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Star Quest I in the 27th century [DOSBox]

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 7:32 pm
by MrFlibble
Some time ago I stumbled upon this shareware game called Star Quest I in the 27th century while browsing cd.textfiles.com. According to the descriptions, it's supposed to be a pretty sophisticated space combat and exploration simulator:
Long Desc : Take command as a high level officer giving orders to a
squadron of ultra-fast wing ships with high fire power. Order the fleet to
follow and protect you while you destroy hundreds of enemy ships. Don't miss
this amazing experience of flying with a team of top notch fighters. Imagine
arriving from deep space, closing in on a solar system, circling around a moon
to finally blast a base protected by ground cannons on the planet's surface.
Start playing the incredibly realistic missions to sense the ultimate fear of
destruction in ap bombarded by fire power so intense that your head will be
spinning. Wipe out space mine fields to protect your Star Cruisers while an
armada closes in on you... The ultimate real-time space flight environment.
Running on state of the art algorithms, Star Quest I allows you unlimited
freedom of movement and control around full 3D planets. FEATURES: 3D mapped
stars for a total feeling of immersion. Full 3D Gouraud shaded planets with
atmosphere simulation. Texture mapped objects with real-time shading by
sunlight. Mixed missions: deep space, air and surface. Over 60 different
spaceships. Space racing with weaponry. Full 360 degree 3D movement including
light speed, reverse and stop. Layered sound effects with volume that
decreases with distance. General MIDI music output. Animated texture mapping.
Exploration mode to plan your attack and strategy. 10 levels of difficulty per
mission. Stunning explosions with flying debris.
Sounds cool, huh? Googling also yielded some quite nice-looking screenshots as well. The problem is, the game does not run in DOSBox for me. It installs properly and allows itself to be configured, but launching the actual game just gives a black screen. I've checked the troubleshooting section in the readme, and turned off EMS memory, but to no avail. While the screen is black and thing happens, the DOSBox console displays a message "Screen output redirected to null."

The shareware distribution is available from a number of places, for example, here: SQ101.ZIP

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:01 pm
by dosraider
:huh:
No problem here, installed shareware version from \temp\ to \SQ1\ ... and runs as a charm.
Dosbox 0.74, default settings (except output and screen size)

Image

Image

Image

Sounds&cinematics&ingame : all fine.

[Edit]
Also: once installed tried to run the game with drag&drop SQ1.EXE on dosbox icon to see if it's one of those nitpicking 'watch out how you mount-launch' games, but runs fine with drag&drop, no problem.

Seems you do something wrong somewhere, but no idea what, maybe give some more details?

[Edit]²
Bloody, not bad at all that game, gonna have to look for the full version.

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 10:10 am
by MrFlibble
Well, I managed to make it work after all, just used DOSBox v0.74 (I usually use a rather old Taewoong's build v0.71), disabled EMS and set machine type to 386 just to be sure :) The game runs well with SB sound, however when I tried to change music to General MIDI in internal options it did not play any music all, even after restarting the game. Other than that, it runs quite well.

The gameplay is pretty cool too, makes one wonder why this game isn't that well known...

BTW, the company that made this game, Virtual Adventures Inc., still exists, and they are working on a sequel to Star Quest too :)

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 11:00 am
by dosraider
MrFlibble wrote:... however when I tried to change music to General MIDI in internal options it did not play any music all, even after restarting the game......
Works fine with MIDI here .... weird.
Tried with EMS false ànd true, no prob.
Maybe it's your core setting?
No idea.

Maybe gonna try some things out later if *IF* I find enough time ...... but I rather play the game, indeed pretty good.

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 11:35 am
by MrFlibble
I'll play around with settings but MIDI music isn't top priority anyway :)

Here's the original shareware version 1.0 for anyone interested: SQ1.ZIP

You can still order the full game from Virtual Adventures' website BTW.