Best way to play Turrican 2 PC dos

[buckrogers]

Some members mention Turrican on the pc as the best version. Whats the best way to play this? On an old 486 or emulated? Best soundcard (GUS?). How about sound emulated using dosbox?

[OddbOd]

I just tried it under DOSBox and it works very well, display filtering/scaling was necessary for me as I'm using an LCD monitor. There were some problems getting it configured correctly but a little persistence pays off, a quick tip, if you use DOSBox you need to add set t2dir=<path to cfg directory> to your autoexec.

[keropi]

if you have an old 486 use this...
you must remember that you do not need any EMS manages loaded, just XMS (won't run with EMM386 loaded...) have a look here :
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=16918

[buckrogers]

Hey Keropi, no long time. I been buying up hardware but am just getting round' to putting a system together now. I still have that Yamaha SW20 card but have yet to install it.

Could you use some advice. I am putting together a P2 400Mhx LX based system running windows ME for school and older gaming. I have an LAPC, SCC1, Tseng ET6000pci or Matrox G450, and a pair of Righteous Orchids Voodoo 2 Sli'd with max memory.

I have enough bits and pieces to put together a Pentium 133 system OR a 486/5x86 system. Have some SB16's coming and an isa card for a competetion pro joystick. This systewm would be for T2PC and Ultima underworld and a few others. But if I can run those games on a P2 based system it would be better, since I can my main apps on the P2 and USB is handy for connectors. Any thoughts?

Does T2PC work with a vesa compatible PCI grfx card or must it be ISA/VLB?

Oddbod, I too experienced difficulties getting T2pc running on my LCD screened notebook, but may go the legacy hardware route to experience the proper sound from the better ISA cards available (LAPC or GUS).

[keropi]

Well, remember that you CANNOT in any way install the SW20 on a pentiumII system and expect it to work OK... it conflicts with some addresses AFAIK... I have being trying to this a LOT in the past, but problems always appearred... DOS apps/games worked fairly good (but some times the DSP got wrong signals [due to addresses conflicting] and the sound was distorted with echo and flanges....) in win98/me there is no chance of it to work...
I recommend to use the pII system, with the SLI voodoo2's, and a basic PCI or AGP card (did not made any difference for me, never found something that would not run because of AGP) and as for the sound, try and get a SoundBlaster AWE 32 or 64 (ISA) that will give you SB16 sfx, AWE/Roland LAPC/SCC1 wavetable, it will work with virtually everything
T2PC does not care about the vga, and the probs you encountered on the LCD monitor is because of the special way it interacts with it... you need a CRT monitor... Remember, t2pc had a constant EXTRA SMOOTH scrolling, even on a 386sx/20 with ISA vga... the programmers were geniouses!

btw, you can run Ultima 7/8 under windows too, someone made some replacement exe's ... http://members.iinet.net.au/~rsd/five.html

[buckrogers]

Yes, the SW20 is an SB Pro compatible card so its best on an older 086 system. I have an SB16 and Roland general midi SCC-1 card for the newer system. The sensible thing would be to get an SB AWE32 but I am afraid I am a sucker for hardware.

Keropi, I wonder whether T2PC will work on a P2 400Mhz system? If so, I may not bother with a 486 based system.

[keropi]

yep, it will work with NO probs on a pentium 2/3/4 as long as it is in PURE DOS mode and no EMS driver is loaded
It even runs on my athlon 2600+ (with a real dos installation ofcourse)

[buckrogers]

OK great. From what I have read, I can access the programs properties in windows 95, and select the memory tab, and turn EMS off. I imagine this is what is needed.

However, if I am running windows ME, I assume I can also access each programs memory properties?

I have found a patch for accessing REAL-dos mode in ME:

http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/

I assume PURE DOS and REAL DOS refer to the same thing?

[keropi]

yep, the same thing, use the patch to boot in DOS... it will not work under windows whatever settings u make

[buckrogers]

Excellent. Nothing like having a single PC for word processing, net surfing AND dos gaming, all using the original legacy hardware to boot.

I know a couple of guys on the forum prefer the PC version and according to a review on mobygames, the PC version sound is equal to the amigas. Now, on the underdogs, it is mentioned that the PC dos version may have used TFMX to emulate the amiga soundtrack. I assume this works with a soudblaster pro/16 or most of the other soundcards the games supports, since it is a software driven soundtrack and not so dependent on hardware.

