On Friday, I sat down at my 486DX2/66 computer and decided to play a little King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tommorow. KQ6 is definitely one of Sierra's best games and it had been a long time since I last tried to play it through. I had the floppy version installed on my hard drive, so I started up the floppy version. Unfortunately, it took the whole weekend to track down the problem and implement a solution for it.
Showing posts with label CD-ROM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CD-ROM. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2016
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Windows 9x and CD Images
Virtually all Windows 9x games come on CDs and expect to be installed from CDs and most will only run with one of the game's CD in the drive. Several Windows 9x games come on multiple CDs, Baldur's Gate and its expansion pack take 6 CDs, Myst III requires 4, Tex Murphy : Overseer uses 5, Sanitarium comes on 3 and there are too many 2 CD games to count. Even an early DVD conversion like Wing Commander IV needs 2 DVDs.
Optical drives are noisy, require physical effort to change CDs and require you to keep a stack of breakable, scratchable CDs near your computer. Because they have moving parts, drive lifespans are limited. Disk images have none of these disadvantages. They can be loaded in with virtual CD drive software like Daemon Tools and run invisibly to the program.
However, disk images are fairly large and a library of CD images can easily overwhelm the limited, reliable disk space of a Windows 98SE system. Windows 9x is generally not reliable when dealing with hard disks greater than 128GB in size. Windows 9x in general was designed in the days of parallel IDE ports and 28-LBA (at best). Support for more than 128GB requires third party partitioning tools, and drivers to implement 48-bit LBA and probably SATA. Also, if you are running a motherboard based on the popular Intel i440BX chipset or its precedessors and close relatives, you will need a BIOS extension ROM to add 48-bit LBA support. Even with all this, it is not advisable to install Windows 9x on a drive greater than 128GB in size.
One way to deal with the disk image problem is to host the images remotely. In the days of Windows XP, this was easy enough to do via Network Neighborhood. You should access a Windows XP computer from a Windows 9x computer or vice versa. Unfortunately, by Windows 7, the communication via this method was strictly one way : you could send and receive data from the Windows 7 or 8 computer to the Windows 9x computer, but Windows 9x would be unable to access the data on a Windows 7 or 8/8.1 computer. I assume Windows Vista acts like 7 and 8/8.1 in the regard. This effectively closes off the vast amount of storage available to the Windows 9x system.
All is not lost. What you cannot access via Network Neighborhood you can access by Mapping a Network Drive in Windows 9x. In Windows' 9x Windows Explorer, you will find the option. In order to Map the Network Drive, you will need to configure the following :
1. First, make sure both your computers are connected to the network and are on the same Workgroup. Typically the default Workgroup's name is Workgroup.
2. Second, you need to know the name of the Windows 7/8 computer or its static IP address.
3. You will need to share a folder containing your CD images on your Windows 7/8 computer. You should add Everyone to the group or user names that will have permission to view the shared folder. You also should limit Everyone's permissions to List folder contents and Read. There is no reason for Full control, Modify or Write access for a folder containing only CD Images.
4. Let's say the name of your shared folder is CD Images and the System Name is WINDOWS8PC. In the Path box under Windows 9x's Map Network Drive, you would enter \\WINDOWS8PC\CD Images. Set a drive letter that will not conflict with your physical and virtual drives and that should be all you need to now access your CD images without having to copy them to your Windows 9x hard drive.
As far as virtual drive tools go, I have always preferred Daemon Tools. The last version of Daemon Tools with Windows 9x support was 3.4.7. It is easy enough to find on oldapps.com. This version of Daemon Tools is sufficiently advanced to emulate most CD protections like Safedisc, SecuROM, Laserlock, and RPMS. It can mount four virtual CD drives. Unfortunately, it does not allow you to create a swaplist which you can switch disc images with the press of a key combination. Obviously, if you need to run a DOS game in real mode DOS, virtual drive tools will not work.
One limitation of using CD disc images instead of the physical CDs is that Redbook CD audio support may be hit or miss. Daemon Tools is a bit tricky to work with when it comes to CD audio. The easiest way to handle it is to set the emulated drive to D: and any physical drives to something after D:.
Optical drives are noisy, require physical effort to change CDs and require you to keep a stack of breakable, scratchable CDs near your computer. Because they have moving parts, drive lifespans are limited. Disk images have none of these disadvantages. They can be loaded in with virtual CD drive software like Daemon Tools and run invisibly to the program.
However, disk images are fairly large and a library of CD images can easily overwhelm the limited, reliable disk space of a Windows 98SE system. Windows 9x is generally not reliable when dealing with hard disks greater than 128GB in size. Windows 9x in general was designed in the days of parallel IDE ports and 28-LBA (at best). Support for more than 128GB requires third party partitioning tools, and drivers to implement 48-bit LBA and probably SATA. Also, if you are running a motherboard based on the popular Intel i440BX chipset or its precedessors and close relatives, you will need a BIOS extension ROM to add 48-bit LBA support. Even with all this, it is not advisable to install Windows 9x on a drive greater than 128GB in size.
One way to deal with the disk image problem is to host the images remotely. In the days of Windows XP, this was easy enough to do via Network Neighborhood. You should access a Windows XP computer from a Windows 9x computer or vice versa. Unfortunately, by Windows 7, the communication via this method was strictly one way : you could send and receive data from the Windows 7 or 8 computer to the Windows 9x computer, but Windows 9x would be unable to access the data on a Windows 7 or 8/8.1 computer. I assume Windows Vista acts like 7 and 8/8.1 in the regard. This effectively closes off the vast amount of storage available to the Windows 9x system.
All is not lost. What you cannot access via Network Neighborhood you can access by Mapping a Network Drive in Windows 9x. In Windows' 9x Windows Explorer, you will find the option. In order to Map the Network Drive, you will need to configure the following :
1. First, make sure both your computers are connected to the network and are on the same Workgroup. Typically the default Workgroup's name is Workgroup.
2. Second, you need to know the name of the Windows 7/8 computer or its static IP address.
3. You will need to share a folder containing your CD images on your Windows 7/8 computer. You should add Everyone to the group or user names that will have permission to view the shared folder. You also should limit Everyone's permissions to List folder contents and Read. There is no reason for Full control, Modify or Write access for a folder containing only CD Images.
4. Let's say the name of your shared folder is CD Images and the System Name is WINDOWS8PC. In the Path box under Windows 9x's Map Network Drive, you would enter \\WINDOWS8PC\CD Images. Set a drive letter that will not conflict with your physical and virtual drives and that should be all you need to now access your CD images without having to copy them to your Windows 9x hard drive.
As far as virtual drive tools go, I have always preferred Daemon Tools. The last version of Daemon Tools with Windows 9x support was 3.4.7. It is easy enough to find on oldapps.com. This version of Daemon Tools is sufficiently advanced to emulate most CD protections like Safedisc, SecuROM, Laserlock, and RPMS. It can mount four virtual CD drives. Unfortunately, it does not allow you to create a swaplist which you can switch disc images with the press of a key combination. Obviously, if you need to run a DOS game in real mode DOS, virtual drive tools will not work.
One limitation of using CD disc images instead of the physical CDs is that Redbook CD audio support may be hit or miss. Daemon Tools is a bit tricky to work with when it comes to CD audio. The easiest way to handle it is to set the emulated drive to D: and any physical drives to something after D:.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Doctor Who Missing Story Options
One of the unfortunate realities of being a Classic Doctor Who fan is that as far as the televised serials go, a substantial portion of the adventures from the First and Second Doctors' eras are missing. Of the fifty serials produced during the sixties, eighteen are still missing telecine of more than 50% of their episodes. Here are the list of serials with episodes missing/total number of episodes :
Marco Polo - 7/7
Galaxy 4 - 1,2, 4/4
Mission to the Unknown - 1/1
The Myth Makers - 4/4
The Daleks' Master Plan - 1, 3-4, 6-9, 11-12/12
The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve - 4/4
The Celestial Toymaker - 1-3/4
The Savages - 4/4
The Smugglers - 4/4
The Power of the Daleks - 6/6
The Highlanders - 4/4
The Macra Terror - 4/4
The Faceless Ones - 2, 4-6/6
The Evil of the Daleks - 1, 3-7/7
The Abominable Snowmen - 1, 3-6/6
Fury from the Deep - 6/6
The Wheel in Space - 1-2, 4-5/6
The Space Pirates 1, 3-6/6
In addition eight serials are still missing at least one episode :
The Reign of Terror - 4-5/6
The Crusade - 2, 4/4
The Tenth Planet - 4/4
The Underwater Menace - 1, 4/4
The Moonbase - 1, 3/4
The Ice Warriors - 2-3/6
The Web of Fear - 3/6
The Invasion - 1, 4/8
All episodes existing from these serials have been released on DVD with one exception. That exception, The Underwater Menace Episode 2, can be viewed without too much difficulty these days.
