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Zomb's Lair - Reviving Old Classics


Zombeaver

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This is a side project I've been working on for the last couple days, inspired by people like Biffman 101 of The Collection Chamber. The idea is to setup some older DOS/3.1/95+ games, create some artwork for them, and package them up in a nice, modern installer package with desktop and/or start menu shortcuts just like any modern PC game (which, of course, can be imported directly into LB as well). Everything will be configured beforehand so you just run the installer and you're good to go!

My policy for these will be that I'll only be doing games that aren't available on digital storefronts like Steam and GOG - those options are already there for you if you want to play those games - these are for games where no such option is available and your only choice is to buy it off a guy on ebay (assuming you have a disc drive) or download an iso (either of which also assumes you know your way around DOSBox, in the case of DOS games).

I've done a few so far, but I've got a big list of stuff that I want to cover.

Zomb's Lair (website)

Full list of currently completed games

This post is getting a little unwieldy, so new additions will be noted in this thread with links to the relevant page on zombs-lair.com but won't be listed below. Below are the first 20 packages that were completed.

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Dreamweb

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 3rd person
Developer: Creative Reality
Year: 1994
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74
WikipediaDreamweb
Special Notes: pdfs of the "Diary of a Madman" and the manual are included - both are required in order to be able to operate the main character's network terminal in his apartment - page 12 in the manual, and the last page of the diary, specifically.

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The Terminator Double Pack (Future Shock and Skynet)

Genre: FPS
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Year: 1995 (Future Shock) / 1996 (Skynet)
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74
Wikipedia: The Terminator: Future Shock / The Terminator: Skynet
Special Notes: Includes both Future Shock and Skynet, and an optional graphics patcher for Skynet to enhance the visuals if you so choose (the standard visuals are present by default).

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Rama

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 1st person
Developer: Sierra On-Line
Year: 1996
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74
Wikipedia: Rama
Special Notes: Due to size constraints for the installer package, this one requires you to manually move some files into the installed directory - place the contents of Rama Discs.zip in the "Disc Images" folder and you'll be all set. Also note that the game  is spread across 3 discs - when prompted to change discs, press Ctrl+F4 to change from disc 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to 1.

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The Journeyman Project: Turbo!

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 1st person
Developer: Presto Studios
Year: 1993
Platform: Windows 3.1
Emulator: DOSBox Daum
Wikipedia: The Journeyman Project
Special Notes: Because this is running an instance of Windows 3.1 within DOSBox, you'll need to press Ctrl+F9 to quit - Esc will just exit back to the 3.1 desktop. Also note that the TSA door code near the beginning of the game is 6894895.

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Blade Runner

Genre
: Point-And-Click Adventure / 3rd Person
Developer: Westwood Studios
Year: 1997
Platform: Windows
Emulator: None
WikipediaBlade Runner
Special Notes: Okay, so this one has a potential snag - you need to have some type of disc drive visible when the game starts otherwise it will crash. It doesn't matter whether that drive is physical or virtual, mounted or not, but it needs to be able to see it. If you have DT or VCD you can have virtual drives visible at all times, even unmounted, and it'll work. If you don't have any dedicated virtual drive software or a physical disc drive and you're on Windows 10, you can mount a disc image - any disc image - and a drive will then be visible which will allow Blade Runner to work. I'm investigating whether or not it's possible to make the built-in virtual drive visible at all times, even while unmounted, in Windows 10. Currently, however, you need to have some type of disc drive visible in order for the game to work. Old games are really stupid about this kind of thing some times...

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Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2

Genre: Action Adventure / 3rd Person
Developer: Ritual Entertainment
Year: 2000
Platform: Windows
Emulator: None
Wikipedia: Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2
Special Notes: The game has been patched to run in 1920x1080 resolution. If you wish to change to a different resolution, edit the "config.cfg" file in the "fakk" subdirectory and change the "seta r_customwidth" and "seta r_customheight" values.

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Dark Seed Collection (Dark Seed and Dark Seed II)

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 3rd Person
Developer: Cyberdreams
Year: 1992 / 1995
Platform: DOS / Windows 3.1
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74 / DOSBox Daum
WikipediaDark Seed / Dark Seed II
Special notes: Press Ctrl+F9 to quit Dark Seed II - quitting the game normally will just exit back to the 3.1 desktop.

