Sound fix for the GOG version of SC1 (solved!)

[oaktea]

Command line parameters would come immediately after starcon.exe, separated by a space on the same line. For example, from Krulle's description:

starcon.exe /S:adlib

That should instruct the game to start using the adlib sound settings.

Hope this helps you get it working better.

Draxas already gave the answer I would've thought works.

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[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount C ".."
c:
cls
starcon.exe /S:adlib
exit

Yes, this is the perfect solution for me! It doesn't sound good exactly, but it sounds less..."musical"! The other options either didn't change anything, or it just sounded like fuzz (for the internal setting).

I don't know if you remember DOS times.
the mount command is not DOS. It is an adaptation necessary for Dosbox.
C: means switching to drive "C:" (which has just been defined by the "mount" command. My Dosbox autorun commands usually are done with g:, g for game, to avoid the OS mixing up my system harddrive c: with the dosbox definition of "c:"...) (or O: for Masater of Orion2)
"cls" stands for "clear screen", you can easily remove that, that will not change anything, except allowing you to read whatever the OS/Dosbox wrote after the previous two commands.
"exit" just tells Dosbox it can end itself, thus exits from Dosbox.
If you want to read error messages, you can try:

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[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount G ".."
g:
starcon.exe /S:adlib

To end dosbox afterwards, you need to enter "exit".
But this will allow you to read error messages from starcon.
Also allows you to test a bit around.

Executables of that time often had a commandline parameter to show you available options.
Thus before exiting dosbox, try

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starcon.exe /help
starcon.exe /?
starcon.exe ?
starcon.exe /h

(these are the 4 most commonly used help requests, others may exist, and most programmers caused all of them to show the same information which may or may not be helpful)

At least one of these should give you a list of available options/parameters.
Then you can see which sound options actually exist.

I haven't used DOS since I was a kid, and I've completely forgotten all of the commands. Thanks for all the tips and info here; super helpful. I'd be interested in playing around with DOS some more (especially since I'm a huge fan of older games).

Also, you're using windows? A desktop icon?
Can you tell us what the command line of the desktop icon leads to?
(right click the icon, and tell us what the "target" is, and the "start in")

I'm on Windows, using a Shortcut installed by GOG's Galaxy Client. Well, to run Star Control; the other one I created is a modified copy of the original. The target path says:

"C:\[...]\DOSBox.exe" -conf "..\dosboxSC1.conf" -conf "..\dosboxSC1_addon.conf" -noconsole -c exit

I presume the "start in" reads something like "c:\program files\GoG.com\Star Control 1 and 2\" or similar.
And the "target" likely is something like "c:\program files\GoG.com\Star Control 1 and 2\dosbox.bat" -conf dosboxSC1_setup.conf -noconsole ...
The .conf file is the one where the batch execution is defined within -> the [autoexec] part cited above.

If you want to run the keys editor or the scenario editor, it's best to copy the .conf file (twice), rename the copies (e.g. dosboxSC1_keys.conf or dosboxSC1_edit.conf ) then edit the ..keys.conf to read in the autoexec part

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[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount G .
g:
keys.exe
exit

and the ..edit.conf to read:

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[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount G .
g:
edit.exe
exit

.

Then copy the desktop link twice (really copy, not creating a shortcut: grab the icon with the mouse, move it, press the <ctrl> button additionally, move slightly more to the place you want the new icon, and then let the mouse button go while keeping <ctrl> pressed).
Edit the names of the new desktop links to reflect the intention (keys, scenario editor), then right click the new icons, go to "properties" and in the "target", replace the "dosboxSC1_setup.conf" part with "dosboxSC1_keys.conf" or "dosboxSC1_edit.conf" accordingly.

Dang, I should set up my own Starcontrol 1 again. But then I'd still not use the GoG installation script, so I'd still run against other walls.
But at least I would not guess names of files blindly.

Finally got this working too! I matched the auto-execution part with what it had in the (working) settings.conf file:

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[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount C ".."
c:
edit.exe

I was trying to get it to work before, and I was calling the conf file correctly and everything...but the problem was that it needed "mount C ".."", and not "mount C ." which is what the GOG forum post had. Either a typo, OS thing, or just me not knowing how DOS works.

Thanks for all the advice everyone! Fixed!

[krulle]

That is wonderful to hear!

Enjoy your experience!

(and glad that my fully outdated knowledge of outdated OSs is still of some use)

the "mount" command is from Dosbox. It pretends that the current directory is a complete disk.
A way to simplify dosbox use (other directorates on your drive are of no use to dosbox, as they have no DOS programs in there).
So, it's less a question of how DOS works, than how dosbox works.
more info: dosbox wiki on mount.

[Draxas]

Glad that this discussion was helpful, and hopefully this thread can be useful to anyone else having the same issue down the road.