MechWarrior 2 DOSBox, hangs after mission completion

[WarBastard]

Hi All

I've searched the entire forum and can't seem to find a solution, perhaps someone can help:

I'm running MW2 DOS in DOSBox 0.72 on a Mac. The whole thing works like a dream, sound, music, all good. The problem comes in the first Wolf mission "Pyre Light." I start, stomp around, kill everything, etc..., and get to the dropship. The lady computer voice says "Mission Accomplished" and then the message saying "Press Any Key to Exit..." pops up.

Then it freezes and won't go back to the debriefing screen! This happens whether I bail out, self-destruct, or complete the mission successfully. Same problem on the Jade Falcon 1st mission as well, it just won't go from the missions' end back to the debrief. Curiously this doesn't affect the training missions, however.

I read in the Activision info file that this may be due to the game trying to find audio off the CD but I've got the DOSBox no-CD business going so it's not that. I've tried turning off the music, sound, and fiddling with screen resolutions, all to no avail. Incredibly frustrating as I can only do the first mission of this awesome old game!

Is this a particular Mac issue you reckon? Anyone else having this problem and managed to solve it? Perhaps something in DOSBox config?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers!

[Sir MMPD Radick]

Hey, welcome!
Umm, sadly since you are on a mac I haven't the slightest clue except yes it is likely a dosbox issue.
I have had similar problems with SVN versions in windows.

You might try 0.74 for the mac
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/ ... g/download

Might solve it.. older versions of dosbox didn't fair well with mech2.
Other than that I really do not know i'm afraid.

[WarBastard]

Hi!

Thanks for the swift reply! I've just tried 0.74, no luck I'm afraid. I suspect there might be something corrupted/funny in my actual copy of MW2. I'll try the IT department go-to fix of "reinstall it, turn it off and back on again" and see what happens...

[Sir MMPD Radick]

good luck, sorry I am not much help on this one.
Only other thing I can think of is you might want to make a img/cue from the discs instead of a no cd patch.

[WarBastard]

So I copied the whole thing across to my other HD where I'm running XP in bootcamp, then downloaded DosBOX 0.74 for Windows. All works perfectly now, chunky polygon explosions and stompy sound effects and all! Only annoyance is I now have to reboot into Windows every time I want to play the game (a pain since very nearly everything else I do is in OS X)... not ideal, but I'll live with it. Thanks for the help!

[Sir MMPD Radick]

well glad to hear it ran at least

[solgae]

I have it working on OS X version of DOSBox. Running OS X Mavericks (10.9) with DOSBox 0.74, but it should work on older OS X versions as long as DOSBox supports it.

What worked for me without having the mission hang on me on completion/failure/self-destruct/self-eject was to edit the DOSBox configuration file (named "DOSBox Preferences" or "DOSBox (version number) Preferences" located on ~/Library/Preferences folder) and change the machine variable to vesa_nolfb.

OS X Lion (10.7) and above hides the Library folder from plainview by default, however. To get to the ~/Library/Preferences folder:

1. From Finder, hold ALT key and open Go menu. The Library menu item should be visible as long as you hold down the ALT key. Select it.
2. Open Preferences folder
3. Find the file DOSBox Preferences or something like DOSBox (version number) Preferences and open it using TextEdit.
At this point, you are looking at the DOSBox configuration file that is pretty much the same as the Windows version of DOSBox, so you can simply follow the instructions on editing the DOSBox configuration file from the YouTube video created by Sir MMPD Radick at that point. However, there is one line I needed to change to make it work.
4. Find the line machine=svga_s3 and set it to vesa_nolfb. Save file and quit TextEdit (or just quit TextEdit if you're using Lion (10.7) and above - TextEdit will auto-save it for you).

Then simply follow the instructions posted on this forum to mount the bin/cue file to DOSBox (you may need the help of a Windows install running on Fusion/Parallels/VirtualBox to create bin/cue files of your Mechwarrior 2 CD), install the game, patch to 1.1, set the sound, and run the game. If something doesn't work, just reboot your Mac and try again.

FYI for OS X, the path should be using the UNIX format instead of the Windows format. In my case, I have the Mechwarrior 2 binaries under Downloads folder in my user account profile where the path is /Users/solgae/Downloads. So when you're running the mount or imgmount command, set the path as something like this: /Users/solgae/Downloads instead of the windows format (e.g. C:\MECH2).

EDIT - updated instructions so everything works.

[navbuoy]

I'm thinking if you had to increase you memsize so dramatically to get it to work on the lower resolutions without issue and trying to go to the highest resolution is the only one giving you issues...starting to think its STILL a memory config issue.

EDIT - Maybe try it with all the options turned off or on LOW and see if it behaves?

[solgae]

Well I messed around with the settings again, and apparently, the default value of the memsize (16) didn't gave me any trouble this time. Kind of confused what's going on - it might be another configuration line I might have changed in the DOSBox, or something went wrong with the Mechwarrior 2 installation. Either way, I reverted the DOSBox config file back to default, and it appears that the default DOSBox config will still apply on the OS X environment.

The 1024x768 resolution glitchy-ness still remains. I tried doing a full-blown installation again on a different directory, but the problem is still there.

[navbuoy]

I wonder what is triggering the Auto-Eject in that resolution?

Did you try installing the 1.1 patch for MW2?
Also, maybe try going into options and turning on Invulnerability? (just to see if it disables the auto-eject)

Maybe it's your CPU or video settings causing a conflict. I've heard weird stuff happening with CPU timing not being quiet right in DosBox. Try lowering it to a slow chip speed emulation? Try it on a vanilla output - don't use any of the fancy scalars for video output - also try toggling the double buffering or trying it out in Window mode as opposed to full screen?

Also, try one of the Vesa options vesa_nolfb or vesa_oldvbe?