Quest for Glory Mac issues

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Maxor127
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Joined: Mon Sep 13, 2010 4:41 am

Quest for Glory Mac issues

Post by Maxor127 »

Some immediate issues I noticed in Quest for Glory Mac is that it skips the Sierra logo. It also skips the Introduction and goes straight to Character Select. And it's missing the sound effect for Magic-User on the character select screen. I'm assuming it's issues with the emulation, although it's possible I'm missing files. I copied the Mac directory for the game over to Windows ScummVM. I'm using 1.9.0.2.

After messing with it more, it seems the audio in general is messed up. When you pick a character and start the game, the music is completely wrong. I don't remember that when I first tried the Mac version years ago. Most of the audio sounds fine though. I'm even wondering if the Mac version sounds better when it seems to be working properly.
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almeath
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Post by almeath »

I cannot comment on the issues with the missing logo and character select screen, but accurate audio emulation in the Mac versions of SCI games is known to be a problem even in the latest builds of ScummVM.

Waltervn has developed a custom build which fixes the audio problems, as long as you are comfortable manually compiling it:

http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=14293

I have used it successfully with most of my Mac SCI games, so if you need detailed assistance just PM me and I will see what I can do to help. I also edited my own version of the build to properly set the 4:3 aspect ratio in some of the Mac SCI games that use a non-standard 320x190 resolution.
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almeath
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Post by almeath »

I have conducted some tests, and the results are:

1. Waltervn's 'SCI sound' build supports Quest for Glory, and the sound and music are working properly with it.

2. When the game starts, if you click a mouse button to progress past the introductory text boxes, the Sierra logo and music will be skipped and it will jump straight to the screen with the buttons for 'Introduction', 'Character Selection' etc.

3. However, if you do not use the mouse and instead use the enter/return key to skip the initial introductory text boxes, then the Sierra logo and intro music will appear first and play properly, then it will take you to the other selection boxes as normal.

4. No sound effect will play when the Magic-user is chosen on the character select screen. As all the other music and sound is working properly, it appears this could have been a bug in the original game. At the moment I cannot confirm this because I have been unsuccessful in getting the game to run in SheepShaver. It keeps crashing at launch and I do not have access to an old Mac for further testing.
Maxor127
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Joined: Mon Sep 13, 2010 4:41 am

Post by Maxor127 »

almeath wrote:I have conducted some tests, and the results are:

1. Waltervn's 'SCI sound' build supports Quest for Glory, and the sound and music are working properly with it.

2. When the game starts, if you click a mouse button to progress past the introductory text boxes, the Sierra logo and music will be skipped and it will jump straight to the screen with the buttons for 'Introduction', 'Character Selection' etc.

3. However, if you do not use the mouse and instead use the enter/return key to skip the initial introductory text boxes, then the Sierra logo and intro music will appear first and play properly, then it will take you to the other selection boxes as normal.

4. No sound effect will play when the Magic-user is chosen on the character select screen. As all the other music and sound is working properly, it appears this could have been a bug in the original game. At the moment I cannot confirm this because I have been unsuccessful in getting the game to run in SheepShaver. It keeps crashing at launch and I do not have access to an old Mac for further testing.
Thanks. Good catch about the mouse click skipping.

I don't remember if audio was missing in the original either. I thought maybe I was missing a driver or using the wrong device. I no longer have a Mac that supports this game, and that era of Mac games has been difficult for me to emulate. I don't think Basilisk would work either because if it doesn't crash in that, you probably won't get any sound or messed up graphics. Mini vMac might work. A lot of games stopped working properly once Macs moved to PPC, and I think Mini vMac is the only one that emulates them properly, and it might require manually compiling a build that supports a color Mac II rom or newer.

This game might also need to be patched with the MCDATE patcher, which patched a bug that affected almost all Mac Sierra games at the time and caused them to stop working if the system date was past September 17, 1993.
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almeath
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Post by almeath »

I conducted some further tests and the results are as follows:

1. SheepShaver is definitely not an option. The game bombs out (literally the bomb symbol that crashes the whole system) in MacOS 7, 8 and 9.

2. The Sierra Patch is not required for QFG, and the utility will in fact not recognize it as a Sierra game. They must have fixed the underlying bug by 1993.

3. Surprisingly, it will launch in Mini vMac (3.5 alpha) emulating a Mac II. It is the only 256 color SCI game I have been able to successfully run this way.

4. Despite point 3, Mini vMac is not currently an option to play the game outright because there is an additional bug that will not let you advance beyond the character selection screen. This is probably because Mac II support (specifically 68020 processor emulation) is not fully implemented in Mini vMac, rather than an underlying bug in the game itself.

5. Getting to the character selection screen in Mini vMac establishes that the lack of sound when you click the magic user is most likely a bug in the original game, because the sound is missing there too. So it does not appear to be an issue with how ScummVM is handling the game. This also indicates that you are not dealing with a missing driver issue.

In summary, your best bet is to run the game with Waltervn's 'SCI sound' build, as it fixes the sound problems you mentioned and the lack of the magic user sound effect is not a bug with ScummVM's handling of the game.
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