RE: Old adventure games running in dos mode
- From: "Lisle, Ted (CHFS DMS)" <Ted.Lisle@xxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:38:04 -0400
I'd be interested in a good interpreter. I have some old word processor
files, that could be converted, except the DOS compatibility of XP
doesn't extend much beyond simple commands. Old DB F files are easy,
but, should I ever want to revive a DisplayWrite file, I'd have to start
the conversion process from inside the program before Word could take
over.
Ted
From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of JM Casey
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 12:22 AM
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Old adventure games running in dos mode
Hey everyone.
I recently was looking at some old textfiles and got a bout of
nostalgia. I used to play these games on the Apple II back in the 80s
called Eamon Adventures, and I learned that there was a port available
for PC. It includes a great many of the games (many of which I hadn't
played before) and is written in the basic language. There's no windows
interpreter provided, and the developer recommends qbasic, a Microsoft
DOS interpreter.
Now, I've been having some frustrating problems. I *think* I've
successfully gotten the software to run on one machine. My home
configuration isn't very different, only I'm using JAWS 9 here instead
of 10...as this is very old software I doubt very much whether this
makes a difference. I'm running Windows XP. I am comfortable with using
the JAWS cursor and, while I haven't had to use many DOS programs, I
usually have little difficulty. The qbasic program itself runs fine on
this machine. However, when I try to run the main .bas file, I can't get
JAWS to read a damn thing. This is very strange because I actually got
it working on here and was using it just fine until I decided to play a
second adventure. At this point I noticed that the ends of words in the
introductory screen were being truncated, and when the intro was over, I
suddenly lost focus and could not get it back no matter how I tried. The
reason I am most puzzled is that I was having these problems to begin
with, before I actually got the thing working. I looked up some stuff
online and it seems some users at the Audyssey forum as well as the
Audiogamers one have successfully used this software, which doesn't
surprise me. I followed some recommended steps, like changing the text
width specified in the .bas file from 80 to 40 columns. I also have been
using alt-enter, which apparently toggles between window and full-screen
mode..the software defaults to full-screen, which JAWS isn't happy with.
In any case, alt-enter seemed to solve my problem earlier, but now all
it seems to do is either nothing or start speaking my desktop shortcuts.
The game/qbasic window appears to be blank except for the title, and
virtual buffer says "no text". I'm really getting that frustrated,
annoyed feeling that comes up when unexplained computer maladies occur,
exacerbated by the fact that this was working more or less fine a while
ago.
Anyone familiar with this software? Alternatively, any hints about using
dos mode programmes like Qbasic with JFW? How about a completely
compatible windows interpreter? I have actually searched for one of
these but both that I've tried so far, while claiming compatibility,
crash with errors when attempting execution of the basic code.
Thanks in advance.
JM
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