Playtime with DOSBox and Nightlong ;)

Playing Prince Of Persia in DOSBox

Greetings again, fellow Amigans! In this blog i am going to tell you how i managed to get games running in the DOSBox emulator in AmigaOS 4.1.5 on my AmigaOne 500 computer system, and how i got the excellent graphic adventure Nightlong running as well.

After reading a blog about running games with DOSBox from an X1000 owner on the net, i realized the process was easier than first thought.

DOSBox was installed to Diverse:Emulators, which was JFXS-formatted. In the DOSBox section there was a C drawer as well. As explained carefully from the DOSBox blog from one X1000 owner, which you can find in my AmigaOS group on Facebook if you happen to be a member, you can create sub-drawers in the C drawer. I created a sub-drawer called Games (making it hidden). You can add several sub-drawers with the name of DOS games you install there as well, making it easier to locate different games you have installed for DOSBox.

How to get the games running, you might ask. Well, in DOSBox Config file opened with NotePad, i changed the line where it mentioned the mounting part to something like this: Mount C Diverse:Emulators/DOSBox/C/Games. This is also the command that has to be typed when you start up DOSBox. From there you should easily allocate the games you have installed in their own sub-drawers in the C/Games section of DOSBox. It's easier than what is usually thought.

First game i installed for testing, was the fast action platformer Prince Of Persia, as seen in the above screenshot. The first time i played it, was on an Amiga 1200 back in the early 90-ies, as i recall. Prince of Persia happened to be one of many games that ran smoothly without distortion in DOSBox. Graphic was looking good, animation was very smooth and the SoundBlaster audio emulation was really good, without a cracking, annoying sound. Just like playing it on PC.

The game was truly very enjoyable to play. You can find a lot of DOSBox games here on these links below:

http://www.emuparadise.me/Abandonware_Games/51 or just Google for DOSBox games and a lot of suggestions will pop up. You can find games very easily!

Playing Pinball Fantasies in DOSBox

Another fine DOS game i found was Pinball Fantasies to run in DOSBox. The game was truly cool to play, even that it was a bit slower than the native Amiga version. The DOSBox version had a "crackling" sound, too.

This left me to think that DOSBox hasn't yet reached a level where every game and application would flow flawlessy in this emulator. Also, there are at least 3 limitations to bear in mind. I will try to explain. 

1. The onboard SM502 of SAM460ex uses about 94% CPU power and doesn't support MIDI.
2. Missing full 3D hardware acceleration (will come with AmigaOS 4.2)
3. The way DOSBox has been made. Probably needs better speed etc)

I actually tried to run a 3D-shooter in DOSBox called Blood. The game was successfully installed, but too slow to be playable. Especially the audio was playing too slow as well, leaving a cracking sound. Again i will advice anyone to leave out 3D games and applicatons until AmigaOS 4.2 with full 3D hardware acceleration is ready. Normal 2D games and adventures run nicely in DOSBox.

Playing Police Quest 4 Open Season in DOSBox

Another game i tried out for DOSBox was Police Quest 4 - Open Season. The game looked amazingly cool, but nearly unplayable in the current state of AmigaOS 4.1.5. Like already mentioned. We urgely need a full 3D hardware accelerated system and some speed improvement to DOSBox. Then such games will run flawlessy within the emulator.

However, there are plans to implement the IGame launcher into DOSBox, according to one of my many Amiga friends whom have asked the author of DOSBox to kindly intergrate this launcher into DOSBox. There is always room for improvements, so this appeared as a good, interesting news.

Now we are moving onto another threat of the blog. The game Nightlong. What is Nightlong? Well, Nightlong is in fact one of the best and biggest games made for Amiga, on 3 (!) CDs (ISO files to you), dated back to 2000 by ClickBOOM! Nightlong is a modern graphic adventure game with 16 bit graphic and audio!

Nightlong - The game cover

As for many, i was thinking that Nightlong would be next to nearly impossible to get running on an AmigaOS 4.1.5 system. One of my Amiga friends managed to get the game running first on his own AmigaOS 4.1.5 system, and he explained to me in my AmigaOS group in Facebook carefully how it was done, as i will try to explain here, too.