Regarding the eighteen mostly or completely missing serials, there are several alternatives to be able to enjoy their plots. Target Novelizations, Scripts, Reconstructions, Audio Recordings, and Telesnap Photonovels.
1. Target Novelizations
Chronologically, these novelizations of Doctor Who stories were the first way in which a fan could enjoy these missing stories. Until re-runs of Doctor Who became commonplace in the 1980s and video releases became available, they were the primary (legitimate) way in which a fan could enjoy any story after it had been broadcast.
One distinctive feature of the early Target novelizations is that they do not necessarily use the same title as the TV serial did. The book "Doctor Who and the Cybermen" was the novelization of The Moonbase. Fortunately, this was the only missing episode story whose title did not have an immediately obvious connection to the title of its corresponding televised story. The Daleks' Masterplan had to published in two volumes due to the size of the story. Volume 1 is Mission to the Unknown and Volume 2 is the Destruction of Time.
One advantage for the Target Novelizations is that the TV script author frequently also wrote the novelization. David Whittaker wrote the script and novelization of The Crusades, Ian Stuart Black The Savages and the Macra Terror, William Emms Galaxy Four, Brian Hayles The Ice Warriors, Victor Pemberton The Fury from the Deep, Donald Cotton The Myth Makers. Gerry Davis was co-creator of the Cybermen and script editor for The Celestial Toymaker and The Moonbase, whose novelizations he wrote. He also authored the actual script and novelization for The Highlanders. Terrance Dicks, who was the most prolific author of the Target Novelizations, wrote the novelizations for many stories produced just before he became script editor on The War Games. John Lucarotti wrote both TV and novel treatments for Marco Polo and The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.
In certain cases, the novelizations do not necessarily describe the same events that were depicted on-screen. Lucarotti's novelization of The Massacre is an important example. The novelization followed Lucarotti's original scripts before they were heavily edited by script editor Donald Tosh. There is a lot more to do with the confusion of the Doctor and his physical double the Abbot of Amboise in the book than on the TV. Episodes with doubles were very difficult to do in the 1960s with TV video cameras, and Hartnell was on holiday for Episode 2, so that material had to be cut, much to Lucarotti's chagrin.
BBC Audio and AudioGo have released audiobooks of some of these novelizations. They are The Highlanders, Fury from the Deep, The Daleks' Masterpan (in two parts), The Abominable Snowmen, The Moonbase (as Doctor Who and the Cybermen), The Myth Makers and The Ice Warriors. Trade paperbacks of these stories, except for the Dalek stories (among the last novelizations written) can usually be found pretty inexpensively online.
2. Scripts Project
If you want to know what was actually planned to be shown and said on the screen, you could read the scripts for the missing episodes. They are available here : http://homepages.bw.edu/~jcurtis/Scripts/scripts_project.htm
That site has not been updated in years, so it still claims Galaxy 4, The Underwate Menace, The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear are still missing episodes that have been recovered. There may be minor discrepancies in some of the scripts between what was supposed to be said and what was actually said on-screen. It also has scripts for the uncompleted Shada serial. Finally, it has the complete scripts for Dimensions in Time and The Curse of the Fatal Death, even though the video for these productions is not hard to find.
Titan Books published a series of the original shooting scripts under the line Doctor Who: The Scripts. Missing stories released in this trade-paperback form were The Power of the Daleks, Galaxy 4 and The Crusade. The Tomb of the Cybermen's script was published in this line before its televised before it was recovered.
3. Audio Recordings
Fortunately, several fans did more to preserve these episodes in some form for the long term than the BBC. They recorded their sound onto tapes while the episodes were being broadcast. Every missing episode's audio survives. BBC Radio, in the early 90s, began to release the missing stories with audio narration onto compact cassette tape, but never finished the range. They released The Power of the Daleks, The Macra Terror and The Evil of the Daleks and Fury from the Deep. Tom Baker did the narration for both Dalek stories and Fury, Colin Baker provided narration for Macra.
From 1999 to 2006, the BBC Radio Collection released the audio with linking narration on CD for all missing stories. In every case, an actor who played a companion in the story provided the narration (William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Peter Purves, Anneke Wills, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury). The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve was the first story released in this line, and it had both a cassette and CD release. All further releases were solely on CD as far as I can tell.
The audio on the CD releases has been restored compared to the old cassette releases. In the cassette version of Evil of the Daleks, episode 1 has a scene cut where the Doctor and Jamie are in a pub due to the music of the Beatles playing on the jukebox in the background. The CD version has the scene and substitutes different music.
The Macra Terror was released twice on CD during this timeframe, the first time with Colin Baker as narrator (taken from the cassette release), the second time with Anneke Wills (who was actually in the serial) as the narrator. Wills narrated version was only included in the box set Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes - Collection Four.
Audio for the missing episodes of The Crusades and The Moonbase without narration can be found on their respective Lost in Time DVDs.
The Audio Recordings are best purchased in the five "Doctor Who": The Lost TV Episodes Collections.
4. Telesnap Photonovels
The use of John Cura's Tele-Snap service, offered from 1947-1969, provided a way in which directors or actors could preserve a portion of their televised performance in a visual medium. No consumer cost-effective recording technology existed at the time to record the transmitted TV image. Videotape was not a consumer technology in the 1960s and 25 minutes of 16mm film (about 1000 feet) was too expensive for a home viewer.
Cura pointed a single shot camera at a TV screen at an exposure of 1/25 a second. This enabled him to capture exactly one video field from his TV screen. Each photo would fit into half a frame of 35mm film, the size of each telesnapped photo thus being 18x24mm. Cura would be able to make a visual record of program with 60-80 images per episode. Telesnaps exist for all the missing episodes except for the following :
Marco Polo Episode 4 : The only episode of that serial not directed by Waris Hussein, telesnaps from the other episodes came from Hussein's personal archive.
Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown, The Myth Makers, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, The Celestial Toymaker : Cura's services were not contracted during this period when John Wiles had control over production budgets. Actor Robert Jewell took 20 photographs of Episode 7 of the Daleks' Masterplan off his TV screen using a similar method to Cura.
Cura's last telesnapped episode was The Mind Robber Episode 3, so the The Invasion and The Space Pirates could not telesnapped by him. Cura died in mid-1969 and was too ill to handle further telesnap work.
Details about the telesnaps can be found here : http://missingepisodes.blogspot.com/p/tele-snaps.html
The BBC, on its website, produced photonovels for all the stories with telesnaps except for Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet. They can be found here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/photonovels/
Finally, the Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition issues 34 (First Doctor), 35 (Second Doctor Part 1) and 36 (Second Doctor Part 2), have telesnap spreads for all the missing episodes for which telesnaps exist.
5. Reconstructions
The purpose of a reconstruction is ideally to combine telesnap images with the surviving audio from the episodes. Clips of episodes, sometimes taken from clips censored when the program was sold overseas, or amateur telecine or 8mm home movies shot on set can be added. Narrations or captions are used to describe action when the audio is unclear. When telesnaps are available, this can give a reasonably authentic presentation of the episode. However, since there are only 60-80 images available, many images are repeated. Sometimes publicity photos and photos taken on the set are used for serials with a dearth of available visual information.
While several people and groups have created reconstructions over the years, the reconstructions from Loose Cannon Productions are the most consistent in overall quality and coverage. They have reconstructed every story, even for stories where no telesnaps exist. They often have had to use publicity photographs, computer animations, photoshopping and transplanting the actors from roles in other shows and clips from other episodes to make up for the lack of authentic images. They even included interviews with some of the actors from these stories on their VHS releases. Their VHS releases were free for the cost of the videotape, but relied upon a network of volunteers to transfer the material. They stated they would refuse to release their material in DVD or better quality, but downloads of their recons are available via bittorrent.
Interestingly, Loose Cannon did the Marco Polo recon twice. First "in color", using a large number of color photographs taken for that story. The second time, in black and white, came when the telesnaps for six of the episodes were found in director Waris Hussein's private collection.
The BBC has done relatively few telesnap reconstructions. They did a 30-minute abridged version of Marco Polo on The Edge of Destruction DVD. They did a telesnap reconstruction for The Tenth Planet Episode 4 for the VHS release and it can also be found on the story's DVD. The Web of Fear Episode 3 was also a telesnapped reconstruction for its DVD. While they had no telesnaps, the BBC did an abridged reconstructon of Galaxy 4 using the recovered Episode 3 and five minutes of recovered footage from Episode 1 and whatever else they could find, and it can be found on the Aztecs: Special Edition DVD. The Ice Warriors Episodes 2 and 3 were given an abridged and combined reconstruction for the VHS, and this can be found on the story's DVD.
The Power of the Daleks was released by BBC Radio Collection on MP3-CD with a full telesnap reconstruction. This was the only time the BBC has done a full reconstruction of a story with more than one missing episode. The CD unfortunately is out-of-print. The Daleks' Masterplan, The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear were also released on the MP3-CD format, but did not have telesnap reconstructions.