Can anyone confirm this? Or does the game sound best using MT-32 or GUS?

[keropi]

I can confirm this, the game DOES NOT use any kind of midi or midi emulation, infact you can choose the sample rate of the music/sfx ... ofcourse having a WSS soundcard allows 48khz output but good old 44.1khz is excellent too... just run OMD.BAT once (located in the game dir) to make it use some oversampling drivers, allowing better output...

[buckrogers]

According to Torsten over at the turrican forever board, GUS is problematic, and an sb16 works flawlessly.

I've managed to get t2 pc working on what I think is a k6 based 700mhz duron machine. However, the screen flashes btw the game and a blank screen.

In win98, I customised the Exit to DOS shortcut by deleting the contents of the config.sys, so that no memory systems are running (pure dos), and left the autoexec alone. Perhaps I need to add something to the config.sys? Any tips?

[OddbOd]

Is the t2dir variable set correctly? It should point to the CFG subdirectory. If it isn't then the configuration screen does not operate correctly and if you try to start the game there will be massive graphical corruption.

[keropi]

hmmm, dunno about gfx probs, but in mem terms, only load your soundcard drivers and himem.sys... nothing else and you'll be fine...
I have the original release disks with the setup, perhaps u want them????

[buckrogers]

Oddbod, sounds like what is causing the problem, but am not sure how to verify this.

Thanx Keropi. The originals would be great. I had a german version I downloaded from a place I cannot remember. I use to be able to bring up setup via dosbox, but now the screen stalls in setup menu after you select language.

Turrican PC looks great and scrolling is just as smooth as on the old A500. More detail, altough purists will complain that the sprite has been bastardised. But I like the idea of being able to switch between study and playing games on the one PC. Hopefully windows ME will prove to be better than XP for MY OWN purposes. Screen shots and all things Turrican are available at:

http://www.nemmelheim.de/turrican/

For the benefit of anyone else wanting to play t2 PC natively, here is what I learned:

download t2pc here:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1751

The download avaliable at the underdogs is in english, but has no setup option (don't know why). t2.exe results in the same freezing problem described above, but using turrican.exe loads a hacked version that works great (at least graphically, cannot try the sound until my new retro system with ISA slots is built) (hacked PC game? Amiga influencing the PC scene?!?).

To play the game you need to be in real/pure dos mode. I followed these instructions, courtesy of Frank Charlton at MaxPc:

Customise the Exit to DOS shortcut
Gain greater control over your real DOS sessions by refining this tiny file. Since this shortcut doesn't exist by default, you need to create it. Select Restart in MS-DOS mode from the shut-down dialog. When DOS loads, type EXIT to return to Windows and force the shortcut's creation. Find the file called Exit To DOS.pif in your Windows folder. This is a DOS Program Information File, and double-clicking it will unload Windows and start a DOS session. To edit it, right-click it and select Properties. Click the Advanced button, then Specify a new MS-DOS configuration and edit the copies of Autoexec.bat and Config.sys.You can add your drivers here with no impact on Windows' performance.

http://www.maxpc.co.uk/tutorials/def...id=7802&page=2

I deleted EVERYTHING in the config.sys window, but apparently I should have left himem.sys in there (and added a soundcard if one was available). Send the exit to dos shortcut to desktop for convenience (you may want to make a copy of the original before creating your own). Note that this technique is applicable to dos gaming in win98 in general, and the rest of the article describes dual win / dos setups that work great if you want one PCI or AGP video card for windows 98/ME, and an old pci or isa video card for dos gaming, for example. If you are using windows ME (as I intend to soon), a patch is available for pure dos mode:

http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/

Please add anything that might help others in running dos games natively. So much info is on playing dos games in dosbox, and little for new users wanting to play dos games natively.

[keropi]

bah, dosbox...
better use the REAL thing
I have zones t2pc, already install and with all its files... remember to run OMD.BAT for better sound quality on a machine greater than a 486/80

and here is something from the readme:

1.4. Notebook LCD screens

* The LCD screen of a Notebook is not capable of emulating
all the functions of a standard screen. So graphic errors may
be visible at the edge of the screen. They have no effect to
the game itself and will not change the gameplay

so lcd sux

[buckrogers]

OK. Got myself a loaded P3 with awe64. No sound though. Config.sys settings? I have not been able to run setup. I get a runtime error 200 at 059B:0091

[keropi]

http://www.johndaileysoftware.com/cg...L=tp7p5fix.zip