Firstly, you will need the tool DiskImageGUI installed into your SYS partition by its' Installer. It was when mounting the game's ISO file i realized how useful and important DiskImageGUI is to have in your system. You will find this tool here: http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=driver/storage/diskimage_device.lha

Mounting devices with files like ISO is not really difficult. You just click the next-last blue button (the blue one with a white line in the middle) to the right, after marking the line saying ICD0 (that would happen to be your first CD/DVD-drive on your Amiga). From there you choose the ISO plugin and double-click on that, then you find the ISO file to mount. Nightlong was found in www.emuparadise.org, by typing in the word Nightlong in the Search part, then it will show you the 3 ISO files that have to be downloaded.

Hi, my name's Joshua - main actor in Nightlong

Adding the 3 big ISO files, all being around 450MB each, they will all appear in over 1GB space! Really big, but excellent game!

It will take some time to download all these ISO files, so be patient and have a nice break while the files are downloading.

It's adviceable to download them to say...the Diverse partition, as i did, because you might want to look for these files again easily if something should go wrong. You will discover a little later that you actually only need the FIRST ISO for the game. That is for DISC 1, where the main Installer for the game is. You still need to download all 3 ISO files before installing the game where you want to, as you will need the data files that are part of DISC 2 and 3 as well. When you have unpacked the game to a game partition, do the following things (the screenshot below will help guide you):

Mount Nightlong ISO with DiskImageGUI

 1. Install Nightlong to your decided destination with the 3 ISO files. 

2. Open DiskImageGUI (if you have it installed. If not, pick it up from OS4Depot.net here by searching for DiskImage

3. Click ICD0 to activate it so it appears marked, then click the next-fatherest blue button with a white line in the middle to the right. From there you choose ISO as the plugin, then choose Options to allow the ISO to be a CD-ROM, click Save.

4. You should now see that ICDO appears as a CD-ROM icon (yellow round disc icon). Now, find the ISO file for DISC 1 of Nightlong (you can now delete ISO for DISC 2 and 3, as the whole game has been installed now). DiskImageGUI has now mounted the ISO file for Nightlong to be run, but don't run the game yet. 2 more things to do.

5. As the game was made back in 2000 and firstly for 68K Amigas with RTG, you will need the Nightlong 1.2 PPC patch to be installed into the Nightlong drawer. You will find out that it's the file Nightlong 1.2 (the main file) you later will have to click to get it running, but not yet.

6. You will also need to install RTGMaster found on Aminet here:
    http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/rtgmaster_user
   You can also install this:  http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/RTGoesWarpOS if you want to. Helps speed up C2P operations. Just follow the instructions carefully. Say YES (Always) when installing the main RTGMaster.

7. More important, you will still have to get the RTGMaster_OS4fix, which you find here: http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=driver/graphics/rtgmaster-os4fix.lha You will discover that the RTGMaster.library is OLDER here than in the other main RTGMaster you installed. Simply ignore that it's older and install it anyway, overwriting the existing library, as the OS4fix of RTGMaster.library is the one you will need. Flame, rtgAMI.library and rtgP96.library should be overwritten as well (if not previously installed) and moved to Libs:rtg. There, now you are ready!

8. If you did everything right now step by step from point 1 to this, then all you need to do now is to restart your system, then just run DiskImageGUI again clicking the ICD0, then insert the ISO file for Nightlong, go into where you installed Nightlong, and double-click Nightlong 1.2 (the main Nightlong 1.2). You will notice a Guru Meditation Yellow Warning, but ignore that by doing nothing and wait around 10 seconds. Suddenly you should see a screen showing up, showing you the 16-bit screenmode the game uses (don't worry, it won't affect your Workbench settings as the game runs standalone), then just click SAVE, and the game should now run! Mission accomplished! The game should then look something like this seen on the shots below!

Joshua investigating the appartment

The game is really cool and exciting to play for hours! It would be nice if the game got a facelift or two.

The graphic could need to be upgraded to 32-bit, using OpenGL, and the HD installer should be upgraded to support AmigaOS 4.1 and AmigaOS 4.2 through a simple installation to harddrive.

What is important now is that the game runs, even after all these configurations. I've had plenty of fun with Nightlong! It's just the beginning! Just take a look at many of the screenshots! The game is so cool!

Joshua finds something mystical here

Well, that should be all for now. Hopefully my next blog will have some videos and music, as i am trying to create more songs with OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c!

Feel free to read my blog and leave nice comments if you find the blog interesting. You can even ask for something you need help with, regarding the blog, and i will provide with answers the best i can.

Thank you for reading ;)

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

Joshua searchs dark areas in Nightlong