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Drowned God

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 1st person
Developer: Epic Multimedia Group
Year: 1996
Platform: Windows
Emulator: None
Wikipedia: Drowned God
Special notes: None

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Gunman Chronicles

Genre: FPS
Developer: Rewolf Software
Year: 2000
Platform: Windows
Emulator: None
Wikipedia: Gunman Chronicles
Special Notes: The intro cutscene may have some artifacts at the very beginning but it should go away after a couple seconds.

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Logical Journey of the Zoombinis

Genre: Puzzle / Logic
Developer: Brøderbund
Year: 1996
Platform: Windows 3.1
Emulator: DOSBox Daum
WikipediaLogical Journey of the Zoombinis
Special Notes: press Ctrl+F9 to exit the game - quitting normally will just exit back to the 3.1 desktop. Keyboard shortcuts in-game for save and load are Ctrl+S and Ctrl+L respectively.

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Companions of Xanth

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 1st person
Developer: Legend Entertainment
Year: 1993
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74
Wikipedia: Companions of Xanth
Special notes: Companions of Xanth makes good use of MT-32 audio, so if you have Munt installed and want to use it, edit the dosbox.conf by going all the way to the bottom, and in the autoexec section, change "xanth" to "install", then start DOSBox.exe and set the music to MT-32 audio. Then change "install" back to "xanth". Also, don't forget to set the "midiconfig=" value in the .conf to whatever it should be for MT-32 on your system - you can check your midi device numbers by opening a standalone DOSBox prompt and typing "mixer /listmidi". Most people don't use things like Munt or VirtualMidiSynth, so I have to create these packages with that in mind - they use Sound Blaster by default.

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Perihelion: The Prophecy

Genre: RPG
Developer: Morbid Visions
Year: 1993
Platform: Amiga
Emulator: FS-UAE
Wikipedia: Perihelion: The Prophecy
Special notes: This is the WHDLoad version so no disk swapping is required! Just start the game and go - play, save, load, etc. press F10 when you want to quit the game. Save games are not stored permanently for WHDLoad games if FS-UAE's menu (F12) is used to exit the game. Save states are enabled, but your mileage may vary - standard in-game saves are more reliable.

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Commander Blood

Genre: Adventure
Developer: Cryo Interactive
Year: 1994
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74
Wikipedia: Commander Blood
Special notes: none

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Alien Legacy

Genre: Strategy / Management
Developer: Ybarra Productions
Year: 1994
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74
WikipediaAlien Legacy
Special notes: none

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3D Ultra Minigolf Deluxe

Genre: Sports / Minigolf
Developer: Dynamix
Year: 1998
Platform: Windows
Emulator: None
Wikipedia: None
Special notes: 3D Ultra Minigolf Deluxe is picky about folder names in its path not being too long - if they're too long all the graphics in the game will be black making it unplayable. "3D Ultra Minigolf Deluxe", for example, is too long of a folder name, which is why the default path used has it named "Minigolf Deluxe". If you start the game and everything's black, it's because one of the folders in the path to the game has too many characters.

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Elvira Collection

Genre: RPG / Adventure
Developer: Horrorsoft
Year: 1990 / 1992
Platform: Amiga
Emulator: FS-UAE
Wikipedia: Elvira / Elvira II
Special notes: This is the WHDLoad version so no disk swapping is required! Just start the game and go - play, save, load, etc. press F10 when you want to quit the game. Save games are not stored permanently for WHDLoad games if FS-UAE's menu (F12) is used to exit the game. Save states are enabled, but your mileage may vary - standard in-game saves are more reliable.

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The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes Collection

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 3rd person
Developer: Mythos Software
Year: 1992 / 1996
Platform: DOS
Emulator: ScummVM
Wikipedia: The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes
Special notes: The soundfont FluidR3 is also included to greatly enhance the music. Osprey's music looping patch has been applied to Serrated Scalpel (so that music repeats once the song ends).

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Spaceship Warlock

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 1st Person
Developer: Mike Saenz, Joe Sparks
Year: 1991
Platform: Windows 3.1
Emulator: DOSBox Daum
WikipediaSpaceship Warlock
Special notes: Press Ctrl+F9 to quit the game - Esc will just exit back to the 3.1 desktop. Click near the top of the screen to access the file menu for saving/loading games. You'll need to then click the Drives drop down and select the ? drive (it defaults to D:, which is the virtual disc drive), before saving. The ? drive it shows isn't your actual ? drive, it's [wherever you installed the game]\Spaceship Warlock\HDD. Also keep in mind that the save names can't be over 8 characters.

