So I downloaded It Came From the Desert off of cinemaware.com . I went to try and launch it with the Ultima 1-3 DOSBox setup since it was the easiest one to get to, and it told me it was installed wrong and I needed to reinstall. I never installed it since it was RARed up, so I'm totally confused as to what I did wrong.

EDIT: Usually I can drop the batch file or executable right on DOSBox and it'll work. I don't think I can save like that, but it still works.

Wow, I didn't know these old games were available FREE, direct from CinemaWare.com! I also wanted to run ICFTD and had the same problems you had initially. I managed to get the game to work, but it took a bit of effort. I'm not sure exactly what the problem was, but in essence... you have to "install" the game to your harddrive as though you were installing it from the 8 floppy disks it came with!

Here's what you can try.

1. Download and unzip the game, and rename the "itcamefromthedesert-DOS" folder to just "\MYDESERT". Note: I'm talking about the folder that is INSIDE the top-level folder. I.e. rename

itcamefromthedesert-DOS\itcamefromthedesert-DOS

to

itcamefromthedesert-DOS\MYDESERT

If you unzipped the game by right-clicking it and saying "Extract All" like I did, then Windows created that toplevel folder as well as the lowerlevel folder. It's the lower-level folder we're interested in.


2. Temporarily copy this new \MYDESERT folder to someplace such as C:\MYDESERT

3. Now you have to edit your DOSBOX.conf file. Go to the bottom of this file and "comment-out" all the commands beneath [autoexec] by adding a "#" character as the first character of each line. Now add these 2 lines to the bottom of the file...

[autoexec]
# other commands
# other commands
mount A C:\MYDESERT (or wherever/whatever you named it above)
A:

4. Now go into C:\MYDESERT and create 8 new files named...

REEL.1
REEL.2
REEL.3
REEL.4
REEL.5
REEL.6
REEL.7
REEL.8

It doesn't matter what is in the files, just the name matters. You can create an empty Text Document if you want, and then copy/rename it to the names above.

5. Last step... delete the file HUGE.INI from the C:\MYDESERT folder you copied.

Now you're ready to go. Launch DOSBOX, and instead of launching into a game, you'll be left in a "DOS window " at the command-line, and it should say "A:\>". This is the command prompt where you need to type the following command...

desert /i

This should launch the Installer. You'll be prompted to pick your video display and your sound card. You can pick these choices (hit ENTER after each choice)...

VGA 16 color (from the right-hand column)
Keyboard only
Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster
Click noise on
Copy game to hard disc

You'll be prompted to pick a folder. I just kept the default C:\DESERT. Hit Enter and the game should be installed very quickly. Press any key to go back to the A:\> prompt. To try out the game, type these 3 commands...

c:
cd desert
desert

That's "all" there is to it! I know it's a lot of work. I'm not sure exactly what problem the game is having with the original files, but it might be because they are all named with lower-case letters instead of uppercase. It might be the missing "REEL.1" files, etc. But I just know that this worked for me.

You could also try the Amiga version instead. I'm sure that's better than the DOS version anyway.

I haven't yet figured out what all the key commands are, but here are a few I found:

move cursor = arrow keys
select = spacebar
P = pause, then C to continue

But that's it. I don't know how to quit the game, or save my progress. The game asks when you start whether you want to continue where you left off (yes/no) but I don't know how to exit and create a save file in the DOS version.

UPDATE

To save the game, select the Go to Map option, and scroll to the upper-left corner of the map where the big SAVE GAME button is, and press the SPACEBAR. I guess to exit the game you just have to "kill" DOSBOX itself (like turning off your computer back in the old days!)

Just wait a bit. Cinemaware is on its way to gog.com.

Is there even a reliable Amiga emulator? I tried looking a while ago and only found like the Amiga equivalent of VirtualPC.

and thanks Tritone, I'll give that a shot.

Um, yes? You really cannot have looked very hard if you failed to find one. I recommend WinUAE. The only catch is that you need a ROM image of the kickstart for the Amiga model you wish to emulate. As far as I know, there are only two ways to acquire one legally. One is to buy one of the packages from Amiga Forever, the other is to transfer it to a PC from a physical Amiga that you own yourself (although I have no idea how you do that). However, finding an "unofficial" copy is not difficult, should that take your fancy.

Ahhh. So that's a classic Amiga emulator? Cool. I'll have to look into that.