Police Quest 2 (Vivendi 2006 release)

[hagmo]

Hi there,

I owe a lot to this forum. Thanks to the regulars in here, I was able to find an MT-32 module on ebay and get it working rather painlessly, both on an old DOS computer and with DOSBox on my laptop. All by simply searching the forum. So, thank you everyone.

I've been playing through all the Sierra games I own that were composed for the MT-32, and now the time has come for Police Quest 2. This is where I run into some problems and I figured this would be the best place to ask for help.

I have the MT-32 connected to a Sound Blaster AWE64 card, and have used the "Sound Blaster MIDI Port Utility" in order to make that set-up work with the earlier games. Trouble is, I only have the 2006 release by Vivendi of the Police Quest Collection. This collection installs the games in DOSBox with almost no way of configuring the setup. I found a fix over at sierrahelp.com that would restore the setup files. After installing that, I burned a new CD and thought I could get away with simply copying the game files to the old computer directly from that CD.

It worked with PQ1VGA, but the Sound Blaster MIDI Utility refuses to work with PQ2. It says that the version of music driver is unfamiliar, and the error code 22301100, which I suppose is only meaningful if you are the author of the utility. 

Not sure where to go from here. I could run the game in DOSBox on my laptop, but the line-in jack doubles as a mic jack and doesn't work very well. Besides, half the charm is lost from playing the game on a tiny widescreen monitor.

How would you go about connecting the MT-32 without using the Sound Blaster port? Would you need one of those mythical MPU-401 boxes? Or is there another, preferrably affordable, way? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

/hagmo

[Marten]

Speaking of the author, he hasn't posted here in 5 years.  But you could start by trying to contact him through the information available here.

http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=5

[jharris01]

You can try abandonware. See if that works in your old machine.

You can buy another sound card, but that sounds like too much trouble for just one game. Lately I've noticed an uprise in profit seekers hoarding old hardware to sell later at outrageous prices.

What I would do is get an external usb (or PCMCIA or newer slot if your laptop supports it) sound card with the necessary inputs. Ebay has lots of cheap USB generic ones starting around $15-20. You can also pay more for a brand name usb audio interface that uses RCA inputs instead of mini phono jacks. For example the Behringer U-Control series.

As for the widescreen issue, you should learn how to enable vertical bars on your DOSBox (while playing fullscreen) or keep 4:3 aspect ratio while playing in a window. It's not so bad once you set it up.

Good Luck

[hagmo]

Thanks for your ideas.

I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable asking Mr. Olsson about a program he wrote 20 years ago, but I might get around to dropping him an e-mail. Or paying him a visit, since he lives 13 miles from me... or used to, 20 years ago.

If it can be avoided, I'd rather not play the game in DOSBox at all. The laptop screen is really small, the keyboard feels wrong, it only has a touchpad, and so on. I know, I'm picky. I might try your abandonware idea though, jharris, even if that also makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Oh well, it's not like I've never pirated anything before... before discovering ebay, before even having an income that wasn't my weekly allowance...

If anyone has further suggestions, I'd be grateful for them.

[Cloudschatze]

The driver that Anders' utility creates shouldn't be game-specific, assuming the Vivendi collection doesn't include the early release version. Try running the game after copying these two files into your Police Quest II directory:

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/RESOURCE.CFG
http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/MT32SB.DRV

[hagmo]

Awesome, Cloudschatze! That worked. The game runs great. And, though I don't think I need to mention this, sounds great.

Thanks to everyone who helped!