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Police Quest 2: The Vengeance Help

Police Quest 2: The Vengeance's original requirements:

8088 / 8086 or better CPU
CGA, EGA
256KB RAM
MS-DOS 2.11 or greater
1.75 MB Hard drive space
Supports: Joystick, Hard Disk (Key Disk)MS-DOS 2.11 or greater
AdLib, Game Blaster, General MIDI, IBM Music Feature Card, Roland MT-32/LAPC-1, Sound Blaster
Mouse

 

Audio Problems

Audio problems are common in the later Sierra DOS SCI games. There's no single fix for all these games.

Problem - Poor Quality / No Sound (Win9x and XP):
The game has no sound or the music is of poor quality.

Solution 1 (preferred):
Play the game in DOSBox. It also will work with the MT-32 sound module, if you are fortunate to have one.

Solution 2:
Use VDMSound. The game work well with VDMSound. The sound will be as good as your audio hardware, and as with DOSBox, it works with the MT-32 sound module.

Solution 3:
Play the game with FreeSCI, a third party Interpreter for Sierra's early SCI games.

Solution 4 (DOS/Win9x):
Install DOS drivers for your soundcard. Without DOS drivers installed you won't have sound in a DOS window in Windows 9x. If you can't find DOS drivers for your soundcard, there is an alpha (developmental) version of VDMS that you can try.

Problem - Unable to initialize your audio hardware:
On starting the game you get the message:

Unable to initialize your audio hardware

This error is timer related. It only occurs on computers faster than those of when the games were originally released.

Solution 1 (preferred):
Play the game in DOSBox. By playing your game in DOSBox, you can avoid this and other timer problems. Even the Windows version can be played in DOSBox if you install Windows 3x in it, first.

Back when computers came with a "Turbo" switch (a sort of speed switch,) Sierra's workaround was to turn off the Turbo switch to start the game, after which you could turn the Turbo back on. If you have your cycles in DOSBox set too high, you may still encounter this problem. You can mimic the turbo switch solution by lowering your cycles (Ctl+F11) before starting your game. You may raise the cycles back up after the game starts (Ctl+F12).

Solution 2:
Patch the old audio driver with GOSiERRA or SBSIERRA.

Solution 3:
Use the updated driver,AUDBLAST.DRV (sb16drv.exe)

Solution 4:
Try installing the Windows version

Speed problems

As with many of the Sierra VGA games, Police Quest 2: The Vengeance has some speed bugs. These bugs can also be avoided by playing the game in DOSBox. If you can't or don't want to use DOSBox, you can try using a Slowdown Utility. Here is a list of problems with solutions/workarounds.

Problem - Introduction Sequence Problem:
The opening Sequence moves too fast.

Solution 1 (preferred):
Apply this patch by NewRisingSun. (You may still want to play the game in DOSBox.) This fix is ONLY for Version 1.002.011. The earlier version, 1.001.000, does NOT need fixing. Do not use this fix with any version other than 1.002.011!

To find out which version you have, run the game, press ENTER to skip the introduction, answer the copy-protection question correctly, and then press ESC to select "About PQ2" from the Sierra menu.

Solution 2:
Install the DOS version and play using DOSBox.

 

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