6. Animation
The following DVDs have full animation reconstructions with the surviving audio of their missing episodes on their DVD releases:
The Reign of Terror
The Tenth Planet
The Moonbase
The Ice Warriors
The Invasion
The Invasion was the first time a missing episode had been fully animated for an official BBC release, and it was done by Cosgrove Hall Films in 2005. The remainder were done in 2013-2014 period by Planet 55, except for the Ice Warriors, which was done by Qurios Entertainment. Cosgrove had the difficulty of recreating missing episodes without telesnaps as references, while the other episodes had telesnaps available.
On the VHS releases of The Reign of Terror and The Invasion, linking narration (and stills and clips for Reign) were provided respectively by Carole Ann Ford and Nicholas Courtney. While the latter can be found on The Invasion's DVD release, the former is not present on The Reign of Terror's DVD release. William Russell did linking narration for the VHS The Crusade, which can be found in its DVD in the Lost in Time set.
Conclusion, Which is Best?
In my personal opinion, currently the best option, when available is to watch the official BBC releases with the animated episodes. In my opinion, they are well done and tend to be reasonably faithful to their source material. They have the advantage of showing motion, something all the other methods generally lack. Doctor Who is more than just talking heads. It is interesting to compare the approaches taken by the three different animation teams employed. However, this only applies to five stories.
Reconstructions would be my first recommendation for most stories. Doctor Who was meant to be a visual medium, and with the telesnaps, clips and stills, some measure of what was put on screen may be experienced. Reading a script loses all the performance or flipping through telesnaps, so the audio remains of great importance. Loose Cannon has done every story, and their recons are the overall best you can find. Fortunately they can be found without having to send VHS tapes to be copied.
The Target novelizations, generally targeted for a juvenile readership, are usually quick reads. An adult could easily finish them in one long evening. The audio releases make for good trips in the car.
Marco Polo - 7/7
Galaxy 4 - 1,2, 4/4
Mission to the Unknown - 1/1
The Myth Makers - 4/4
The Daleks' Master Plan - 1, 3-4, 6-9, 11-12/12
The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve - 4/4
The Celestial Toymaker - 1-3/4
The Savages - 4/4
The Smugglers - 4/4
The Power of the Daleks - 6/6
The Highlanders - 4/4
The Macra Terror - 4/4
The Faceless Ones - 2, 4-6/6
The Evil of the Daleks - 1, 3-7/7
The Abominable Snowmen - 1, 3-6/6
Fury from the Deep - 6/6
The Wheel in Space - 1-2, 4-5/6
The Space Pirates 1, 3-6/6
In addition eight serials are still missing at least one episode :
The Reign of Terror - 4-5/6
The Crusade - 2, 4/4
The Tenth Planet - 4/4
The Underwater Menace - 1, 4/4
The Moonbase - 1, 3/4
The Ice Warriors - 2-3/6
The Web of Fear - 3/6
The Invasion - 1, 4/8
All episodes existing from these serials have been released on DVD with one exception. That exception, The Underwater Menace Episode 2, can be viewed without too much difficulty these days.
Regarding the eighteen mostly or completely missing serials, there are several alternatives to be able to enjoy their plots. Target Novelizations, Scripts, Reconstructions, Audio Recordings, and Telesnap Photonovels.
1. Target Novelizations
Chronologically, these novelizations of Doctor Who stories were the first way in which a fan could enjoy these missing stories. Until re-runs of Doctor Who became commonplace in the 1980s and video releases became available, they were the primary (legitimate) way in which a fan could enjoy any story after it had been broadcast.
One distinctive feature of the early Target novelizations is that they do not necessarily use the same title as the TV serial did. The book "Doctor Who and the Cybermen" was the novelization of The Moonbase. Fortunately, this was the only missing episode story whose title did not have an immediately obvious connection to the title of its corresponding televised story. The Daleks' Masterplan had to published in two volumes due to the size of the story. Volume 1 is Mission to the Unknown and Volume 2 is the Destruction of Time.
One advantage for the Target Novelizations is that the TV script author frequently also wrote the novelization. David Whittaker wrote the script and novelization of The Crusades, Ian Stuart Black The Savages and the Macra Terror, William Emms Galaxy Four, Brian Hayles The Ice Warriors, Victor Pemberton The Fury from the Deep, Donald Cotton The Myth Makers. Gerry Davis was co-creator of the Cybermen and script editor for The Celestial Toymaker and The Moonbase, whose novelizations he wrote. He also authored the actual script and novelization for The Highlanders. Terrance Dicks, who was the most prolific author of the Target Novelizations, wrote the novelizations for many stories produced just before he became script editor on The War Games. John Lucarotti wrote both TV and novel treatments for Marco Polo and The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.
In certain cases, the novelizations do not necessarily describe the same events that were depicted on-screen. Lucarotti's novelization of The Massacre is an important example. The novelization followed Lucarotti's original scripts before they were heavily edited by script editor Donald Tosh. There is a lot more to do with the confusion of the Doctor and his physical double the Abbot of Amboise in the book than on the TV. Episodes with doubles were very difficult to do in the 1960s with TV video cameras, and Hartnell was on holiday for Episode 2, so that material had to be cut, much to Lucarotti's chagrin.
BBC Audio and AudioGo have released audiobooks of some of these novelizations. They are The Highlanders, Fury from the Deep, The Daleks' Masterpan (in two parts), The Abominable Snowmen, The Moonbase (as Doctor Who and the Cybermen), The Myth Makers and The Ice Warriors. Trade paperbacks of these stories, except for the Dalek stories (among the last novelizations written) can usually be found pretty inexpensively online.
2. Scripts Project
If you want to know what was actually planned to be shown and said on the screen, you could read the scripts for the missing episodes. They are available here : http://homepages.bw.edu/~jcurtis/Scripts/scripts_project.htm
That site has not been updated in years, so it still claims Galaxy 4, The Underwate Menace, The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear are still missing episodes that have been recovered. There may be minor discrepancies in some of the scripts between what was supposed to be said and what was actually said on-screen. It also has scripts for the uncompleted Shada serial. Finally, it has the complete scripts for Dimensions in Time and The Curse of the Fatal Death, even though the video for these productions is not hard to find.
Titan Books published a series of the original shooting scripts under the line Doctor Who: The Scripts. Missing stories released in this trade-paperback form were The Power of the Daleks, Galaxy 4 and The Crusade. The Tomb of the Cybermen's script was published in this line before its televised before it was recovered.
3. Audio Recordings
Fortunately, several fans did more to preserve these episodes in some form for the long term than the BBC. They recorded their sound onto tapes while the episodes were being broadcast. Every missing episode's audio survives. BBC Radio, in the early 90s, began to release the missing stories with audio narration onto compact cassette tape, but never finished the range. They released The Power of the Daleks, The Macra Terror and The Evil of the Daleks and Fury from the Deep. Tom Baker did the narration for both Dalek stories and Fury, Colin Baker provided narration for Macra.
From 1999 to 2006, the BBC Radio Collection released the audio with linking narration on CD for all missing stories. In every case, an actor who played a companion in the story provided the narration (William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Peter Purves, Anneke Wills, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury). The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve was the first story released in this line, and it had both a cassette and CD release. All further releases were solely on CD as far as I can tell.
The audio on the CD releases has been restored compared to the old cassette releases. In the cassette version of Evil of the Daleks, episode 1 has a scene cut where the Doctor and Jamie are in a pub due to the music of the Beatles playing on the jukebox in the background. The CD version has the scene and substitutes different music.
The Macra Terror was released twice on CD during this timeframe, the first time with Colin Baker as narrator (taken from the cassette release), the second time with Anneke Wills (who was actually in the serial) as the narrator. Wills narrated version was only included in the box set Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes - Collection Four.
Audio for the missing episodes of The Crusades and The Moonbase without narration can be found on their respective Lost in Time DVDs.
The Audio Recordings are best purchased in the five "Doctor Who": The Lost TV Episodes Collections.
4. Telesnap Photonovels
The use of John Cura's Tele-Snap service, offered from 1947-1969, provided a way in which directors or actors could preserve a portion of their televised performance in a visual medium. No consumer cost-effective recording technology existed at the time to record the transmitted TV image. Videotape was not a consumer technology in the 1960s and 25 minutes of 16mm film (about 1000 feet) was too expensive for a home viewer.
Cura pointed a single shot camera at a TV screen at an exposure of 1/25 a second. This enabled him to capture exactly one video field from his TV screen. Each photo would fit into half a frame of 35mm film, the size of each telesnapped photo thus being 18x24mm. Cura would be able to make a visual record of program with 60-80 images per episode. Telesnaps exist for all the missing episodes except for the following :
Marco Polo Episode 4 : The only episode of that serial not directed by Waris Hussein, telesnaps from the other episodes came from Hussein's personal archive.
Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown, The Myth Makers, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, The Celestial Toymaker : Cura's services were not contracted during this period when John Wiles had control over production budgets. Actor Robert Jewell took 20 photographs of Episode 7 of the Daleks' Masterplan off his TV screen using a similar method to Cura.
Cura's last telesnapped episode was The Mind Robber Episode 3, so the The Invasion and The Space Pirates could not telesnapped by him. Cura died in mid-1969 and was too ill to handle further telesnap work.
Details about the telesnaps can be found here : http://missingepisodes.blogspot.com/p/tele-snaps.html
The BBC, on its website, produced photonovels for all the stories with telesnaps except for Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet. They can be found here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/photonovels/
Finally, the Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition issues 34 (First Doctor), 35 (Second Doctor Part 1) and 36 (Second Doctor Part 2), have telesnap spreads for all the missing episodes for which telesnaps exist.
5. Reconstructions
The purpose of a reconstruction is ideally to combine telesnap images with the surviving audio from the episodes. Clips of episodes, sometimes taken from clips censored when the program was sold overseas, or amateur telecine or 8mm home movies shot on set can be added. Narrations or captions are used to describe action when the audio is unclear. When telesnaps are available, this can give a reasonably authentic presentation of the episode. However, since there are only 60-80 images available, many images are repeated. Sometimes publicity photos and photos taken on the set are used for serials with a dearth of available visual information.
While several people and groups have created reconstructions over the years, the reconstructions from Loose Cannon Productions are the most consistent in overall quality and coverage. They have reconstructed every story, even for stories where no telesnaps exist. They often have had to use publicity photographs, computer animations, photoshopping and transplanting the actors from roles in other shows and clips from other episodes to make up for the lack of authentic images. They even included interviews with some of the actors from these stories on their VHS releases. Their VHS releases were free for the cost of the videotape, but relied upon a network of volunteers to transfer the material. They stated they would refuse to release their material in DVD or better quality, but downloads of their recons are available via bittorrent.
Interestingly, Loose Cannon did the Marco Polo recon twice. First "in color", using a large number of color photographs taken for that story. The second time, in black and white, came when the telesnaps for six of the episodes were found in director Waris Hussein's private collection.
The BBC has done relatively few telesnap reconstructions. They did a 30-minute abridged version of Marco Polo on The Edge of Destruction DVD. They did a telesnap reconstruction for The Tenth Planet Episode 4 for the VHS release and it can also be found on the story's DVD. The Web of Fear Episode 3 was also a telesnapped reconstruction for its DVD. While they had no telesnaps, the BBC did an abridged reconstructon of Galaxy 4 using the recovered Episode 3 and five minutes of recovered footage from Episode 1 and whatever else they could find, and it can be found on the Aztecs: Special Edition DVD. The Ice Warriors Episodes 2 and 3 were given an abridged and combined reconstruction for the VHS, and this can be found on the story's DVD.
The Power of the Daleks was released by BBC Radio Collection on MP3-CD with a full telesnap reconstruction. This was the only time the BBC has done a full reconstruction of a story with more than one missing episode. The CD unfortunately is out-of-print. The Daleks' Masterplan, The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear were also released on the MP3-CD format, but did not have telesnap reconstructions.
6. Animation
The following DVDs have full animation reconstructions with the surviving audio of their missing episodes on their DVD releases:
The Reign of Terror
The Tenth Planet
The Moonbase
The Ice Warriors
The Invasion
The Invasion was the first time a missing episode had been fully animated for an official BBC release, and it was done by Cosgrove Hall Films in 2005. The remainder were done in 2013-2014 period by Planet 55, except for the Ice Warriors, which was done by Qurios Entertainment. Cosgrove had the difficulty of recreating missing episodes without telesnaps as references, while the other episodes had telesnaps available.
On the VHS releases of The Reign of Terror and The Invasion, linking narration (and stills and clips for Reign) were provided respectively by Carole Ann Ford and Nicholas Courtney. While the latter can be found on The Invasion's DVD release, the former is not present on The Reign of Terror's DVD release. William Russell did linking narration for the VHS The Crusade, which can be found in its DVD in the Lost in Time set.
Conclusion, Which is Best?
In my personal opinion, currently the best option, when available is to watch the official BBC releases with the animated episodes. In my opinion, they are well done and tend to be reasonably faithful to their source material. They have the advantage of showing motion, something all the other methods generally lack. Doctor Who is more than just talking heads. It is interesting to compare the approaches taken by the three different animation teams employed. However, this only applies to five stories.
Reconstructions would be my first recommendation for most stories. Doctor Who was meant to be a visual medium, and with the telesnaps, clips and stills, some measure of what was put on screen may be experienced. Reading a script loses all the performance or flipping through telesnaps, so the audio remains of great importance. Loose Cannon has done every story, and their recons are the overall best you can find. Fortunately they can be found without having to send VHS tapes to be copied.
The Target novelizations, generally targeted for a juvenile readership, are usually quick reads. An adult could easily finish them in one long evening. The audio releases make for good trips in the car.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Early PC CD-ROM Games
The Compact Disc may have been first prototyped in the 1970s, and the first CD-ROM drives available in the late 1980s, but it was the 1990s when CD-ROM games came to PCs. At first, however, they were little more than the same games on floppy disks with some kind of Redbook CD-Audio. Not long afterward, they were used to store digital audio in files and more detailed or higher resolution graphics and movies.
The first known CD-ROM game released for the IBM PC was The Manhole. This was a port of the floppy disk version of the B&W Macintosh original by Robyn and Rand Miller. The Millers would later go on to create Myst, but in the Manhole, you can see a definite beginning of the style of game for which they would become famous. The Manhole was released sometime around July, 1990. It supports VGA, MCGA, EGA and Tandy graphics. However, while the game uses VGA and MCGA graphics modes and supports a much wider variety of colors than the 16-color EGA and Tandy graphics modes, it displays no more than 16 colors on the screen at any one time. This was common back in 1989 when the floppy disk version was released, as using many more colors meant redrawing the graphics.
The CD format for The Manhole was a mixed-mode CD, consisting of one data track and one or more audio tracks. The CD standard can support a maximum of 99 tracks, and the Manhole uses 95 audio tracks (this does not count the data track) to store music, speech and sound effects. There is no need for a sound card to hear full audio with the CD version. Since there is no save feature, the game is run entirely off the CD-ROM. The floppy disk version supported Adlib, Roland MT-32 and Tandy 3-Voice music and Sound Blaster and Tandy DAC for speech. The audio is obviously much improved in quality and quantity over the floppy version. The graphics, however are exactly the same as the disk version. This version of The Manhole is very obscure today, and the game was re-released twice on CD-ROM format, once for DOS and Windows as The Manhole - New and Enhanced Edition (also on floppy) and once for Windows as The Manhole - CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition. These editions are much more common, much more impressive graphically, and use far fewer CD Audio tracks.
Just about one year later (1991), Sierra began to release its first CD-ROM conversions. While there probably were other games released beforehand, this was the first time a gaming company committed substantial resources and effort into promoting the new "multimedia" experience offered on disc. First came Mixed-Up Mother Goose, then Jones in the Fast Lane, followed by Stellar 7, King's Quest V and Space Quest IV. Like the Manhole, all had previously been released on floppies. They were also more expensive than the older floppy versions. Don't forget that a CD-ROM was a very expensive proposition in 1991, Sierra was charging $795.00 for a CD-ROM kit. At least the hardware, a SCSI CD-ROM and a Mediavision Pro Audio Spectrum (later 16), were high quality products.
Sierra's evolution of the CD-ROM format was simple. Jones in the Fast Lane included all its speech on one large audio track. The game would instruct the CD-ROM driver to play samples at specific times on the track. Music would require separate music hardware, as the only one CD-Audio track can play at a time.
Stellar 7 used its single CD-Audio track for speech during cutscenes for voice acting and the music. Sound effects were unchanged from the floppy version, relegating users to Adlib and MT-32 sound effects. One benefit to having all the music on one track was there would be less of a pause for the music to restart. However, preserving the timing of the track was especially critical, especially when making copies.
Mixed Up Mother Goose signalled a different approach. This time, the CD-ROM would be used strictly as a data CD, with the speech samples stored in one large audio file instead of on an audio track. A DAC like the Sound Blaster, Pro Audio Spectrum, Thunderboard, Tandy DAC or PS/1 Game/Audio Card would be required to hear the speech, which would be stored in an 8-bit sample format. Without this innovation, no more than 74 minutes of speech could be stored on a CD-ROM. Additionally, it was very annoying when the CD had to spin up to play a voice sample.
