Prince of Persia 1 and 2 hangs (WinXP)
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#28 Prince of Persia 1 and 2 hangs (WinXP)
I tried running Prince of Persia 1 and 2 using
VDMSound. Both games do not have any music properly
configured via setup.exe to use soundblaster pro
midi. Both games also hang when using soundblaster
pro digital sound.
I'm using Prince of Persia 1 v1.4 and Prince of Persia
2 v1.1 taken off Red Orb's Prince of Persia Collection
CD. I'm running those on a WinXP machine. Haven't
tried it on a Win2k machine as I don't have access to
one.
In Prince of Persia 1, the game hangs at the end of
level 1 and at the beginning of the doc-check level.
I used a level skip cheat to get to the doc-check
level. Hanging seems to be related to the door
opening/closing (I think the same sample is used)
sound as it is stuck looping when the game hangs.
In Prince of Persia 2, the game hangs a little after
the beginning of the 2nd level. I think the first
sound on the 2nd level (aside from the ambient noise)
makes the game hang.
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I have Prince of Persia 1 (v1.0) and it works fine at all
points. Does the game stop freezing if you don't use
VDMSound/sound emulation in general?
Prince of Persia 2 is a known problem, it will lock up
(actually it will just slow down a lot) at the beach
scene. It can slow down at other points during the game as
well. I do not know what the cause is, but enabling EMS
will make it slow down in a lot of places (e.g. during the
intro) whereas disabling EMS, IIRC, will only have it slow
at the beach (what I did is enter the caves without sound,
saved, then enabled sound and restored -- that worked very
well). You can also try dosbox (see VDMSound Links
section), although it has some VGA palette problems with
Price of Persia 1.
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I really can't say if the Prince of persia 1 freezes for
the same reason when not using VDMSound. Whenever the game
is run without VDMSound it seems that the down key becomes
jammed and whenever I press the level skip cheat it hangs
even before the doc check level gets displayed and before
any sounds get played out.
As for Prince of Persia 2 the game freezes whenever I load
a game with sb16 sound on, with or without VDMSound.
I'm going to try dosbox and post the results. By the way,
I have been experiencing hanging problems using other dos
games on XP (flashback, dune 2) with and without VDMSound
so I'm guessing that this might be an XP problem now.
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I really can't say if the Prince of persia 1 freezes for
the same reason when not using VDMSound. Whenever the game
is run without VDMSound it seems that the down key becomes
jammed and whenever I press the level skip cheat it hangs
even before the doc check level gets displayed and before
any sounds get played out.
As for Prince of Persia 2 the game freezes whenever I load
a game with sb16 sound on, with or without VDMSound.
I'm going to try dosbox and post the results. By the way,
I have been experiencing hanging problems using other dos
games on XP (flashback, dune 2) with and without VDMSound
so I'm guessing that this might be an XP problem now.
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Yikes double post. Sorry. Anyway I just tried dosbox, it
can't even run either Prince of Persia games. Uch.
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Dune 2 and PoP 1 should definitely work without any major
problems. Same fro FlashBack (except that the cinematics
will be very slow when sounds are enabled). DosBox (0.2)
works fine with both PoP 1 and Dune 2 on my Win2k, so it's
weird that it wouldn't work for you (have you typed
something like "dosbox D:\GAMES\POP1 PRINCE.EXE" ?!)
With DosBox, unfortunately, I don't think that you can pass
parameters so you can't "megahit" PRINCE.EXE. :)
Also go to windowsupdate.com and make sure your XP is up to
date especially as far as "compatibility updates" are
concerned.
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Yup I tried dosbox that way and also used the launcher.
Dosbox just exits with a error messages. Also with
Flashback, playing with the settings, I either get no sound
(just music) or it churns oput weird sounds and then
hangs. I'm going to try to find different versions of
Prince of Persia 1 and 2. Would it be helpful if I sent
VDMSound log files?
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After a bit of searching, I noticed that either the older
versions of Prince of Persia 1 (pre v1.4) either didn't
have sound support at all or the copy I got had missing
files. I have a feeling that my version of PoP 1 and 2 has
updated sound support since I think it was released during
the post-dos era which is probably why dosbox doesn't work
properly.
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Possible Solve:
Many modern sound cards by default such as the sound
blaster live set the advanced properties under "Sounds and
Multimedia" in Windows 2k/XP to best sample rate
conversion and full directx acceleration. If you change these
settings to "Good Sample Rate converstion" (The lowest
setting), and "Standard Acceleration" in advanced properties
it appears to help Prince of Persia 1.4 using VDMS which
previously would hang the moment any digital sound was
triggered. You know when you have the right settings as they
are marked as Recommended in thier descriptions.
I have also tryed this with Prince of Persia 1.0 and 1.3
although all tests were brief just to see if symtoms would
reoccur, I make no gauruntees.
Here are the symptoms I was having:
Random termination with an exception fault (Prince of Persia
1.0)
Random clean termination with no error (Prince of Persia 1.3)
Lockup at the end of level 1 as exit door opened (1.0 and 1.3)
Lockup the moment digital sound was used (Prince of Persia
1.4 and Prince of Persia 2 version unknown)
*I have not testing prince of Persia 2 with this fix yet.
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Any workarounds or fixes to the POP2 problem, i.e., hangs on
first sound effect in level 2 with win xp.
-eric
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Well it seems that the problem is not with vdmsound or with
WinXP dos box alone. I managed to get my hands on a copy
of Connectix Virtual PC and tried it out. Prince of Persia 1
and 2 crashes as well but at different points. I was using it
under a DOS 6.22 environment. I'm going to try running it
under a Windows 9x environment as I suspect that it was
meant to be run under that. The cd them from had autorun
hehe. I have yet to find one of my old Win9x CDs though. If
that doesn't run properly, I'm going to try to get one of my
old machines to run.
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hmm... almost a year with no follow ups. anyway, i finally got
my hands on connectix virtual pc version 5.2. installed win98.
copied over pop games.
tried pop1. weird, the player gets stuck crouched. ?!?!
tried pop2, still crashes on first sound effect in level 1.
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ok should have tried them in dos mode and not in a dos box.
anyway, pop1 works perfect in connectix virtual pc dos mode.
so there is hope for vdmsound in this case.
pop2, however still crashes on the first sound effect on level
1. i used to be able to reach level 2 with vdmsound though. :
(
prince2 is very picky about the busy bit
on DSP status register. When it issues the
DMA command, it then immediately starts polling
the status port. The real SB DSP is rather slow,
so it first gets a couple of "not busy" replies,
and then "busy", until the command completes.
Under emulators however, the busy bit is toggled
immediately, so prince2 is waiting for "not busy"
but receives it only after the command is completed,
and then it starts waiting for "busy", which never
occur and prince eventually times out waiting.
Hope that helps explaining the slow-downs.