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Ripper

Genre: Point-And-Click Adventure / 1st Person
Developer: Take-Two Interactive
Year: 1996
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox
Wikipedia: Ripper
Special notes: Ripper spans six CDs, but I've setup the configuration and ini files to have access to all six at once - what this means is that the game will still prompt you to change discs on occasion, but all you need to do when this happens is press "continue" and you'll be able to continue on, no muss, no fuss!

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Chasm: The Rift

Genre: FPS
Developer: Action Forms
Year: 1997
Platform: DOS
Emulator: DOSBox 0.74
WikipediaChasm: The Rift
Special notes: Includes the addon levels and level editor. The game has been patched to run at a high framerate at 640x400 resolution (double the base resolution).

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More to come! :)

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  On 2/13/2018 at 5:19 PM, DOS76 said:

Heavy Metal looks pretty cool got it running on my HTPC last night never even heard of it before so thanks for hooking these up for us.

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Heavy Metal's a neat little game. Those Quake III engine games haven't aged super well (although Anachronox is still one of my all-time favorites and they did some pretty magical things with the Quake II engine), but it's really colorful and pretty smooth to play at least. It's got some neat aspects to it like dual-wielding a mix of weapons of your choice and then using the left and right mouse buttons to control the left and right weapons. Also, Julie Strain provided the voice for her character in the game :)

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Sadly, Blade Runner would not work on my system either but I knew that by reading your comments that it may or may not work on certain systems. I do use Windows 10 so that may be why. I am going to try when I get home to try to run it in Windows 7 compatibility settings and see if that helps.

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Honestly I'm not sure what to make of that. It works on my primary PC, but didn't on another, and Neil tried it on his and it didn't work either. I went back and tried some alternate patches and even some different installer versions of it and it continued to fail on my office PC and continued to work on my primary PC. If it were something within DOSBox it'd be a lot easier for me to try and diagnose but being that it's using a ddraw wrapper it's not so easy (especially since I can't replicate the issue on my primary PC). The main thing that the installer is doing is 1) installing it in a way that bypasses the game's built-in installer, which no longer works on modern versions of Windows and 2) using a ddraw wrapper so that it'll actually play on modern video hardware. So far I'm 1 for 4 out of test cases though :(

It did "work" in the latest development version of ScummVM on my work PC, but it was very buggy. I think they've got a long way to go. Hopefully that'll get improved over time and then I'll just remake the pack to use ScummVM instead, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

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Ah HA! Did a lot more sleuthing and thanks to some testing by @neil9000 I figured out the problem with Blade Runner! Old games are so stupid sometimes...

Basically the game freaks out if it doesn't see some type of disc drive - any type of disc drive, whether virtual or phsyical. If you don't have a physical disc drive - which is becoming more and more common these days - or a virtual drive, it crashes on start; but it just so happens that I have a Blu Ray burner and DVD-RW drive on my PC (as well as a DT virtual drive)... where it's been working... If you have Daemon Tools or Virtual Clone Drive or equivalent (I use DT myself) you can have a virtual drive at all times, whether mounted or not. I know that Windows 10 has a built-in mounting feature, but by default it makes the drive disappear when unmounted - I haven't figured out if there's a way around that yet, but I'll keep looking.

Essentially the fix is that you have to have some type of disc drive - whether physical or virtual - that it can see when you start the game. You can have something mounted - anything - and it will work. You can have nothing mounted and so long as some type of drive is visible it will work. If you use DT or CVD you can have them visible at all times whether mounted or not, and it should still work fine. I'll do some more research on if there's a way to keep 10's built-in virtual drive visible even if unmounted.

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I've updated the package for Drowned God so that it no longer requires compatibility mode to be set by the user. You're able to force these settings for specific programs via command-line, so I created a .bat that does this for you and is used in the start menu/desktop shortcuts. Now you just install and start! This will be good for future projects as well, as the same concept can be applied for any other native Windows games that require compatibility settings to work.

Also, thanks to @Bobinator, @Lordmonkus, and @DOS76 who have helped me with some Windows 10 testing since I'm on ye olde Windows 7 :P

Gunman Chronicles will be up next.

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