Theme Park issues .......

[Guest]

Hey all,

Need some help from people that know what they're doing (which I don't).

I'm trying to get Theme Park (the original) running in Windows 95. It works, graphics and sound are perfect but after a while, when I change from screen to screen, the mouse cursor freezes up but the game keeps going on fine.

This has always happened for as long as I can remember; when I was a kid on our Windows 95 and Windows 98 computers, more recently in DOSBox on XP, and now on a Windows 95 computer I built to play some old games.

I'm not using DOSBox, just the DOS that runs under Windows 95. I'm using a PS/2 mouse.

Can somebody please help. I just can't get enough of these old games. This Theme Park thing is stopping me from digging up lost childhood memories.

[organisation64]

It was me (organisation64) that posted this message btw.

I didn't realise I wasn't logged in at the time. But yeah, the problem still stands.

[dosraider]

just the DOS that runs under Windows 95.

Explain please, what you're doing exactly.

[organisation64]

just the DOS that runs under Windows 95.

Explain please, what you're doing exactly.

Okay. I'm trying to play some old DOS games on an old Pentium system I threw together, it's Windows 95.

I want to play Theme Park, it works for a while but then the mouse seizes up, but the game continues to run.

[dosraider]

[Echo mode]

Explain please, what you're doing exactly.

[/Echo mode]

[organisation64]

I just want to sort out the mouse problem.

I'm gonna try and install DOS 6.22 and use Slo'Mo though to see if that helps. I know that Theme Park was intended for use on MS-DOS, not on Windows 95.

Windows 95 has a version of DOS running in the background am I correct? As all the O/S's up until the NT Kernel came in booted up DOS and then the O/S.

[dosraider]

Win95 isn't dos, it can run (some) dosprogs but it ain't dos.
To be complete: W98SE has far better dos compatibility then W95 ever had.

What I want to know is:
Do you run the game in W95 or do you reboot the comp in dosmode?

[organisation64]

I run the game in W95. I run other DOS games in W95 though like Theme Hospital and they play perfectly.

[dosraider]

It's not because Theme Hospital runs perfect in W95 that other games will ....*sigh*

[organisation64]

I know.
But if I remove W95 and install DOS 6.22 (with Slo'Mo) for example, will all my DOS games run perfectly?

Will my CD drive even work in DOS or do I need to install a specific driver for it?

[dosraider]

All your games ...? No, as dosgaming covers an era from 1MHz to 200MHz compys you can't expect ALL dosgames to run on a 120MHz computer without having to tweak here and there.
Of course games as DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, Tomb Raider will run fine.
Those need a beefy doscompy.

Your problems will be for games that were written for slower PCs, I even think that a 120MHz will be too fast for the first Wing Commander .....

Dos needs specific CD drivers, must be loaded in config.sys and autoexec.bat.

You will have to learn to google young padawan, all that tech info is easily findable on the net.
As is:
http://www.computerhope.com/ac.htm
http://www.computerhope.com/cdromd.htm

http://www.tnd.com/camosun/elex130/dostutor1.html
http://www.msdos.windowsreinstall.com/
Etcetera ......

[organisation64]

Thanks for the links dosraider.
Do you hate graphical user interfaces?
I thought when GUI's came along everybody was glad to see the back of DOS prompts.

Would you agree that if I downgraded my Pentium to a 90Mhz (and gave it the correct bus speed and voltages on the motherboard), then installed DOS 6.22 and Slo'Mo, I could get my games to run better than in W95?

[dosraider]

Do you hate graphical user interfaces?

Nope, why would I? Life never been easier since we had some good GUIs.
(If we forget we had to go through W95, WinME and the first NTs .....)

Would you agree that if I downgraded my Pentium to a 90Mhz (and gave it the correct bus speed and voltages on the motherboard), then installed DOS 6.22 and Slo'Mo, I could get my games to run better than in W95?

Not really, no, a P120 is pretty good, as long you forget that #@#@#W95 and run dos, at least you can run some of the more resource demanding dosgames on such PC, and the others, Mo'Slo and similar do usually the trick.

But to be honnest, I rarely fire up my ol'PCs, dosbox and VPC are much easier and versatile.

[dosraider]

But maybe you should continue this discussion in
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=17
And stop mixing several topics/subjects ......

[organisation64]

Okay. We've gone slightly off topic, so back to the original subject:

Why would the mouse freeze up in Theme Park?

[dosraider]

Why would the mouse freeze up in Theme Park?

Because it does a call that the OS doesn't like?
Because it's a dos TSR and does a call that a memory manager doesn't like?
Whatever, it's conceived to run in plain 'classic' dos, not the dos included in W95.
Also:
Theme Hospital is from 1997, so it's only normal it runs on W95, there even is a W95 version on the original CD.....
Theme Park is from 1994, so not made with Win9x compatibility in mind, it's a 'dosgame' only ( ....and early Mac I thought).

You also could try a MSdos 6.x bootdisk, should work nicely on your system.
Plenty bootdisks in all kinds of flavours@
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
BTW,that one is a legit site.
Do some config.sys and autoexec.bat tweaking to add mouse support and sound where needed, will be a nice learning curve should you decide to go fully for MsDos on your system.
Also give the CDdrivers a glance, some nice things included over there.

[organisation64]

Thanks for the help. I'll try out some of this stuff tomorrow.
I see what you're saying about Theme Park being built purely for MS-DOS.

Hopefully I'll finally be able to play that game properly for the first time in 16 years.

Thanks once again!

[organisation64]

Update:

I've introduced a clean install to a freshly formatted partition and installed MS-DOS 6.22. It works great, I've set up the CD-ROM drivers and mouse drivers and installed Theme Park and as far as I can tell, the mouse issue has gone.

Oh, and on another note, I didn't even need Slo'Mo, its running at the correct speed.

However I am having problems with sound in the game. Should I start a new thread for this or continue it here?

[dosraider]

We can go on here I think ... as long it's theme park related.

Sound problem:
-> What is your sound hardware?
-> Hardware settings? Addr, IRQ, DMA, HDMA? Do they match your game setup params?

[organisation64]

I have an ISA Creative CT2960 Vibra, which I believe is part of the SoundBlaster 16 family.

My hardware settings for the soundcard are: A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6

When I setup Theme Park I choose:
'Sound FX: Soundblaster 16'
'Music: Soundblaster 16'
'IRQ: 5'
'DMA: 1'

The setup screen then says:
'Sound to port: 220'
'Music to port: None'

I don't understand why 'Music to port' is none, I cannot change it unless I choose an other Soundcard like Adlib Gold, but then I get an error message.

Oddly enough, it appears the Music is working fine in the game, but the sound is not.
ie. Music from the rides can be heard, but other sound effects in game cannot.