Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!sgiblab!swrinde!hookup!news.kei.com!eff!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cleveland.Freenet.Edu!al885 From: al885@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gerard Pinzone) Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard Subject: T7G Technical FAQ Date: 10 Apr 1994 05:57:07 GMT Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA) Lines: 317 Message-ID: <2o84fk$9v3@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> Reply-To: al885@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gerard Pinzone) NNTP-Posting-Host: nextsun.ins.cwru.edu Xref: cdrom.com alt.cd-rom:2463 comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure:7599 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom:2025 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard:11029 T7G FAQ LIST - 03/24/94 Gerard Pinzone T7G Technical FAQ Version 1.07 Thanks to Steve Hamm(hamm@ssdt-bluestein.sps.mot.com) for some info on the Pro Audio Spectrum and more info on the patches and thanks to Mike Olsson (renfield@cyberspace.com) for info on T7G Strategy Guide. The Seventh Guest: The Official Strategy Guide By Rusel DeMaria Created by DeMaria Studios for Prima Publishing, Rocklin, CA ISBN: 1-55958-468-8 $19.95 Since this is a technical FAQ, I don't think I'm going to include any game hits, tricks, tips, etc. since the file will be TOO damn big! However, I will explain what T7G is....T7G (short for The 7th guest) is a CD-ROM game made by Virgin Games. It's an incredible 3D rendered game that walks you inside a haunted house! You have to solve some REALLY tough puzzles (the microscope is the hardest!). The reason I started all this is because of Virgin Games lack of support on their BBS!!!! The game is NOT buggy! In fact, it runs under conditions (Windows, OS/2) that most other DOS based applications would fail badly! The biggest reason this game gives people trouble is because it requires a VESA driver (Cirrus Logic video cards should have this built into their BIOS). The ones on the 2nd CD ROM aren't so hot. Also, new video cards are made quite frequently, therefore, it is important that your video card manufacturer can supply you with the newest one before purchasing this game! I think Virgin Games should also give BIG kudos to Kendall Bennett for creating the program UVESA32.ZIP (the Universal Vesa Driver). This works BETTER in a lot of cases than some custom designed ones! In case you call Virgin's BBS, they will have it up there (thanks to me :-) If you have a S3 chip video card....well...you might be in trouble. Some of the S3 chips aren't very good accelerators. They get some pretty good winmarks, but for an overall speed rating...they're the pits. Read the end of this FAQ for more S3 chip info. Also, if you have a Trident video card and you have mouse trouble with the microscope puzzle, you have a bad VESA driver; use UVESA32.ZIP. Thanks to: nbond@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com, if you have a Diamond Stealth 24 ISA card will run VERY slowly in the SVGA mode. However the UNIVESA driver effective for this card as well. "Cleared all video problems right up". If you have a Diamond Viper, you need the 1.24 fix and at least version 1.02 of VPRMODE (just type VPRMODE VESA) from Diamond. XGA and XGA-2 do not work! Virgin has NO plans for supporting it in the future. My only possible recommendation is try BOTH 1.24 and 1.30 only if a new VESA driver happens to come out, otherwise you are out of luck! If you have trouble, first of all get the 1.24 patch on the bbs or via ftp on ftp.cdrom.com. In fact, even if you aren't having trouble, get it. It's very good. Even a perfect setup could get a "Sound Buffer Failure" once in a blue moon. The 1.24 patch fixes a bunch of VESA rom identification bugs (usually with VESA TSRs), and it also cured the Sound Buffer failures most people were getting. The 1.30 patch fixed some S3 chip problems and allowed T7G to run under less conventional memory. It also was reported that this version ran a little slower, so I usually don't recommend it unless you have a S3 chip video card. T7GFIX3.ZIP on ftp.cdrom.com has sound drivers for just about EVERY sound card out there. Because T7G uses the Miles drivers, you can have support for your sound card by getting the proper .ADV file and adding it to the list. The PAS drivers are now included and reportedly work well; however, you might want to try an 8-bit IRQ and DMA if you have problems. There is also support for the Microsoft Sound System and the Gravis Ultrasound files are there. I believe they put version 1.02 of ULTRAMID.EXE in there. I suggest you get 1.08 (see below) from archive.epas.utoronto.ca in the pub/pc/ultrasound directory. If your sound card still isn't listed, you can try to get an .ADV file from another game that uses miles drivers! Do not get it from protected mode games (like