The Adventures of Willy Beamish (alternate floppy images?)

Currently, the seven-disk version with 5.25" floppy images on the site have a problem in that you can't install the game because the installer gets confused when there are more drives than C:\ and A:\. This means, unfortunately, you cannot install even on DOSBox since it has an extra virtual drive -- Z:\

So I was hoping if anyone has the 3.5" version of the disk images, please kindly upload. It would be interesting to see if the installer works everywhere besides VirtualBox/VMWare.

Thank you in advance.

 

I actually doubt that 3,5" version have different installer...

So you can use IMGMOUNT A image_1 image_2 image_3 image_4 image_5 image_6 image_7 -t floppy

You can then cycle the images using CTRL+F4.

Just not all Dosbox builds have it working for floppies, so you probably should first find the proper version, which support it.

Also you always can use 3rd-party floppy drive emulator (there are plenty for each platform) and do a hot swap there.

Another option is just download floppy version (VGA/EGA), not floppy images.

 

@the_grumeti, it is not because of an extra virtual drive!
This must be some DOSBox bug - and it is not the first time I see it being unable to install games.
I have just installed that seven-disk version with 5.25" floppy images in DOS 6.22@VirtualPC that has A:\, C:\ and Z:\ drives without any problems!

 

You're probably right, but there are several official VGA floppy releases (at least 3 confirmed):

v1.0 VGA (1991-09-25) 3.5" 6-disk version
v1.01 VGA (1991-10-11) 5.25" 7-disk version
v1.02 VGA (1991-11-08) 3.5" 6-disk version

The version on this site has all the critical files with a timestamp of 1991-09-25, so I'm assuming it's v1.0 although there are two odd files dated 1992-04-21, which is strange...

I was being optimistic that maybe in the later floppy versions, Sierra/Dynamix changed or designed a better installer

I appreciate your suggestions though, I did try all those steps earlier on both DOSBox-X and the SVN build, as well as a virtual floppy drive (ImDisk). The game installer gets confused on how the disk structure of the PC is laid out. In some cases, it would say "please insert Disk 1" when in fact it should say "Disk 2". In other cases, it simply does not even give the option to install (i.e. the installer thinks it's being run from a hard disk).

The only way the game would install for me is to use a highly advanced emulator like VMWare/VirtualBox in a "real DOS" environment. (I couldn't get the installer working in FreeDOS either). You can also install using the custom fan-made installer from sierrahelp.com, but that has an audio stuttering problem in the opening sequence.

I saw them, but I try to avoid such "rip" versions because they usually contain hacks, cracks, misconfigured settings, unoptimised settings (for example, "default" Soundblaster/General MIDI driver is selected instead of the superior Roland MT-32), user's save games are included, wrong (old) game version used, official patches not applied, sometimes censored game version (which is very common in Sierra games as the older, original version is the uncensored, better version), etc... Even the GOG version is not always the "best" version of the game.

Besides, it's more 'fun' to install from the original media and apply the patches yourself, so you are in control in every step from start to finish.

--- добавлено 31 июл 2018, предыдущее сообщение размещено: 31 июл 2018 ---

It's possible that it's a DOSBox bug, though I think some of the blame lies in a very selective, poorly designed installer. I also got it working in VMware/VirtualBox when I had only the A:\ and C:\ drives, but as soon I loaded the CD-ROM driver and had a third drive (D:\), the installer suddenly choked and gave some sort of "disk not ready" error...

 

Basically what installer does is just collects files from all disks.

Okay, I extracted the files from floppies, you can mount that as a directory in DosBox, they are 100% identical to floppy version we have on site, except the CHKLIST.CPS file (which is duplicated on disk 7, I renamed it to CHKLISTA.CPS for sake of preservation). Zip file attached to this post. Believe me, it is 100% authentic, no hacks.

Well... It depends. As I said I doubt that any other version would not choke on same problem. So I would suggest mounting all in same directory and play, really

 

I guess what I was trying to say is that "the journey" of installation is just as satisfying as the destination.

Heh. Okay, fair enough. Thanks