I've just played through the whole game with frotz254 from https://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/. That's a 16 bit version I gather so should work on older systems too. Everything worked perfectly.
richardpickles
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I was using a 486SX with DOS 6.22. I'm just using a renamed copy of the dos folder included in the download copied to the c drives. I've since tried it on a PII with the same setup and get the same bug. So I tried a fresh download on DOSBox and I still get the same bug every time when I try to put the statuette in the panel. As far as I can see it's nothing to do with hardware and happens every single time without fail so it should be easy to reproduce. I didn't have the same issues on a CPC I'm glad to report.
There was another very minor issue on real DOS hardware in that the batch file doesn't work to launch the game. It looks like it's breaking the first line up into two parts when trying to run it. Opening it with edit, it looks normal enough. I removed the carriage return after the first line, put it back, saved again and it was fine. Maybe just opening and saving would have done the trick? Not sure what the issue is there - it works in DOSBox. I thought that maybe it's using some unsupported text encoding format but that's speculation.
Very nearly got to the end but when I try to put the candles on the gravestone I get endless "You probably wanted to say put something in something" messages and can't finish the game. I can't clear this by dropping items.
I tried starting a fresh game in case it was my save that got corrupted and had the same errors again as soon as I got to the statuette part. The game appears to be unbeatable on DOS as far as I can see. I'm determined to see the end at this point so will try another version instead.
I'm playing version 13 on DOS and am having serious issues with put commands. Minor spoilers ahead:-
This first occurred with trying to put the statuette in the panel. This refused to work no matter what I tried giving a "You probably wanted to say put something in something" message (even though that was exactly what I'd done). I ended up looking at the transcript, seeing that I hadn't picked up the torch elsewhere so I did that and it worked second time around.
I then had a similar issue with the plates and murals. I initially tried to place the Lindisfarne/Cuthbert plate first and got the same message. Checked the transcript again which did things in a different order and that then worked.
Now I'm trying to put the salt in the pouch and am getting the same error yet again. Also if I type get salt, it doesn't return a message at all. Not sure if I can even work my way around it this time but will keep trying.
I played through it all last night. The only issue I ran into was the music not playing after loading a savegame on one occasion. I have no idea how reproducible this is but I was in the room with the scholar with music playing. I saved my game then took the pills to get the secret ending. The same music kept on playing at this point which may or may not be right. I reloaded my save and there was no sound at all. I walked outside, still wasn't hearing anything and decided to reload again at which point the music was playing again.
Good news first. I just played through the latest version on a Tandy. I loved the new areas and everything worked perfectly. Really enjoyed finding all the extra lore that was added.
I thought I'd try it out in EGA as well with the MT-32 but I'm not having so much luck. The game runs fine but I'm not getting more than a couple of hanging notes from the MT-32. I've tried this on a 286, 486 and Pentium II, none of which worked correctly. They are all using MPU-401 emulator cards of various sorts to connect to the MT-32. I've never had any problems with other games so there seems to be an issue of some sort with your MIDI drivers.
I really enjoyed the game. There were a few bugs I ran into along the way that I thought I ought to mention, nothing show stopping but your game would be better still if they could be fixed. I've not tried the Windows version so it may only be on real hardware - these were all playing the DOS version on a Tandy 1000TX:-
- If you restore your game while the intro is playing, the text prompt never appears so you can't do anything. I had to skip the intro first.
- The score at the top of the screen has a habit of disappearing at times. Especially if something falls from the top of the screen where it wipes it out. My final score wasn't displayed on the last screen either.
- The line of text you see to type exit to leave the screen when you have a closeup (e.g. the crystal with the scholar trapped in it) doesn't go away when you do exit.
- The keyboard controls are a bit dodgy when changing direction. E.g. I press 4 to walk left, then swap to 7 to go diagonal left/up. It wouldn't necessarily pick the change up. I could end up stopped or only moving up instead unless I released and pressed the 7 key again.