Privateer) since the .ADV files have been modified. Just select Sound Blaster (for example) and copy over the existing sound blaster .ADV files. Trouble-shooting tips: 1) Check your VESA driver. It is probably the cause. If the one on CD Disc 2 of T7G doesn't work for you, get the most up to date one from your video card manufacturer. If you have the "Fred and Ethel" video card, and you can't find their BBS, try getting the latest copy of VPIC; it has lots an lots of VESA tsr programs. If all else fails, try UVESA32.ZIP. It's on godzilla.cgl.rmit.oz.au and Virgin's BBS. 2) Check your DMAs and IRQs for conflicts. If you have a Sound Blaster or compatible, and if IRQ 5 is free, use it. The older SB packages set the default IRQ to 7 which is shared by the printer. Some I/O cards may cause spurious calls to the printer port. All new packages of the SB, SB Pro and SB Pro 16 should be set to IRQ 5 by default. Also, if you have a Microsoft compatible mouse, use the REAL microsoft driver supplied with Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS 6.x. Use version 7.04 or later. This is a good idea in general. 3) Make a boot disk and get rid of un-needed TSRs. DO NOT use a CDROM cache like Smart Drive 5.0, CD Speedway, Norton Speedcache Plus or Lightning CD! They are great for other CD games, but not this one! 4) YES, your Gravis Ultrasound will work! The file T7GFIX3.ZIP on archive.epas.utoronto.ca will contain the necessary ULTRAMID files needed to emulate General MIDI and digitized sounds. If you can't get this file, GUS0040.ZIP is the necessary add-on for T7G. (it contains Ultramid version 1.08 along with other updates to the 2.06a disks) Here's a short synopsis on how to do it: a) Install at least ver. 1.24 of T7G. b) Set it up for General Midi for music and Sound Blaster for sound. c) Copy the GF1MIDI.ADV and the GF1DIGI.ADV files to your /ID/T7G directory. d) Edit the GROOVIE.INI file and change the .ADV file listed under [General Midi] to the GF1MIDI.ADV instead. Do accordingly with the soundblaster line and GF1DIGI.ADV. e) Load Ultramid and then start T7G. Run it with /M80 parameter so the music doesn't overpower the digitized speech. Do NOT add the -C parameter! T7G CAN DO PATCH CACHING!!! (Whee!) f) If your GUS is set to a 16-bit DMA channel, you might need to increase the DMA buffers in your memory manager (see 6). g) Since T7G allows patch caching, you might wanna load a disk cache program like smartdrive to quickly get the patches off the hard drive. Again, do not cache the CD ROM, it's pointless for this game. 5) If you have a Cirrus Logic Local Bus video, use the newest VESA TSR if you get static. If you have clicking, turn on "video cacheable" in your BIOS. Otherwise, you don't need a VESA tsr for these cards. (Whee!) 6) Try increasing the DMA buffers in your memory manager (QEMM, EMM386, 386MAX). For QEMM, add DMA=256 to your QEMM386.SYS line in the CONFIG.SYS. For EMM386.EXE, use D=256. There should be something similar for Netroom and 386MAX; refer to your memory manager's manual. (This helped me when I got garbage on the screen when I put my GUS to DMA 7). 7) RTFM! Yes, read the f***ing manual. There are directions in there to install the game. Don't complain to anyone that your game doesn't work when you didn't even know you had to run a VESA driver! 8) a. Your MSCDEX.EXE buffers should be set to at least 20 (i.e. /M:20). Failure to do so might result in *choppy speech*. You can load them into expanded memory with the /E switch; this is needed since you probably won't have enough conventional memory to leave them low and your memory manager will puke if it tries to load it into UMB! (unless you didn't install EMS memory, i.e. NOEMS parameter). If you own a Mitsumi CD-ROM drive, set the MTMCDE.SYS buffers in your CONFIG.SYS first since they are much more important! You can load them into extended memory with the /X switch. b. If you still use DOS 5.0 (yea!), you might wanna try getting version 2.22 of MSCDEX. According to the Norton Speedcache manual, there are semi-bogus copies of version 2.21 out there. You can get a copy of 2.22 from DOS 6.0. BTW, if upgrading to DOS 6.0, you MUST use version 2.22! Just change your line in the AUTOEXEC.BAT to look for MSCDEX in the DOS directory. If you don't ALL cd rom operations will cease to work. DOS 6.2 comes with and uses version 2.23 only! 9) If you are using QEMM, do NOT use stealth! In fact, NEVER use stealth! Hopefully, you won't need the whopping 3k of extra UMB! Also, if you are still using QEMM 6 (NOT VERSION 7!), exclude C000-C7FF since there was a bug with VESA bios'. 