The most limiting aspect of the CD-ROM was the total inflexibility of pre-recorded audio. To adjust the parameters of a piece of music played on an MT-32, the programmer would only need to send a few kilobytes of data to the module. To adjust the music on a CD-ROM meant changing to another track. With 74 minutes maximum and 99 tracks, the musician could easily run out of space. LucasArts' games using the iMUSE dynamic sound system would always use the CD-ROM versions for voice acting.
Most CD-ROMs use the ISO-9660 format, which is standard for CD-ROMs and is widely used. Some of these early CD-ROMs, especially those from Sierra, use an earlier format called the High Sierra Format. MS-DOS's MSCDEX supports either format, but DOSBox has trouble with HSF. DOSBox will not IMGMOUNT a HSF image, but will MOUNT a drive using Daemon Tools and read the disc from that drive. Also, you can convert HSF images to ISO images using a program like Nero Burning ROM.
King's Quest V and Space Quest IV would continue the large audio file approach. A common approach to voices at this time was to use company members to voice various parts. Roberta Williams and other employees of Sierra, would lend their voices to many of these CD-ROM releases. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of the voice acting was somewhat lacking, since these individuals were not trained actors. Many other companies would follow Sierra's lead.
One company that never went the "Starring the programmers" route was LucasArts, which always sought professional voice talent for its CD-ROM conversions beginning with LOOM and Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. Professional voice actors had been relegated to roles voicing cartoon characters, announcers, bit parts and the like. Now there was a whole new avenue of employment for them for companies who cared enough about their expensive product to spring for decent voice acting. Eventually, "name" actors would be given roles.
Another type of CD-ROM release which began to appear in 1992 or so is the compilation release. On these CDs, there was nothing you could not have obtained on a disc, but the size of a CD allowed the inclusion of several (older) games (Interplay 10th Anniversary) or a game and all its expansion packs (Wing Commander Deluxe).
Data compression and relatively low bitrate techniques helped keep the size of speech files in check, and companies began to put full motion video on their discs. Interplay would re-release its Lord of the Rings : Fellowship of the Rings with animated scenes taken from the Ralph Bakshi movie of the 1970s. Sierra King's Quest VI CD-ROM would include a longer, better animated version of the introduction contained in the previously released floppy version.
One final issue with CD-ROMs games of the time is that these versions always seemed just to have something goat-glanded onto the floppy version. When the 7th Guest turned out to be a huge hit in 1993, all of a sudden the market for CD-ROM only games became attractive to developers. The 7th Guest used high resolution graphics throughout, digitized video around every corner and plenty of voice acting. It also came on two CD-ROMs. Far too much would have had to be cut to put the game on floppies, so Trilobyte took a gamble and did not bother to release a floppy version.
Just after The Seventh Guest, LucasArts released Day of the Tentacle simultaneously on floppy and CD. Up to this point in time, CD releases would lag several months behind floppy disk releases. Additionally, by the time the CD was released, there would be interface changes and the like. For DOTT, the game was more or less identical except that the CD version had a very large audio file. Floppy users still had the benefit of speech during the opening scenes. By the end of 1993, many, many games were being designed with CD-ROM first and then a cutdown floppy version would follow, usually compressed onto many disks.
The first known CD-ROM game released for the IBM PC was The Manhole. This was a port of the floppy disk version of the B&W Macintosh original by Robyn and Rand Miller. The Millers would later go on to create Myst, but in the Manhole, you can see a definite beginning of the style of game for which they would become famous. The Manhole was released sometime around July, 1990. It supports VGA, MCGA, EGA and Tandy graphics. However, while the game uses VGA and MCGA graphics modes and supports a much wider variety of colors than the 16-color EGA and Tandy graphics modes, it displays no more than 16 colors on the screen at any one time. This was common back in 1989 when the floppy disk version was released, as using many more colors meant redrawing the graphics.
The CD format for The Manhole was a mixed-mode CD, consisting of one data track and one or more audio tracks. The CD standard can support a maximum of 99 tracks, and the Manhole uses 95 audio tracks (this does not count the data track) to store music, speech and sound effects. There is no need for a sound card to hear full audio with the CD version. Since there is no save feature, the game is run entirely off the CD-ROM. The floppy disk version supported Adlib, Roland MT-32 and Tandy 3-Voice music and Sound Blaster and Tandy DAC for speech. The audio is obviously much improved in quality and quantity over the floppy version. The graphics, however are exactly the same as the disk version. This version of The Manhole is very obscure today, and the game was re-released twice on CD-ROM format, once for DOS and Windows as The Manhole - New and Enhanced Edition (also on floppy) and once for Windows as The Manhole - CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition. These editions are much more common, much more impressive graphically, and use far fewer CD Audio tracks.
Just about one year later (1991), Sierra began to release its first CD-ROM conversions. While there probably were other games released beforehand, this was the first time a gaming company committed substantial resources and effort into promoting the new "multimedia" experience offered on disc. First came Mixed-Up Mother Goose, then Jones in the Fast Lane, followed by Stellar 7, King's Quest V and Space Quest IV. Like the Manhole, all had previously been released on floppies. They were also more expensive than the older floppy versions. Don't forget that a CD-ROM was a very expensive proposition in 1991, Sierra was charging $795.00 for a CD-ROM kit. At least the hardware, a SCSI CD-ROM and a Mediavision Pro Audio Spectrum (later 16), were high quality products.
Sierra's evolution of the CD-ROM format was simple. Jones in the Fast Lane included all its speech on one large audio track. The game would instruct the CD-ROM driver to play samples at specific times on the track. Music would require separate music hardware, as the only one CD-Audio track can play at a time.
Stellar 7 used its single CD-Audio track for speech during cutscenes for voice acting and the music. Sound effects were unchanged from the floppy version, relegating users to Adlib and MT-32 sound effects. One benefit to having all the music on one track was there would be less of a pause for the music to restart. However, preserving the timing of the track was especially critical, especially when making copies.
Mixed Up Mother Goose signalled a different approach. This time, the CD-ROM would be used strictly as a data CD, with the speech samples stored in one large audio file instead of on an audio track. A DAC like the Sound Blaster, Pro Audio Spectrum, Thunderboard, Tandy DAC or PS/1 Game/Audio Card would be required to hear the speech, which would be stored in an 8-bit sample format. Without this innovation, no more than 74 minutes of speech could be stored on a CD-ROM. Additionally, it was very annoying when the CD had to spin up to play a voice sample.
The most limiting aspect of the CD-ROM was the total inflexibility of pre-recorded audio. To adjust the parameters of a piece of music played on an MT-32, the programmer would only need to send a few kilobytes of data to the module. To adjust the music on a CD-ROM meant changing to another track. With 74 minutes maximum and 99 tracks, the musician could easily run out of space. LucasArts' games using the iMUSE dynamic sound system would always use the CD-ROM versions for voice acting.
Most CD-ROMs use the ISO-9660 format, which is standard for CD-ROMs and is widely used. Some of these early CD-ROMs, especially those from Sierra, use an earlier format called the High Sierra Format. MS-DOS's MSCDEX supports either format, but DOSBox has trouble with HSF. DOSBox will not IMGMOUNT a HSF image, but will MOUNT a drive using Daemon Tools and read the disc from that drive. Also, you can convert HSF images to ISO images using a program like Nero Burning ROM.
King's Quest V and Space Quest IV would continue the large audio file approach. A common approach to voices at this time was to use company members to voice various parts. Roberta Williams and other employees of Sierra, would lend their voices to many of these CD-ROM releases. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of the voice acting was somewhat lacking, since these individuals were not trained actors. Many other companies would follow Sierra's lead.
One company that never went the "Starring the programmers" route was LucasArts, which always sought professional voice talent for its CD-ROM conversions beginning with LOOM and Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. Professional voice actors had been relegated to roles voicing cartoon characters, announcers, bit parts and the like. Now there was a whole new avenue of employment for them for companies who cared enough about their expensive product to spring for decent voice acting. Eventually, "name" actors would be given roles.
Another type of CD-ROM release which began to appear in 1992 or so is the compilation release. On these CDs, there was nothing you could not have obtained on a disc, but the size of a CD allowed the inclusion of several (older) games (Interplay 10th Anniversary) or a game and all its expansion packs (Wing Commander Deluxe).
Data compression and relatively low bitrate techniques helped keep the size of speech files in check, and companies began to put full motion video on their discs. Interplay would re-release its Lord of the Rings : Fellowship of the Rings with animated scenes taken from the Ralph Bakshi movie of the 1970s. Sierra King's Quest VI CD-ROM would include a longer, better animated version of the introduction contained in the previously released floppy version.
One final issue with CD-ROMs games of the time is that these versions always seemed just to have something goat-glanded onto the floppy version. When the 7th Guest turned out to be a huge hit in 1993, all of a sudden the market for CD-ROM only games became attractive to developers. The 7th Guest used high resolution graphics throughout, digitized video around every corner and plenty of voice acting. It also came on two CD-ROMs. Far too much would have had to be cut to put the game on floppies, so Trilobyte took a gamble and did not bother to release a floppy version.
