Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria etc. Backup on DVD?

[Unknown,Unknown]

Since a few weeks i’ve a DVD-Burner and want to backup my old Sierra Games on DVD. Does anyone tried it? a normal 1:1 copy (copy all files on dvd) won’t work (RESOURCE.AUD and *.sfx have the same filenames on every CD – tested with Gabriel Knight II).

Can anybody help?

Thx
Gerard

P.S. I’ve the German Collector Edition (GK1+GK2+Solve Book).

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria etc. Backup on DVD? ) I backed up all my recently purchased Sierra CD’s recently and did similar stuff by putting Kings Quest V, Space Quest IV, Larry 1 onto one CD – which in total was only like 3-400 megs.
I simply created a folder KQ5, SQ4, LSL1 and copied each of the CD’s contents into the appropriate folder.
This works fine for me because when I install the games I don’t use the Sierra install programs and simply copy the contents of those folders to the harddrive.
If you want to use the install programs still you could potentially temporarily map a drive to one of the folders and run the installer from that ‘virtual’ drive. I haven’t tried this but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
To do this, simply go to your Windows File Explorer, and select ‘Map Network Drive’ from the tools menu. Map a drive (e.g. X:) to D:\GK1 (assuming D: is your DVD drive and the Gabriel Knight 1 folder on the DVD is named GK1).
Then in the File Explorer, go down to drive X: and double click the installer program and if all goes well it should run fine. For games that still access the CD drives while you are playing them, you may also need to edit a config file that gets put on your harddrive by the installer. They usually have an entry that states the place of your CD drive or audio files etc. You might have to edit that file and change it to be X:.
Let me know if this works. For games like GK1 I copy the audio files to the hard drive when I install it so I never need to run it with a CD.

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria etc. Backup on DVD? ) Thanks for the quick reply!

I’m primaly not a Windows User (I’m using Linux), but on this way it will be as easy as in Windows. So i will give it a try (rewriteable, so I don’t waste my DVDs ;-)= ).

I will report on success or mistake, but maybe there will be a [dressier?] way.

A second Question: does anybody already tried to convert the Video-Files (Gabriel Knight II, Phantasmagoria I+II) in an AVI-Format to make a whole movie? I’ved read about many tools for playing these Files (like ffmpeg, vmd-play etc.).

And a last note: I’m growing up with Sierra, Origin and Lucas Arts, and the first two had best sound in games i’ved ever heard. All three was outstanding in making games (Sierra and Lucas Arts in Adventures and Origin in Space and Roleplaying). So I’m very sad about closing of my favorite Game-Companies :’-(=

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria etc. Backup on DVD? )

If you want to play Phantasmagoria 1&2 off your hard drive instead of using the CD’s, you can! This way, you can back up the games onto DVD ready to copy onto your Hard Disk whenever you want to play the games (no installing necessary). First, copy all the CD contents onto your hard drive.

For Phant1 move all the CD’s Robot, VMD and patches files into the CD#1 dir’s (there are multiples of some files on every CD except for CD7, it saves over 1GB of space). Next since all the SFX files are different for each CD, copy them into their own seperate folders. Now set the paths for the folders in the resource.win file as follows, replacing the D:\TEMP\P1 path with your own dir path.

resAud=D:\TEMP\P1resSfx=D:\TEMP\P1\;D:\Temp\P1\D2;D:\Temp\P1\D3;D:\Temp\P1\D4;D:\Temp\P1\D5;D:\Temp\P1\D6;D:\Temp\P1\D7
robot=D:\TEMP\P1;D:\TEMP\P1\ROBOT
patchDir=D:\TEMP\P1;D:\TEMP\P1\PATCHES
movieDir=D:\TEMP\P1\VMD
rescdisc=D:\TEMP\P1resmap=D:\TEMP\P1
For Phant2 move all the CD contents into one dir, and all the DUK files into one DUK folder and patches into another. The P2 audio “SFX” files appear to be the same on each CD except for CD5; put it into another folder. Now just set the paths in the Resource.win file as below, replacing the P2 dir and drive with your own:

palette=D:\P2\DUK
resAud=D:\P2resSfx=D:\P2;D:\P2\SFX_DISK_5
resMap=D:\P2
rescdisc=D:\P2patchDir=D:\P2\;D:\P2\PATCHES
movieDir=D:\P2\DUK
robot=D:\P2\ROBOT
discID=RESSCI
CD:=D:\P2useDirectDraw=TRUE
useDirectSound=FALSE

It seemed to work fine for me, hopefully for others who try this as well.

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria etc. Backup on DVD? )

thanks, after finishing my Gabriel Knight DVD i will work for my Phantasmagoria DVD.

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria etc. Backup on DVD? ) Hi again Mike,

I’ved tested your way, but get some errors on founding sound-files:
Chapter 2: going straight to the shop in the city. On opening door Phantasmagoria crash. Same Problem with my Saved Game etc.
I think he’s looking only the first place for the right file (cause all .SFX-Files have the same name).

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria etc. Backup on DVD? ) For Phant1, each disc has a different seperate SFX file, unlike Phant2, which are all the same except for disc5.
What I did was put each sfx file from each CD into a different directory and point to the pathname of each individual dir in one line as such.

resSfx=D:\P1\;D:\P1\D2;D:\P1\D3;D:\P1\D4;D:\P1\D5;D:\P1\D6;D:\P1\D7

Note the “;” operator between each path.

The game ran without a problem for me. Maybe check over you resource.win settings to see if your paths are all set correctly… You know how computers are..

MikeP.

[Author]

Posts