I was trying to play (Tyrian).

I asked my dad and he said the computer with Windows 98 has an amd 500 Mhz processor, and the one with XP has an amd 2 Ghz processor. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what that means...I'm not even sure of how to use the emulator right now...

The Mhz (megahertz) and Ghz (gigahertz) are measures of the speeds of those processors. With a program like DOSBox, the faster the processor, the better the program's performance will be. The 500 Mhz computer is definitely outdated compared to what is available today and performance in DOSBox will most likely suffer, but the 2.0 Ghz computer is still pretty "competitive" and the game should run in DOSBox without too much slowdown.

The easiest way to use DOSBox is to open up a Windows Explorer window with the DOSBox executable in view, open up a window with the Kyrandia executable in view, and then drag the Kyrandia executable on top of the DOSBox executable.

The emulator isn't working – I can't get it to do anything on XP, and even when I manage to get it running on Windows 98, I still don't get any sound. I tried doing what you said with it, but on both of them it keeps saying "drive does not exist", "illegal command", or I get this message:

Unable to load 8FAT.FNT
Reinstall program

Over and over, no matter how many times I reinstall it or go through the setup program. I can't even get it to work properly when I run it through the actual DOS program. Am I doing something wrong, or is there anything else that I could try that might work?

This wouldn't be nearly as annoying if the opening cut-scene had text to it...

The easiest way to get any DOS game working is to acquire or build a computer whose specs are representative of the time that the game in question was released and just throw a copy of pure DOS on it.

If the game doesn't work in pure DOS mode on the Windows 98 machine (Windows XP does not have such a mode), most likely it's because your hardware is too umm... "advanced" for it. Did you reboot into DOS and then try the game from there, or did you just double-click on the game's main executable in Windows? If you haven't done the former, you should and see what happens.

EDIT:

I just got a copy of the game and ran it on my system without any issues. All I did was drag setup.exe on top of the DOSBox executable, set up the video/sound and memory options, exit the setup program and then type "Kyrandia" without the quotes at the prompt and hit Enter. The intro played smoothly and completely and I was able to manipulate things with my mouse.

Did you do what I did or did you do things differently?

I've mainly been going by the instructions that came with the CD when I used DOS or the emulator: change to the CD drive, type INSTALL, press enter, go through that whole process, and when it's finished type KYRACD. I tried what you said worked when you used it, but I still get either a soundless (but otherwise properly running) game, or nothing at all.

Maybe the problem is just which options I'm choosing...which ones did you use?

For the options I chose the following:

Under Setup Video, Sound and Mouse:
- VGA 256k+ video RAM (I have 128 MB of video RAM )
If a red box comes up telling you that some older VGA cards are not completely compatible, hit Enter and ignore it.
- Sound Blaster/Sound Blaster Pro
- Yes, I would like to use a mouse

Under Memory setup:
- Yes, use XMS if available
- Yes, use HMA if available (I ignored the message about HMA not being available)

BTW, while you're doing all this, if all that the game's "installer" does is copy the contents of the CD to a directory on your hard drive and the game's files aren't compressed, you could do that manually in Windows Explorer. The copy of the game I acquired had all of the game's files already available for use and I didn't have to do any installing.

Once again, no luck. On the XP I just get several painful screeching blasts of noise, and it only works on the other one for about twenty seconds before it crashes...on the really high note. Which keeps on playing and playing until I either restart the computer or load the game back up again. Although, if I skip past the opening sequence on Windows 98, I can get all the music for the game, but still none of voices.

I don't remember ever seeing anything about memory setup at any point, though. Where is it?

When you run the setup program, right on the main screen it should say "2. Memory Setup". I assume I got the same game you're trying to play...

Well, I'm really not sure what to tell you. All I had to do under XP was drag SETUP.EXE on top of the DOSBox executable, configure the video/sound and memory options, exit that program, type KYRANDIA at the new "virtual" prompt and then hit Enter to run the game. There are only two things I can think of that might possibly be influencing your inability to run the game under the emulator:

a. The copy of the game I got came with all of the game's files in one directory; nothing was compressed and everything was on the hard drive. If the installer on the game CD does not copy all of the game's files to a location on your hard drive and grabs some resources from the CD, that could possibly be a problem, especially if the sound is accessed there. I have not run any DOS games from a CD under DOSBox, and although I imagine support for CD-ROM based games is good, for troubleshooting purposes I'd suggest running the game completely off your hard drive if possible. Running the game from a CD and accessing resources from there is just another thing that DOSBox has to take care of, and it may be causing a problem.
b. Your particular hardware configuration and your drivers. If you don't have the latest drivers for your video card and sound card, I'd suggest that you at least get those and see if that helps. For the record, I have an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro and a Soundblaster Audigy.

I don't think you mentioned this specifically, I apologize if you did... have you tried rebooting into "pure DOS" on the Windows 98 machine with the appropriate CD-ROM and sound card drivers loaded and then installing/running the game? Your best chance of getting the game running is to run it under "pure DOS" mode on the 98 machine or running it under the emulator on the XP machine.

This should solve your problem (if you're still around to read this):

If you have installed VDMS (as you should have) and tried to run MAIN.EXE with it (Run with VDMS in the menu) you should already have a VDMS configuration file for that file, named simple MAIN. Right-click this file, chose Properties (I think that's the English term, I'm running a different language Windows XP) and make sure to check the box for "Enable low-level CD-ROM support (MSCDEX)"

I had the exact same problem as you (Unable to load 8FAT.FNT) and this solved the problem for me.

Good Luck. I'd appriciate it if you'd post a reply and let me know if it worked or not.