Just after The Seventh Guest, LucasArts released Day of the Tentacle simultaneously on floppy and CD. Up to this point in time, CD releases would lag several months behind floppy disk releases. Additionally, by the time the CD was released, there would be interface changes and the like. For DOTT, the game was more or less identical except that the CD version had a very large audio file. Floppy users still had the benefit of speech during the opening scenes. By the end of 1993, many, many games were being designed with CD-ROM first and then a cutdown floppy version would follow, usually compressed onto many disks.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Philosophy of PC Game CD/DVD Imaging
Thrift stores are great places to find older PC games on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. I have found many good games at these stores. The first thing I do when I get home is to make disc images of them. Disc images are great for several reasons. First, it reduces wear and tear on both discs and drives. Second, if you want to install or play a game, you don't have to physically move from your computer. Third, in the unlikely event that two or more people in your house/office want to play the game, you don't have to share the CD. Fourth, if the game requires the CD to be in the drive, you can mount an image on a virtual drive rather than having to hunt for a NO-CD crack.
There are three types of PC game discs, pure single-track data discs (CD or DVD), multi-track or mixed mode discs (CD only) and copy protected discs (CD or DVD), which can be mixed mode but usually are not. In this article, I am going to talk about the types of imaging formats, programs to use and copy protection. First, lets start with imaging formats :
1. ISO
The extension .iso is named after the file system found on CD-ROMs, ISO-9660. Any CD imaging program can make .iso images. This is a straight sector dump of a formatted data track. It does not support CD-Audio, multiple tracks and will fail to make a working disc image of any copy protected CD. Do not make an image with the .iso format unless you know your game is unprotected and contains no CD Audio tracks. This disc format will work with unprotected DVDs or Blu-ray discs, even though they use the UDF file system.
I have observed iso files accompanied by a cue sheet. If the cue includes audio tracks, then by loading the cue you will have access to the audio files. However, the only discs I have ever seen ripped this way were NEC TurboGrafx CD games, which do not use the ISO-9660 and are not readable in Windows.
How to tell if your game CD has CD-Audio?
Certain games have a data track with one or more audio tracks located thereafter. Windows Media Player will tell you if your disc has Audio tracks. If you are trying to image a Sega CD, Turbo-Grafx CD, 3D0 CD Neo-Geo CD or Atari Jaguar CD, assume that it has CD-Audio tracks. You can also use virtually any good CD ripping program. Always check before you rip. A list can be found on the Mixed Mode CD article on Wikipedia.
Will .iso work on a hybrid disc?
A hybrid disc is one formatted for both Windows and Macintosh. The Mac file system, HFS or HFS+, is included, usually points to the same data and is not ordinarily readable in Windows. There are programs liks hfsexplorer for Windows that can verify the existence of an HFS disc. If any of the game's discs are marked as working for Macintosh, then all the game's discs almost certainly are hybrid discs. I have made .iso images of hybrid discs and hfsexplorer indicates the file system is present. Some claim that a more involved imaging format like CloneCD or Alcohol 120% is needed to actually get these games to work in a Mac.
2. BIN/CUE (or IMG/CUE)
This extension was introduced by CDRWIN. Unlike ISO, it can support multiple data and audio tracks. The .cue is a small plain text file that contains the name of the .bin or .img file. The .bin or .img contains the data from the disc, and may or may not include CD Audio tracks. The audio tracks may be separate wave or mp3 files, and the file name will be listed alongside each track. CDRWIN is a very old program and best run on Windows 95 or 98. The last version is 4.0H. Many other programs, like CloneCD and Alcohol 120% support bin/cue. Do not use Alcohol to rip to a BIN/CUE, the audio will be two seconds off. CloneCD doesn't have that issue. I recommend Perfect Rip, a free program, to make img/cues. This format will defeat basic or crude copy protection methods that use multiple data tracks or dummy files, but not Safedisc or SecuROM. Last updated in 2010. The Nero Burning ROM nrg format seems to provide equilavent functionality.
With the exception of a few European sports games, DOS CD-ROM games were never copy protected except for a few games like Warcraft that relied on document checks (except for the oldest and newest versions of the program).
3. CCD/IMG/SUB
This is the Slysoft (previously Elaborate Bytes) CloneCD format, and is suitable for copying copy protected discs using commercial copy protection products. The .ccd is a plain text file that describes the image, the .img contains the data for the disc, and the .sub (which is not always present) is a file containing subchannel data. The intent is to make 1:1 copies of discs. It works well with Safedisc protected games, but SecuROM NEW (v4 and up) are best handled by Alcohol 120%. It creates accurate cue files as well by default. Despite its name it also copies game DVDs. For copy protected movie DVDs and Blu-rays, you must use AnyDVD or AnyDVD HD. This program was last updated in 2009.
4. MDF/MDS (or MDX)
This is the format used by Alcohol Soft's Alcohol 120%. Alcohol 52% will only make images, not burn them. It will make any of the above imaging formats or its own format. This program was last updated in 2012, so I recommend it. It is especially good for SecuROM. Use the appropriate protection profile when copying. For Safedisc and SecuROM games, making an image that will not later require a no-CD crack will take longer, since it has to read errors and use Data Position Management. Usually only the first or the play disc is protected, since that will be the disc the game expects in the drive. However, some games like Syberia and American McGee's Alice have protection on both discs. If Alcohol can detect the protection used on the first disc, then if it does not detect the protection on the other discs you can avoid using the DPM option, which takes far longer than a standard imaging would take.
Older versions of the program had a bug when making bin/cue files. This bug would cause the audio tracks on a mixed-mode CD to be off by two seconds. The current version of the software does not suffer from this problem, and I am not aware of any problems when using the native format. For most games, the track index measurements are not crucial, so these discs can be repaired. Some games, like Loom (05:00:00), require the audio track to be located at a precise measurement because they use the track for speech and sound effects.
MDX is the file format that Daemon Tools creates, and simply combines the MDF and MDS files.
5. How to Tell if your Game is Copy-Protected?
The best way to tell if your game is copy protected is to install it and then run PROTECTiON iD (last version July, 2010, v.6.4.0) on the game's hard drive directory. Scanning the disc itself may work for earlier protections, but the game's exe files are usually compressed in install files which are beyond the program's scan until they are unpacked and installed to the hard drive. Alcohol 120% can usually give you an idea of which protection is used by scanning the media, but PROTECTiON iD is better for getting the actual version of the copy protection used. Alcohol 120% is not perfect, as the program detected the Tages protection on my original copy of Giants, Citizen Kabuto, which the game does not have. Gamecopyworld often lists the protection used, but protections may not have been used for all releases or all regions.
I own quite a few Windows Game CDs from 1996-2004, but not all of them are copy protected. Budget or late (Game of the Year, Gold) releases often have copy protection removed. Games released before 1999 typically lack commercial copy protections. Since I live in the US, I have only encountered Safedisc and SecuROM protected discs. Tages, CD Cops, Laserlock seem to be European innovations, and Starforce seems to have come along later.
6. Daemon Tools
Almost everybody uses Daemon Tools Lite to emulate CD or DVD drives and load disc images. It emulates RMPS, SecuROM, Safedisc and LaserLock protections. Daemon Tools 3.47 is the last version that supports Windows 95, 98 or ME.
There are three types of PC game discs, pure single-track data discs (CD or DVD), multi-track or mixed mode discs (CD only) and copy protected discs (CD or DVD), which can be mixed mode but usually are not. In this article, I am going to talk about the types of imaging formats, programs to use and copy protection. First, lets start with imaging formats :
1. ISO
The extension .iso is named after the file system found on CD-ROMs, ISO-9660. Any CD imaging program can make .iso images. This is a straight sector dump of a formatted data track. It does not support CD-Audio, multiple tracks and will fail to make a working disc image of any copy protected CD. Do not make an image with the .iso format unless you know your game is unprotected and contains no CD Audio tracks. This disc format will work with unprotected DVDs or Blu-ray discs, even though they use the UDF file system.
I have observed iso files accompanied by a cue sheet. If the cue includes audio tracks, then by loading the cue you will have access to the audio files. However, the only discs I have ever seen ripped this way were NEC TurboGrafx CD games, which do not use the ISO-9660 and are not readable in Windows.
How to tell if your game CD has CD-Audio?
Certain games have a data track with one or more audio tracks located thereafter. Windows Media Player will tell you if your disc has Audio tracks. If you are trying to image a Sega CD, Turbo-Grafx CD, 3D0 CD Neo-Geo CD or Atari Jaguar CD, assume that it has CD-Audio tracks. You can also use virtually any good CD ripping program. Always check before you rip. A list can be found on the Mixed Mode CD article on Wikipedia.
Will .iso work on a hybrid disc?