10) pray. I am not a SYSOP, nor do I work for Virgin. This FAQ will solve 95% of the problems. If you have a fix for a problem that isn't obvious, and isn't mentioned here, please e-mail me a reply; don't send me private e-mail on th BBS, it's too expensive for me to call anymore. As far as S3 chip video cards are concerned....just about ALL of the older ones will not work properly in SVGA. You will have to get at least version 1.30 of the patch to get SVGA. I have heard for many people some of the NEWER S3 chips work perfectly with T7G. The STB Powergraph VL (uses 928) is one of them. If you do not have VLB and want a fast video card, I strongly recommend the Genoa 8500. It's a Cirrus Logic card, build in VESA bios (no TSR needed), extremely inexpensive, and probably the fastest non-local bus DOS accelerator! I'd like a list drawn up of which S3's are good and which ones are not. P9000 cards ought to be fine providing VESA support is there. Here is some more insightful info about S3 chips from Shawn stleaf@fsh.mtu.edu (Leaf): First, I've got an Actix GE32 which is a 1 meg ISA-bus S3-86c801 graphics accelerator. I've found that the 801 is very close to Tseng ET4000 when it comes to SVGA graphics. The 7th Guest worked perfectly after using a UniVesa driver (flicker before... the built in VESA didn't support page flipping). (Oh, this card [ISA, mind you] gets 13M WinMarks on a 386/40.) The S3-86c805 is supposedly identical to the '801 except that it is for VL bus. These two have fantastic SVGA performance. The '911 and '924 are the two that are infamous for crummy SVGA support. The '928 is supposedly the same as the '805 except it uses VRAM instead of DRAM. Hopefully that helps clarify the S3's. (BTW, the '801 and '805 have been out for more than a year and by now represent the bulk the S3 cards--especially since they're very cost effective.) Here are two suggestions by other BBS callers: If you have a Sony CDU31A CD-ROM, read this: "At first I had trouble with the audio quality during the animated sequences of the game. However, I found a way to make the CD work a little faster. By adding /m:I with the undocumented /o:32 switch for the sony SLCD.SYS driver the audio quality during animated sequences is now perfect. Also using /m:d and /o:32 doesn't improve the performance on my system but may on someone elses. I hope this helps people that are having performance problems with the CDU31A." To all users of Creative's double speed/Omni CD: "The driver that shipped with Omni CD has been updated. The newer version corrects many problems. If you're having problems with T7G audio skipping with this CD, then download the driver from Creative Labs. A lot of users have said this fixes it. Their BBS number is 405 742-6660." Hereis a batch file I made up for T7G. I'm using C: for the hard drive and D: for the CD ROM drive; if it differs for you, just change them accordingly. It will check if the 7th Guest disc is in the drive and put you back to the root directory when you exit the game: -------------------------------saw here-------------------------------- @ECHO OFF if exist D:\T7G\GAMWAV.GJD goto start echo THE 7th GUEST disc not in drive! goto end :start C: cd \id\t7g @v ! cd \ :end -------------------------------saw here-------------------------------- You-got-me's: I'm adding this section for little quirks that are either totally unexplainable or just weird! 1) If you have a GUS, no matter which version of ultramid you use, there is ONE part in the game, the intro where the line spoken is "...and the children started dying." The word "started" on my machine is said twice. This does not occur in the demo. 2) If you see one frame of video with a messed up pallete occasionally, it's normal. I believe there are a few places around the house where you can re-create this (the card puzzle, leave (turn) to the left.) 3) If you look closely enough, you might notice a bit of redness around eye and hand icons; from what I'm told, it's normal. 4) Oh yea, it's a DARK game...turn up the brightness/contrast and deal with it! ;-) In conclusion... If you have Internet access, you can get the 1.24 and 1.30 fix from wuarchive.wustl.edu or ftp.cdrom.com. Please don't send me e-mail asking me how to ftp. Ask your net administrator. If you want to send me mail on the internet: al885@cleveland.freenet.edu. People on Compuserve and Fidonet can also reach me this way, ask your local SYSOP for more information. Remember, I am NOT Virgin's tech support, however, I believe this game IS good and 95% of the problems are with setup and inferior hardware, and not bad programming! I just wish it was a little easier to get answers. NOBODY should be deprived of playing this game because of a little 5k TSR! Have fun! Gerard J. Pinzone King of all Tech Support P.S. Just use "finger -l gpinzone@ic.sunysb.edu" to get the latest copy of T7G Technical FAQ! Also, if anyone has ANY information on running T7G via OS/2, lemme know; this question always comes up. -- _______ ________ ________ "Small nose, loose girls, no nipples, (.|.) / ___/ / _____/ / __ / Iczer curls!" -=- Gerard Pinzone ).( / ___/ / /____ / __ / al885@cleveland.freenet.edu ( v ) /______/ /_______/ /__/ /__/ Join the ECA Wehrmacht! Kill CM! \|/