Lost files of Sherlock Holmes 1

[Larn Conner]

First post. I searched the forums and found two posts related to my problem and neither had any solution, so I thought I would bring it up here with some settings I tried and the results I got. If I'm posting in the wrong forum, sorry, I tried to do my research and newbie forum seemed not the place, ao486 seemed like the right place since the game runs on that core.

So, I installed the game and the intro runs fine, you hear the voices and the music, but once the game turns over control of the characters to you, the mouse pointer freezes and you can't do anything. The settings I had were Soundblaster for music and Soundblaster for digital voices.

I started over and the game will let you move around the mouse pointer with the arrow keys, but you cannot get any response from any of the keys that correspond to actions the game allows you to try. As soon as you move the mouse, the mouse pointer freezes again.

I found that removing the Soundblaster digital voices driver in the setup screen actually allows the game to be playable, but you lose voices the game provides and I guess other sounds. You can move the mouse around and do any of the actions the game allows.

I'm guessing there is some hardware conflict somewhere, but I wouldn't know. There is no option to change interrupts and addresses and things that other DOS games allow during setup. I figured describing some of these problems and how changing settings made the game work might give someone a clue where the conflict is.

There is another annoying problem. The intro music overpowers the voices at the start and there is no way to change this. I checked in PCem to see if the music is as loud that is kinda drowns out the voices and although it is almost as loud as the voices, the voices are still pretty clearly heard.

Sorry for the long post. Thanks for reading.

Update: HarborSeal a few posts below provides a solution that fixes the most serious issue with the game, being able to save under DOS.

[flynnsbit]

you can try changing some things around in the ao486 core using https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_M ... /sbctl.exe

sbctl.exe: set Sound Blaster configs. Supported: I5,I7,I10,H5,H1,T4,T6

then set blaster= in your autoexec.bat to match it. These kind of lock ups can also be memory related to make sure you are excluding / including the right memory space.

You can try using the IDE 0-0 VHD image from my DOS Top 300 pack as your boot vhd and then your vhd as the secondary and see if it acts the same. That boot VHD has be curated over many years specifically for AO486's finicky nature.

That's all I've got.

[Larn Conner]

you can try changing some things around in the ao486 core using https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_M ... /sbctl.exe

sbctl.exe: set Sound Blaster configs. Supported: I5,I7,I10,H5,H1,T4,T6

then set blaster= in your autoexec.bat to match it. These kind of lock ups can also be memory related to make sure you are excluding / including the right memory space.

You can try using the IDE 0-0 VHD image from my DOS Top 300 pack as your boot vhd and then your vhd as the secondary and see if it acts the same. That boot VHD has be curated over many years specifically for AO486's finicky nature.

That's all I've got.

Thanks. I already tried sbctl.exe as I was searching the forum for soundcard issues and didn't seem to work for me.

It could potentially be memory issues. I'm using EMS settings from someone's examples on the forums because the regular memmaker settings to set up EMS do not work in ao486. I'll post the settings I use:

EMM386.EXE 4096 RAM FRAME=E000 D=256 X=A000-C7FF I=C800-EFFF

I'll see about giving your suggestions a try and if there is any success, I will post results so anyone in the future looking for a solution to the game might run into this thread.

[Larn Conner]

Possible solution, but not by changing any settings.

I was using the keyboard keys to move around, namely Home, Page Up, Page Down, End and Insert and Delete to take actions. I did not use the mouse because I knew from multiple tries with different configurations that it always froze. So, once the computer turns over control to you and you are in Holmes' apartment, I used the keys I mentioned to move the cursor around and I targeted the door and went outside, then I went to the map and headed for the crime scene. To my amazement, I was moving around with the keys and decided just to try the mouse to watch it freeze up and it did not. I was actually able to move the mouse and click on things to take actions.

I went back to Holmes' apartment to see if the mouse would lock up again and once I was in the apartment the mouse was still working, everything seems to be normal.

So, as of right now, the game seems to be working just by leaving the apartment by using the keys to move around and take actions and at least when I got to the crime scene, the mouse no longer froze.

I have not tried it a second time. Hopefully this will work for others. I use to own this game with my first PC, so it's one of those games I had to have working on MiSTer FPGA.

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Update: There had to be a catch. When I click files and choose a slot to save in, I get the prompt but can't type in anything. So, currently stuck without being able to save. Once you are outside the apartment, your mouse doesn't seem to freeze anymore.

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Update 2: I tried different settings, no music no sound no mouse, and the game would still not let me type in a save game name. I tried a different keyboard in case it was my keyboard, same problem. I tried two other USB ports on the MiSTer fpga, same problem.

Although the game appears playable without saving, it's not a short game and I don't recall if there might be spots where you might die like in King's Quest. This is about the best I can do, not a programmer to dive deep into what is going on with the game on ao486.

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Update 3 and final update: Weird way to save, but it worked for me.

I installed Win95.

I then Installed The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes to the same hard drive.

I turned on all options in the game, soundblaster music and soundblaster digital sound.

I did not use expanded memory, but it appears Win95 will allow the game to run with expanded memory. I haven't tried it.

I ran the game, using the keyboard keys Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, Insert and Delete to move and take action. I target the door, walk outside and outside the apartment you can start using the mouse without it freezing.

Ok, now for the saving part of the game, it's a bit complex, but first you click Files in-Game on the lower right of your screen and then you click the first file left side of the screen, it gives you a prompt and you can't type into it no matter what you do. I used alt-Enter keys to go back to Win95, opened up a notepad and typed out a word and then the ENTER KEY TWICE then highlight and copy the word and ENTER keys to clipboard and then I used the "paste" option at the top of the window for the game while it is open in Win95. It will paste the word into the prompt and the ENTER keys will close the the savegame and save your game.

You can make all 30 saves in a emulator game and then transfer the Holmes.sav to the game, then you can probably highlight any save to save to it by the method I wrote above. I did try to click on file 2 after saving the first save and it did work, so try that, see if you can make more saves that way, if not, try the import saves from emulator method.

You can go back to fullscreen in-game by pressing alt-Enter keys again.

Of course you could just play The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes on an emulator and save yourself all these problems until, hopefully, the game is fixed on ao486.

Hope this thread helps someone someday.

[HarborSeal]

Thank you Larn Conner.

I found a solution that allows me to save the game in DOS with AO486. It doesn't fix the mouse bug at the beginning of the game, but all keyboard keys seem to work now once I exit Holmes' apartment. It's a patch called holmesfix by Martin Kiewitz. https://ecsoft2.org/holmesfix-lost-file ... lmes-patch

Put the holmesfx.exe file into the game directory and run it in dos.

[akeley]

Whoa, this fix works perfectly...amazing! Many thanks for not giving up on this and persevering to find a solution.

I 've been playing it on my real DOS PC recently, but it looks so stunning on a 15kHz CRT using modelines, that I was hoping it'd get sorted here one day too. So, I know what I'm doing tonight...the game's afoot

[Larn Conner]

Sounds great. I'll be sure to add this file to my game and try it. Saving without a hassle will certainly make the game just about 100% playable without problems, except for the mouse freezing before leaving the apartment at the start of the game. I finished the game a few weeks ago, not sure if the dart game in the pub might need a special hand, at first I used the win95 save game trick, but then I found the mouse click got it working.

Update: Yes, this file you provided definitely works. I was able to save under DOS without a problem.

Any way to sticky your post, HarborSeal, so people can see the solution near the top of the post?