A hybrid disc is one formatted for both Windows and Macintosh. The Mac file system, HFS or HFS+, is included, usually points to the same data and is not ordinarily readable in Windows. There are programs liks hfsexplorer for Windows that can verify the existence of an HFS disc. If any of the game's discs are marked as working for Macintosh, then all the game's discs almost certainly are hybrid discs. I have made .iso images of hybrid discs and hfsexplorer indicates the file system is present. Some claim that a more involved imaging format like CloneCD or Alcohol 120% is needed to actually get these games to work in a Mac.
2. BIN/CUE (or IMG/CUE)
This extension was introduced by CDRWIN. Unlike ISO, it can support multiple data and audio tracks. The .cue is a small plain text file that contains the name of the .bin or .img file. The .bin or .img contains the data from the disc, and may or may not include CD Audio tracks. The audio tracks may be separate wave or mp3 files, and the file name will be listed alongside each track. CDRWIN is a very old program and best run on Windows 95 or 98. The last version is 4.0H. Many other programs, like CloneCD and Alcohol 120% support bin/cue. Do not use Alcohol to rip to a BIN/CUE, the audio will be two seconds off. CloneCD doesn't have that issue. I recommend Perfect Rip, a free program, to make img/cues. This format will defeat basic or crude copy protection methods that use multiple data tracks or dummy files, but not Safedisc or SecuROM. Last updated in 2010. The Nero Burning ROM nrg format seems to provide equilavent functionality.
With the exception of a few European sports games, DOS CD-ROM games were never copy protected except for a few games like Warcraft that relied on document checks (except for the oldest and newest versions of the program).
3. CCD/IMG/SUB
This is the Slysoft (previously Elaborate Bytes) CloneCD format, and is suitable for copying copy protected discs using commercial copy protection products. The .ccd is a plain text file that describes the image, the .img contains the data for the disc, and the .sub (which is not always present) is a file containing subchannel data. The intent is to make 1:1 copies of discs. It works well with Safedisc protected games, but SecuROM NEW (v4 and up) are best handled by Alcohol 120%. It creates accurate cue files as well by default. Despite its name it also copies game DVDs. For copy protected movie DVDs and Blu-rays, you must use AnyDVD or AnyDVD HD. This program was last updated in 2009.
4. MDF/MDS (or MDX)
This is the format used by Alcohol Soft's Alcohol 120%. Alcohol 52% will only make images, not burn them. It will make any of the above imaging formats or its own format. This program was last updated in 2012, so I recommend it. It is especially good for SecuROM. Use the appropriate protection profile when copying. For Safedisc and SecuROM games, making an image that will not later require a no-CD crack will take longer, since it has to read errors and use Data Position Management. Usually only the first or the play disc is protected, since that will be the disc the game expects in the drive. However, some games like Syberia and American McGee's Alice have protection on both discs. If Alcohol can detect the protection used on the first disc, then if it does not detect the protection on the other discs you can avoid using the DPM option, which takes far longer than a standard imaging would take.
Older versions of the program had a bug when making bin/cue files. This bug would cause the audio tracks on a mixed-mode CD to be off by two seconds. The current version of the software does not suffer from this problem, and I am not aware of any problems when using the native format. For most games, the track index measurements are not crucial, so these discs can be repaired. Some games, like Loom (05:00:00), require the audio track to be located at a precise measurement because they use the track for speech and sound effects.
MDX is the file format that Daemon Tools creates, and simply combines the MDF and MDS files.
5. How to Tell if your Game is Copy-Protected?
The best way to tell if your game is copy protected is to install it and then run PROTECTiON iD (last version July, 2010, v.6.4.0) on the game's hard drive directory. Scanning the disc itself may work for earlier protections, but the game's exe files are usually compressed in install files which are beyond the program's scan until they are unpacked and installed to the hard drive. Alcohol 120% can usually give you an idea of which protection is used by scanning the media, but PROTECTiON iD is better for getting the actual version of the copy protection used. Alcohol 120% is not perfect, as the program detected the Tages protection on my original copy of Giants, Citizen Kabuto, which the game does not have. Gamecopyworld often lists the protection used, but protections may not have been used for all releases or all regions.
I own quite a few Windows Game CDs from 1996-2004, but not all of them are copy protected. Budget or late (Game of the Year, Gold) releases often have copy protection removed. Games released before 1999 typically lack commercial copy protections. Since I live in the US, I have only encountered Safedisc and SecuROM protected discs. Tages, CD Cops, Laserlock seem to be European innovations, and Starforce seems to have come along later.
6. Daemon Tools
Almost everybody uses Daemon Tools Lite to emulate CD or DVD drives and load disc images. It emulates RMPS, SecuROM, Safedisc and LaserLock protections. Daemon Tools 3.47 is the last version that supports Windows 95, 98 or ME.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Why CD Collections or Compilations Are Not Ideal for Vintage Computing
When I bought a copy of the King's Quest 15th Anniversary Collector's Edition almost 20 years ago, I thought I had everything I would ever need to enjoy the King's Quest Series. I had the AGI versions of KQ1-3, KQ4, KQ1SCI, KQ5 CD and KQ6 CD. (KQ7 would have to wait for a later collection). Isn't that everything?
Well, as it turns out, that is far from everything of King's Quest. For KQ1 & 2, I only had the DOS-installable AGI2 versions. No disk images were included to use the previous booter versions of KQ1 and KQ2. The AGI version of KQ4 was not included, nor was the English disk versions of KQ5 and KQ6, but the French disk version of KQ5 and the German version of KQ6 were. More details available as to the extras can be found here : http://www.sierraplanet.com/curiosities/kingsquest/collections.html
So what, I still had the ideal, didn't I? Well, for vintage gamers, the ideal is not always enough. Lets see what I can come up with for issues :
KQ1 - No PC Booter versions for the IBM PC, IBM PCjr. or Tandy 1000.
KQ2 - No PC Booter version. Version 2.1 included where there is a version 2.2 (fixes issues with using EGA or VGA on a Tandy 1000).
KQ3 - No issues
KQ4 - No AGI version, later version of KQ4 included; earlier version has many graphical differences, as demonstrated here : http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php/topic,2802.0.html. I assume they included the patch to fix the waterfall bug. Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ1SCI - Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ5 - No English Disk Version included, either 16-color or 256-color, the CD version features pretty poor voice acting, all from people working for Sierra and it cannot be turned off.
KQ6 - No English Disk Version included, however the very good voice acting can be turned off. Minor differences in the interface, better opening video.
Obviously, if you are releasing CD-ROMs, the user must have a CD-ROM drive. But to run KQ5 or KQ6 CD, you have to keep the CD in the drive or use a custom install program and lots of hard drive space. In 1994 hard drives tended to average around 500MB. It would not be unreasonable to allow people to install the disk versions and avoid having to keep the CD in the drive. Having to put up with pauses or spinning when the game looks for the next audio file or video segment is also annoying.
One great benefit to having CDs is that they will not deteriorate like floppy disks. Of course, if the game is already corrupted by the time of transfer, then the CD really does not serve its archiving purpose. Ultima II is a good example of this, because by the time it hit the CD compilations, it had suffered from data corruption. A dungeon entrance was removed as a result. Also, because the game could only be run from floppy disks, the files were originally given the same names on the Player and Galactic Disks. Instead of changing the file names and modifying the executable, they simply copied over the files and destroyed the ability to travel to several planets in the original game. The fix to both issues is available here : http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/ultima2/utilities.shtml
Some companies left manual-based copy protection intact, others removed it, but at a cost. In the Monkey Island Madness CD, Monkey Island 2; LeChuck's Revenge was included. MI2 was only ever released as a disk version, (not counting the relatively recent Special Edition or patches to the DOS version based on it). The original disk version used a code wheel copy protection at the beginning of the game, but the version included on this CD eliminated it. However, the easy mode was also eliminated, and selecting EGA graphics gave an incorrect monochrome EGA display instead of 16 colors. A fix for the EGA version can be found here : http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=10452&sid=17c26cf2a1203f1d3c23f85c47001561. On the other hand, the MPU-401 port is now selectable in the CD versions.
LucasArts also broke Tandy Graphics support in the version of Maniac Mansion included in Day of the Tentacle. With DOTT, the text with Tandy Graphics selected is corrupted. However, the Nuke-Em Alarms door is always open. LucasArts always disabled manual based copy protection in their floppy collection releases as well, so there are no protection screens in the LucasArts Classic Adventures (except possibly for Zak McKracken) and Air Combat Classics . Of course, you lose out on the experience of using a codewheel, a red filter, or a codebook and the screens supporting them.
