Police Quest: Open Season compatibility?

[EazyCheeze1978]

Hi all! Got a question

I got the GOG version of Police Quest: Open Season, one of my favorite games! (I also have many other old-school adventure games, but ) This game runs through DOSbox and has two configuration files being called from its shortcut (LNK), one to set the configuration for the game, then another to mount a disc image that contains the game data. From what I'm seeing, the LaunchBox DOSBox configuration does not include a functionality to run two configuration files at once like that. So, loading the game through LaunchBox does not work, apparently. Can LaunchBox indeed load two configuration files and pass them to DOSBox, and I just don't know about it? Or is there something else that can be done?

Thanks

Edited March 9, 2017 by EazyCheeze1978

[Zombeaver]

For GOG games that use multiple confs like that you'll typically just want to set it up like a traditional PC game rather than a DOS game. You'll just want to direct the LB entry to the shortcut that's in the installation folder (usually something like "Launch [game name]") and turn off DOSBox (if you have it enabled) in the game entry in LB.

Alternately, you can typically just disregard the confs that come with GOG games (which sometimes use less than ideal settings and/or an older version of DOSBox) and just create your own.

[EazyCheeze1978]

Thanks Zombeaver All I had to do was uncheck DOSBox. Really should have tried that before.  Now, need to tweak things so that General MIDI gets used, if possible  (FM synthesis sounds a little bland when GM is available )

[Zombeaver]

Yep, I do that myself. I use Munt for MT-32 emulation and VirtualMIDISynth + a soundfont (usually FluidR3) for GM. They just have to be set in the .conf in the "midiconfig=#" field, with the number being whatever device you want to use. If you load up DOSBox you can type "mixer /listmidi" to show the available devices on your computer and their corresponding number.

[EazyCheeze1978]

Fortunately Police Quest 4 has built-in General MIDI support; just needed to find the correct driver name (GENMIDI.DRV) and change the resource.cfg file to match.  Works wonderfully.

BTW of course General MIDI being better only applies to native DOS games when digital sound is not present, not arcade emulation where amazing things are done with YM FM chips  hehe. Great stuff I hear in MAME on the regular, no need to change that.