Game Sound

[Unknown,Unknown]

I own a plethora of classic Sierra games. All the King’s Quest games, the Quest for Glory series, the Leisuresuit Larry series (I wonder what Al Lowe is up to these days!), as well as some newer series like Gabriel Knight & Phantasmagoria.
The sound doesn’t work. I tried installing VDMSound, but the older games still don’t work. The newer games never had a problem to begin with.
I’m running Windows XP on a Pentium III. Everything is up-to-date as far as sound drivers and all that. I figure the digital sound must be incompatible with the older Sierra midi sounds…can anyone help??
Thanks!

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound) You wonder where Al Lowe is in these days? Look at http://www.allowe.com  for the answer!!

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound)

You say you are using VDMSound. When you start the game, are you right clicking on the game icon and then clicking on ‘Run with VDMS.’ I’ve been playing many of the old King’s Quests games and they work fine on an XP with VDMS as well as on an ME machine using the alpha version of VDMS for 9x.

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound)

What if you’re not running Win2k, NT or XP? I have Windows 98 with an AMD Athlon processor. Is there any program simlar to VDMSound compatible with my computer?

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound, HOWTO) Hello,
To avoid right-clicking every time, install VDMSLaunchpad, a companion to VDMSound. I have found that by creating a BAT or CMD file for each game, right clicking on the icon, choosing Properties, and configuring the VDMSound tab only once, is the most flexible and quickest way to get a game running. Same for modifying any settings later on.
Be sure to first run the game setup with VDMSound loaded (no need to create a BAT file since you’ll do it only once), and save the configuration.
Note that to get the best sound quality, you might want to choose General MIDI emulation in VDMSound, as well as choose the General MIDI driver from the installation program. The MT-32, although superior to Adlib or SoundBlaster, is a precursor to General MIDI, so you should choose the latter when available.
By the way, when you are running Windows XP, it is possible not to use VDMSound for music synthesis at all if your audio card has an OPL chip for FM synthesis — most newer cards *do* not — as Windows XP has a built in emulator for SoundBlaster 16 for this case (presence of OPL chip). But the quality could be poor — so get VDMSound with VDMSLaunchpad, configure General MIDI and start gaming 🙂 Plus, it will sound the same on any machine running VDMSound.
Best regards,
Vesko

P.S.
This is my first post here, but I’ve followed all discussions from the beginning. Cheers to Ken and Roberta! I’ve got a lot of ideas playing their games, and I’ve refined my English, too. This was more than 10-15 years ago.
And yes, there was something special in *some* of these games — the much more sensible plots than the ones present in today’s games, the emphasis on thinking while playing — not simply showing off graphics and sound. These games are still different than any adventure games of today, in the positive way, and I’m not saying that because of nostalgia.
Will post again here in the future.

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound) If you are running Windows 98, as it is based on DOS and does not totally prevent direct hardware access, you do not need VDMSound. Windows ME is a revision of the Windows 98 core, ergo the same there.
You need your BLASTER environment variable configured correctly, however, and your audio card should be working correctly under Windows as well.

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound)

I have the same problem with sound on older games. If you care enough to buy a new sound card for it, just go to your nearest Best Buy and ask the people there which of their sound cards will play sound for older games. They told me once, but I dont remember which ones do.

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound)

i had a problem recently with sound playing PQ1 (VGA remake) on an old P1 windows 98 machine. it was still too fast for the game to recognize my sound card and I got a “can’t initialize sound” error message when I launched the game.

i downloaded the GoSierra utility from Quest Studios and it fixed the problem. there’s a link below.

-emily

GoSierra sound utility

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound) For VDM Sound users:
One thing that should help you to get more games running, is downloading the latest version of AUDBLAST.DRV from Sierra (
Link: http://ftp.sierra.com/patches/pc/sb16drv.exe(http://ftp.sierra.com/patches/pc/sb16drv.exe) 
). That should do it for many games that won’t detect your hardware. Hope this helps
– Zol

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Game Sound)

Will that patch work for higher end Sound Blasters? I’ve got an Audigy and can’t get Sierra games to work with it. Course, running Windows ME probably isn’t helping the case.

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