Many Problems with the 2006 VU KQ Collection
Preface
There were many issues with the last release of the King's Quest Collection. This collection was assembled from a hodgepodge of several different sources, so much so that it almost appears to have been compiled by an abandonwares group. Much that should have remained was ripped out, like the install files which are necessary to change basic game settings and the settings that they chose were often far from optimal.
The DOSBox solution was a great idea, but its execution left much to be desired. It provided no reasonable DOSBox upgrade path for users. This was a serious flaw, as DOSBox is under very active development and is constantly being improved. Many of the issues that customers encountered were solved by simply upgrading DOSBox.
Other problems with the execution of how they used DOSBox included things such as the settings could not be changed, as the Launcher used internal settings and did not use the dosbox.conf. This caused less than optimal settings for the individual games. One of the settings was to start the game in full screen, with caused several issues with many users. "Alt+Enter"ing to switch to window mode or "Alt+Tab"ing would crash the game. It took so long to develop the collection that by the time that it was released DOSBox 0.65 had been released before the collection became available. (BTW, there was no reason why it should have taken so long. Ignoring the manual PDF creation and the packaging, I could have prepared a nearly ideal release in a matter of a few days, not the many months that they took. My Phantasmagoria installer has been far more complicated and involved)
Another huge issue with using such an old version of DOSBox is that it is not Vista friendly. UAC creates a huge headache with earlier versions. This is also a big issue with installing legacy games in the %ProgramFiles% directory, as these games often need to write to the hard drive. This is solved by not installing in a system folder as well as using a Vista compatible version of DOSBox like 0.73.
All of these issues caused a flood of help requests on the VU forums, as that was the only support that VU offered. There was a huge anticipation in the Sierra community awaiting the release of the new collections, but when word got out about all of the failings of the so called "XP compatible" collections, most that were planning to buy did not. Fixing the release would have been so easy and would have cost no more. If they had started from the 1997 Collection Series release, dumped the non KQ games and had installed DOSBox into a standard install location with using Windows shortcuts to DOSBox and individual conf files, it would have been ideal. It would have allowed an easy upgrade path for DOSBox
Individual game issues
KQ1 AGI
Missing. A big mistake, as a large proportion of the potential customer base are Sierra fans that want the complete series. The game is tiny and could have been included at very little cost of disc space.
KQ1SCI
Install files missing, can only change game settings by manually editing the RESOURCE.CFG. DOSBox settings less than optimal, Aspect should be set to "true", output should be set to overlay to avoid pallet corruption when changing from full screen to windowed mode. Cycles should be set to somewhere between 6000 to 10000 for reasonable game speed.
KQ2
DOSBox settings less than optimal. Under the [dosbox] section machine type should be set to tandy, Aspect should be set to "true", output should be set to overlay to avoid pallet corruption when changing from full screen to windowed mode. Cycles should be set to somewhere between 6000 to 10000 for reasonable game speed.
KQ3
DOSBox settings less than optimal. Under the [dosbox] section machine type should be set to tandy, Aspect should be set to "true", output should be set to overlay to avoid pallet corruption when changing from full screen to windowed mode. Cycles should be set to somewhere between 6000 to 10000 for reasonable game speed.
KQ4
Install files missing, can only change game settings by manually editing the RESOURCE.CFG. DOSBox settings less than optimal, Aspect should be set to "true", output should be set to overlay to avoid pallet corruption when changing from full screen to windowed mode. Cycles should be set to somewhere between 6000 to 10000 for reasonable game speed.
KQ5
Install files missing, can only change game settings by manually editing the RESOURCE.CFG. DOSBox settings less than optimal, Aspect should be set to "true", output should be set to overlay to avoid pallet corruption when changing from full screen to windowed mode. Cycles should be set to somewhere between 6000 to 10000 for reasonable game speed.
KQ6
Graphics driver included with the game cannot handle the opening sequence. Can easily be fixed by replacing driver from certain other early VGA SCI games. Install files missing, can only change game settings by manually editing the RESOURCE.CFG. DOSBox settings less than optimal, Aspect should be set to "true", output should be set to overlay to avoid pallet corruption when changing from full screen to windowed mode. Cycles should be set to somewhere between 6000 to 10000 for reasonable game speed. Most prefer the Windows version for the higher rez dialog images that are not used with the DOS version. It is possible to get the Windows version running on XP, but not without issues. The Windows version will install and run on Vista, but only 32 bit. The DOS version is the only option for 64 bit Windows users.
KQ7
The show stopper. The version that shipped with the latest collection was version 1.4. Besides several bug fixes of later versions, it came with no DOS interpreter. It did not even include the official KQ7PAT patch from Sierra. The game suffers from a impassable speed bug - the infamous firecracker bug. This bug can easily be avoided by playing the DOS version in DOSBox. Only version 2 came with a DOS interpreter. Version 2 also addressed several other issues. NO 64 BIT USERS WILL BE ABLE TO PLAY THIS VERSION OF THE GAME, AS THE EXECUTABLE IS 16 BIT.
Resolutions
The SHP DOSBox patches fixes nearly all of these issues, but they are not what this post was about.
Note: the other collections had many of the same problems. If I get some time I will post in those game forums with series/game specific issues for those releases, too.
