conquests of the longbow

[Wheezle]

Hi. I'm trying to run conquests of the longbow on windows XP. I downloaded the audblast.drv to get digital sound, and followed instructions to stop the looping, which works ok. But the sound in the game gets jerky. The music pauses at points for like half a second then catches up (which sounds irritating). Also with some longer digital sounds (such as the singing when you enter the abbey) the sound cuts out before it finishes. This may be partially due to the aforementioned sound pausing.

I have found that if I set the cpu priority for the program to realtime, the pausing stops but my pointer does not move smoothly, and the cutting out still happens (but the sound does seem to last a little longer).

any suggestions? it still happens if I disable digital sound.


specs: Pentium 4 2.0 GHz, 768MB DDR RAM, NVIDIA geforce 4 ti 4200, soundmax integrated digital audio sound card (onboard)

[Alistair]

I recommend you do *not* use DOSBOX, but do use VDM Sound- http://ntvdm.cjb.net . (I assume Robin's head jerking all over the place doesn't bother you.)
Or if you'd like to fix timer bugs as well; go here: http://www.geocities.com/belzorash/
And apply the patch to your game.

Then you should be home AND hosed.

- Alistair

[Wheezle]

sorry forgot to specify. I am using VDMsound. I just copied my post from the vdmsound forums cos no one replied after 2 days  

Thanks at least robin isn't gonna get a screwed up neck now =P

the sound jerking seems to be attributed to the adlib/soundblaster music. if I switch to midi the jerking stops but my digital sound still doesn't improve. Still cuts out.  :cry:

[Alistair]

If you run a SoundMAX, download the General MIDI after-market driver for Longbow (download here: http://www.queststudios.com/quest/Utilities.html)

Install the game with General MIDI and your sound blaster.
Download the VDM Sound add-on called 'Speedset'- look at their forums for that one.

Run the game with a batch file; with a command line something like:
speedset .005
scidhuv.exe

Don't forget to have speedset.exe in your Longbow folder, and to right-click the batch file you created and select 'run with vdms' to actually run the file. Get back to us.

- Alistair

[Wheezle]

Well i'm not quite sure what the speedset thing did. But the music now seems a bit faster, and the river doesn't animate in the map screen. but other than that, no change.  :?

Has anyone else ever got their digital sound working perfectly?

[Alistair]

Speedset, for VGA games, allows the MIDI music to play back properly. At the right speed, that is.

For digital sound; maybe try the GoSierra patch. Can be found on the same QS page I linked to before.

I know either it or one of its' variants fixes Longbow. Hopefully that one.

- Alistair

[Wheezle]

well i've tried gosierra but i think that just adresses the looping sound which I already resolved. Yeah, there was never any problem with midi. It was the adlib/soundblaster music which was a problem.

right... well I tried without vdms, using gosierra. Digital sound works fine, but if I use midi music, its really dodgy, and if I use adlib theres no music at all. is there any way I could use vdmsound without it overriding the gosierra driver?

[Alistair]

GoSierra just patches a driver called 'sndblast.drv', or in this case 'audblast.drv'. So, install the game with the patched driver, and run the Speedset batch file with VDMS (i.e. right-click).

Should be it. Whew!
- Alistair

[Wheezle]

yeah, but VDMS overrides whatever gosierra is doing, and causes the "unable to initialize audio hardware" thing to come up. which is quite a pain.

[Alistair]

I just tried it.. and lo and behold, the same frickin' problem. Let me get back to you tomorrow (or at the latest, end of the week), I think I have a way of getting past the overriding disaster.

- Alistair

[moturimi1]

You can use Abandon Loader. It functions !! I tried it. With VDMS I get the same error message.

[Wheezle]

I just tried it.. and lo and behold, the same frickin' problem. Let me get back to you tomorrow (or at the latest, end of the week), I think I have a way of getting past the overriding disaster.

- Alistair

Alright. Thanks for all this  

[moturimi1]

I just tried it.. and lo and behold, the same frickin' problem. Let me get back to you tomorrow (or at the latest, end of the week), I think I have a way of getting past the overriding disaster.

- Alistair

Do you now know how to do it?

[Alistair]

Working!

Don't remember which program I used, but it was indirect inspiration from Cloudschatze.

So I'm not giving the program out, because I have no idea which one it was ( ), but you can find the driver 'audblast.drv' here:
http://smc.sq7.org/miscfile/AUDBLAST.DRV

Copy it over your existing one and run install.exe. Keep general MIDI, and keep using Speedset.
GoSierra really annoys me.. I knew it wasn't the one that worked properly.

- Alistair