Every time I load my save game, my map is empty again. It just starts re-drawing from where my save position is...

Any ideas on how to fix it?

Hi Chekote,

It could be a bug related to the way the game is installed on your machine. As far as I understand it, the UU-games use the file 'lev.ark' to store map information. In the original installations, these would be present in both the 'data'-folder and the individual 'save' folders. The 'data'-folder contains the master file, while the others hold the ones that displays what you've discovered so far.

Now, GOG has created an installation that differs from the original distribution. We can look into that later. My first suggestion is to navigate to the game's save folder and right-click on the 'lev.ark' file. Perhaps it is somehow set to 'read-only'? It could also be that the file is corrupted. Yesterday I alt-tabbed out and into the game, causing one of my savegames to have a weird name. (a name consisting of obscure characters). Perhaps this is happening to you as well?

If it's an issue with saving, then perhaps installing the game to a location other than program files will help. On Vista and Windows 7, the program files directory has extra protections and can interfere with games and game saving. Also make sure you are running the game as administrator.

This is not the cause of his problem. DOSBox has no problems with VirtualStore redirection nor is administrator elevation ever necessary.

Additionally, even in the few cases where software has issues with redirection you do not need to both run it as an administrator and install it outside a protected location; either one of these will achieve an identical result.

My wife was suffering from this same problem on her computer. She was running Vista with UAC enabled.

Not knowing what else to do, we located her files (Under her user folder, in AppData/Local/VirtualStore or something like that...I can get exact path if necessary) and copied them into the appropriate location under Program Files. There was already a SAVE0 there, this added SAVE1 thru SAVE4. This duplicated my hard drive (which is Vista but not running UAC).

This didn't fix anything. However, she then found a single save that was still working (she would load, and it had a map). She loaded this and saved under the other directories and this "fixed" them (she could then load them, see the map, change the map, save, restore, and still see the map).

I don't know if it was a permissions problem, just buggy data that needed to be cleared, or what. The problem could also come back (which would encourage her to restoring a save just after saving it, to see if it "worked."

I played this when it came out in 1992. One of the greatest games of all time for me, and I reference it almost daily in my gaming discussions (I'm a professional game designer and developer). It is such a joy to be playing again. I was unable to finish the original game due to bugs (one involving the ghost late in the game you have do a quest for) and from the very get go whenever I opened the map the game would crash. The end result was I played nearly the entire game without a map. Now, 20 years later, i still remember the hallways (oh yeah, this goes down and turns left and there will be a door...). Kinda cool.

I sure hope I can finish this time. My wife ended up playing a few years after I did (say '96) and so I did get to experience the end of the game. But we're both replaying now.

Thanks to all the people who are helping others get the game to run on here. The fullresolution=0x0 helped me, and getting the SoundBlasterPro sounds working was a huge bonus for me. Glad these forums exist.

Ken

I've only just got back to trying the game again, and I've noticed that *everything* in the world is resetting, not just my map. For example, I can stand in an area and pick up all the items, and kill all the enemies, but as soon as I save and load the game, all items and enemies in that area have returned.

Even stranger, the items are still in my inventory. So it's causing duplicate items every time I load a save game.

I'm going to do some tests with permissions and UAC, and I'll post my results.

@Waltorious For security reasons, I don't ever run anything as administrator.

I looked into the VirtualStore (thanks @TiggerTooth), and there were save files in there. There was also a duplicate of the save file in the C:\Program Files GoG.com directory. It seems as if there was some problems with having the data duplicated in both places.

I deleted all saved games from both places, and created a new one. The new save was only created in the VirtualStore, and it is storing world data correctly now.

My only guess is that I lauched the game from the installer (with a "play now" checkbox or something), which caused it to launch in the Administrator account, which in-turn caused the save to be stored in C:\Program Files instead of the VirtualStore.

Glad you got it working! According to Arkose's post above, DOSBox games don't need to be run as asministrator (I didn't know that), but it sounds like your issue may have been caused by switching between administrator and non-administrator. Good to know.

I'm experiencing the same problem. I've also found that if I write a note on the map and hit close the game freezes up.

It looks like the general consensus is to delete all the saved games and try again. Has anyone found a way to fix a saved game? I have two different saves for my character a regular one and a 'safety', I don't think I had this problem until after I made the safety saved game.