Other compilation releases do not always put the latest version of the game in the CDs. The Leisure Suit Larry Collections put an earlier version of LSL1 in it, so it suffers from the same issue as the KQ2 found in the King's Quest Collections. The Police Quest Collection has some install weirdness going on. For copyright reasons, the original version of Quest for Glory I, entitled Hero's Quest, is not included in the Quest for Glory releases. The Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry collections do not include the 16-color versions of SQ1 & SQ4, LSL1 remake & LSL5, and PQ3 16-color is not included in the Police Quest Collections. The disk version of SQ4 is not to be found, being replaced by the buggy and Sierra-staff voice acted SQ4CD. Nor will you find the disk version of PQ4. However, the first LSL collection CD contains the disk version of LSL6, but the later collection CDs have the CD version. On the Roberta Williams Anthology, the version of Lara Bow: Dagger of Amon Ra, is the CD version voiced by the Sierra staff.
In other releases, you do not have the option to install the expansions separately from main game. So in Ultima VII, you will always have the Forge of Virtue and the Silver Seed installed. Ditto for the Secret Missions and Special Operations of Wing Commander I & II. You cannot install the "save space" options for Ultima Underworld or The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes : Case of the Rose Tatoo. Nor can you install the 16-color graphics for Wing Commander I & II. Did you know that Wasteland and Dragon Wars had separate installs for Tandy, CGA and CGA color composite graphics? The versions on the CDs only works with an EGA or VGA card.
Wizardry 7 had a CD version that was did not take advantage of the CD's storage capacities but did allow you to use separate devices for music and sound effects. The floppy version and the version included in the Ultimate Wizardry Archives do not allow for that.
I could go on and on about these issues, but let me return to the focus of my article, why these are not all that great for vintage computing. First of all, shocking as it may seem, but not all vintage computers have a CD-ROM drive. Getting a CD-ROM drive in a computer with only 8-bit slots is no simple task. Installation then becomes a game of installing it on one computer and moving it to another. Finding VGA cards that work well in an 8-bit slot tends to be a bit of a challenge. With these compilations, you may have some difficulty running King's Quest IV in a Tandy 1000 computer. A Tandy 1000TX (8MHz 286) was almost certainly a prime target for Sierra's developers at the time. Suppose that I wanted to run the EGA version of Wing Commander because that was the way I played it back in the day? Good luck with a CD version.
The solution is floppy disk images. If the disk is a DOS disk and does not have disk-based copy protection, they are very easy to make. WinImage is a popular program, but write protect any floppies you insert into a system with a Windows OS, otherwise it will modify the disk's FAT table. The modification is harmless, but the disk is no longer "pure". DSK2IMG is a program I like to use, and it can be set to retry the read multiple times if you have an iffy disk. DOSBox is getting better and better at being able to install games off floppies.
Well, as it turns out, that is far from everything of King's Quest. For KQ1 & 2, I only had the DOS-installable AGI2 versions. No disk images were included to use the previous booter versions of KQ1 and KQ2. The AGI version of KQ4 was not included, nor was the English disk versions of KQ5 and KQ6, but the French disk version of KQ5 and the German version of KQ6 were. More details available as to the extras can be found here : http://www.sierraplanet.com/curiosities/kingsquest/collections.html
So what, I still had the ideal, didn't I? Well, for vintage gamers, the ideal is not always enough. Lets see what I can come up with for issues :
KQ1 - No PC Booter versions for the IBM PC, IBM PCjr. or Tandy 1000.
KQ2 - No PC Booter version. Version 2.1 included where there is a version 2.2 (fixes issues with using EGA or VGA on a Tandy 1000).
KQ3 - No issues
KQ4 - No AGI version, later version of KQ4 included; earlier version has many graphical differences, as demonstrated here : http://queststudios.com/smf/index.php/topic,2802.0.html. I assume they included the patch to fix the waterfall bug. Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ1SCI - Original monochrome install program is replaced by the color install program that was introduced years after the game, and most of the graphics and sound drivers in the floppy releases are not included.
KQ5 - No English Disk Version included, either 16-color or 256-color, the CD version features pretty poor voice acting, all from people working for Sierra and it cannot be turned off.
KQ6 - No English Disk Version included, however the very good voice acting can be turned off. Minor differences in the interface, better opening video.
Obviously, if you are releasing CD-ROMs, the user must have a CD-ROM drive. But to run KQ5 or KQ6 CD, you have to keep the CD in the drive or use a custom install program and lots of hard drive space. In 1994 hard drives tended to average around 500MB. It would not be unreasonable to allow people to install the disk versions and avoid having to keep the CD in the drive. Having to put up with pauses or spinning when the game looks for the next audio file or video segment is also annoying.
One great benefit to having CDs is that they will not deteriorate like floppy disks. Of course, if the game is already corrupted by the time of transfer, then the CD really does not serve its archiving purpose. Ultima II is a good example of this, because by the time it hit the CD compilations, it had suffered from data corruption. A dungeon entrance was removed as a result. Also, because the game could only be run from floppy disks, the files were originally given the same names on the Player and Galactic Disks. Instead of changing the file names and modifying the executable, they simply copied over the files and destroyed the ability to travel to several planets in the original game. The fix to both issues is available here : http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/ultima2/utilities.shtml
Some companies left manual-based copy protection intact, others removed it, but at a cost. In the Monkey Island Madness CD, Monkey Island 2; LeChuck's Revenge was included. MI2 was only ever released as a disk version, (not counting the relatively recent Special Edition or patches to the DOS version based on it). The original disk version used a code wheel copy protection at the beginning of the game, but the version included on this CD eliminated it. However, the easy mode was also eliminated, and selecting EGA graphics gave an incorrect monochrome EGA display instead of 16 colors. A fix for the EGA version can be found here : http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=10452&sid=17c26cf2a1203f1d3c23f85c47001561. On the other hand, the MPU-401 port is now selectable in the CD versions.
LucasArts also broke Tandy Graphics support in the version of Maniac Mansion included in Day of the Tentacle. With DOTT, the text with Tandy Graphics selected is corrupted. However, the Nuke-Em Alarms door is always open. LucasArts always disabled manual based copy protection in their floppy collection releases as well, so there are no protection screens in the LucasArts Classic Adventures (except possibly for Zak McKracken) and Air Combat Classics . Of course, you lose out on the experience of using a codewheel, a red filter, or a codebook and the screens supporting them.
Other compilation releases do not always put the latest version of the game in the CDs. The Leisure Suit Larry Collections put an earlier version of LSL1 in it, so it suffers from the same issue as the KQ2 found in the King's Quest Collections. The Police Quest Collection has some install weirdness going on. For copyright reasons, the original version of Quest for Glory I, entitled Hero's Quest, is not included in the Quest for Glory releases. The Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry collections do not include the 16-color versions of SQ1 & SQ4, LSL1 remake & LSL5, and PQ3 16-color is not included in the Police Quest Collections. The disk version of SQ4 is not to be found, being replaced by the buggy and Sierra-staff voice acted SQ4CD. Nor will you find the disk version of PQ4. However, the first LSL collection CD contains the disk version of LSL6, but the later collection CDs have the CD version. On the Roberta Williams Anthology, the version of Lara Bow: Dagger of Amon Ra, is the CD version voiced by the Sierra staff.
In other releases, you do not have the option to install the expansions separately from main game. So in Ultima VII, you will always have the Forge of Virtue and the Silver Seed installed. Ditto for the Secret Missions and Special Operations of Wing Commander I & II. You cannot install the "save space" options for Ultima Underworld or The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes : Case of the Rose Tatoo. Nor can you install the 16-color graphics for Wing Commander I & II. Did you know that Wasteland and Dragon Wars had separate installs for Tandy, CGA and CGA color composite graphics? The versions on the CDs only works with an EGA or VGA card.
Wizardry 7 had a CD version that was did not take advantage of the CD's storage capacities but did allow you to use separate devices for music and sound effects. The floppy version and the version included in the Ultimate Wizardry Archives do not allow for that.
I could go on and on about these issues, but let me return to the focus of my article, why these are not all that great for vintage computing. First of all, shocking as it may seem, but not all vintage computers have a CD-ROM drive. Getting a CD-ROM drive in a computer with only 8-bit slots is no simple task. Installation then becomes a game of installing it on one computer and moving it to another. Finding VGA cards that work well in an 8-bit slot tends to be a bit of a challenge. With these compilations, you may have some difficulty running King's Quest IV in a Tandy 1000 computer. A Tandy 1000TX (8MHz 286) was almost certainly a prime target for Sierra's developers at the time. Suppose that I wanted to run the EGA version of Wing Commander because that was the way I played it back in the day? Good luck with a CD version.
The solution is floppy disk images. If the disk is a DOS disk and does not have disk-based copy protection, they are very easy to make. WinImage is a popular program, but write protect any floppies you insert into a system with a Windows OS, otherwise it will modify the disk's FAT table. The modification is harmless, but the disk is no longer "pure". DSK2IMG is a program I like to use, and it can be set to retry the read multiple times if you have an iffy disk. DOSBox is getting better and better at being able to install games off floppies.
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