Playing Realms Of The Haunting on Windows XP

Don´t try to install ROTH on Windows XP or Vista directly. To make sure everything works as in the original game without any problems you need to install the free program DosBox.

Grab the latest version of DosBox from this page:
DosBox Downloads
Just click on the link called "Windows" (Win32 Installer) and download the file.

Download the latest version of D.O.G., a frontend for DosBox which allows you to easily install and configure DOS games:
D.O.G. Download

You are now ready to install DosBox so execute the DosBox file you just downloaded. After accepting the license you have to choose a directory. You can use any directory you like but for simplicity we now assume that you install DosBox in the directory c:\dosbox
Open the Start menu now and look for the newly created entry for DosBox. Click on DosBox-?.?? > Video > Install Movie Codec.
This allows you to capture video from within the game by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F5.

Now execute the DOG executable you just downloaded. Install it in c:\dosbox\dog
Start a new explorer window and navigate to c:\dosbox\dog and double-click on the DOG.exe file.
You are now asked if you wish to configure a DosBox version. Confirm this by clicking on Yes. Just click on the "Select" button in the next window and browse to c:\dosbox and double-click on the dosbox.exe file. Click OK to confirm. You can now see the D.O.G. main window.

Click on "Profiles" > New profile.
Insert the first ROTH disc into you CD-ROM drive.
Enter a Profile Name, e.g. "Realms Of The Haunting".
You can see two tabs, once called "Setup". Click on it, click on the select button and browse for the install.exe file on your CD-ROM drive. Double-click on the install.exe.
Now click on the select button near the field "Conf Filename", type "roth" and press ENTER (assuming that you already are in the conf directory of the D.O.G. installation, if not, browse there).
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Now select "Sound" in the navigation on the left.
Then click on "Gravis UltraSound". Uncheck the checkbox "Enable Gravis UltraSound".

Click on "DosBox" now and then on "Console".
Select "Higher" under "Focused Thread Priority".

Click on "Drives" and again "Drives".
Click on "Add CDROM".
Click on the "..." button in the field "Drive Folder" and select your CD-ROM drive there, e.g. "D:\". Select "D:\" as the "DosBox Drive".
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Then click on "OK".

Click on "Add Harddrive" and select the drive where you wish to install ROTH, e.g. "C:\". Select "C:\" as the DosBox drive.
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Then click on "OK".

Now click on "CPU" and once again on "CPU". Choose "Dynamic (May be unstable)" under "Core".

Click on "DOS" and then on "Memory".
Select "63MB" for "High Memory Allocated".

Click on "Screen" and then "Screen Settings".
Select "Original Resolution" for both "Full Screen Resolution" and "Window Resolution".
Select "Overlay" as output device on the right.

Now click on "Scaler" and select "No scaler".
Click on OK to create the profile.

Depending on your ROTH version the installation process might be a bit different.

Right-click on the new profile that was just created and select "Run Setup".
You should now - after a few seconds - see the installation screen. Press any key to continue.
Select "Maximum Installation" and press ENTER. Click to view a screenshot
Select the path where you want to install ROTH. Please note that you can only select the harddrive you selected before and that the directory name must not exceed 8 characters and must not contain and spaces.
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After pressing ENTER you need to press another key for the installation to begin.
When the installation finishes you will hear a short beep and see the following screen: Click to view a screenshot
Press any key now and select "Select Sound Device". Press any key again to proceed and select "Yes" when you are asked if setup should try to auto-detect the sound device.
The soundcard should be detected as "Sound Blaster 16".
Click to view a screenshot
Confirm it by selecting "Yes" and confirm the sound test. You should hear a short sound. Select "No" in the "Adjust Settings" dialog.
When asked if the device should be used for music select "no" and select "General Midi" and confirm the default settings. You should hear a music when confirming the sound test. Select "No" in the "Adjust Settings" dialog.
Proceed to "Exit" until you see the DOS prompt. Type "exit" and press ENTER.

You are now ready to configure the installed game. In the D.O.G. main window once again right-click on the entry and select "Edit Profile".
Within the "exe" tab click on the "Select" button and browse for the realms.bat file in the directory you installed ROTH in, e.g. c:\ROTH\realms.bat and double-click on it in the file dialog. Confirm the selection with ok.

Start ROTH by right-clicking on the entry in the D.O.G. main window and select "Run Game".
ROTH should now be started in a window. If you wish to play it in fullscreen mode simply press Alt+Enter to switch between fullscreen and windowed mode.

Depending on your version you may be able to select VGA resolution in the game settings, however if you do not have that option follow the instructions below.

You will notice that ROTH has been started in a low resolution. To play ROTH with full 640x480 resolution you first have to make ROTH create the roth.ini file.
When you see the main window with the ROTH menu select "Settings" and change a value, e.g. turn subtitles off. Return to the main menu and quit the game. Close the window by typing "exit". In the ROTH installation directory (c:\ROTH) a new file, roth.ini has been created. Double.click on it to open it with a text editor and change these settings:
Before:
VideoMode=0 ViewSize=2

Afterwards:
VideoMode=8 ViewSize=0

Now save the file, quit the editor and restart ROTH via the D.O.G. window.
ROTH should be running in full 640x480 resolution. Feel free to switch to fullscreen by pressing Alt+Enter.

To get your mouse pointer out of the Dosbox you can press the WINDOWS key.

Everything you capture is by default saved in the Capture directory within your ROTH directory, e.g. c:\roth\capture.
To start/stop capturing a video press Ctrl+Alt+F5.
To take a screenshot (PNG) press Ctrl+F5.
To start/stop recording sound as a WAV file press Ctrl+F6.
To pause DosBox press Alt+Pause.
To kill DosBox press Ctrl+F9.

You should deactivate your virus scanner when playing the game. The more CPU power your PC has the better the framerate. Don´t wonder if the game becomes slow when capturing video as in that case the game is running, each screen is captured and compressed and saved to disk which uses a high amount of CPU power.

To improve performance you should try out different settings in the areas CPU and Screen in the D.O.G. settings.

The following guide has been compiled by Tom Spencer (Spee2k8).

1. Make a folder called "hd" in the same emulated hard disk that DOSBOX is using for ROTH.... e.g if DOSBOX mounted e:\dosboxhd as its C drive then Roth will be in "e:\dosboxhd\ROTH" so put hd in as "e:\dosboxhd\hd"
   
   
2. Copy the entire contents of CD1 to the "hd" folder
   
   
3. Then move onto CD2, 3 and 4 (CD's 2, 3 and 4 have the same folders and some of the same files as CD1) ignore everything on these disks apart from the GDV folder (this contains all the movie files) copy the contents of each GDV folder from 2, 3 and 4 into the hd folder's GDV folder, you will be asked if you want to replace "TUNNWARP.GDV" for each disk just say no as its already in GDV from CD1.
   
   
4. Go to the hd folder you have made and open up the DATA folder, then open "FILELIST.TXT" in notepad, skip past DISK1's list and goto "DISK2". Remove the lines in DISK2's list that say "dbase300.dat" , "dbase500.dat" and "tunnwarp.gdv". Do the same for DISK's 3 and 4 list's. Please be sure you do not have any repeating file names throughout the entire file! (I used notepad's find and replace function and just replaced with a space then just took out the blank lines afterwards). Do make sure you have ONE and only one of each of the following in the file "dbase300.dat" , "dbase500.dat" and "tunnwarp.gdv". Then remove the words, "DISK2={", "DISK3={" and "DISK4={", also make sure you remove the closing "}" for each disk apart from the very last one at the end of the list. You should now have a long continuous list of files starting with "DISK1={" and ending in "}" (i.e there should only be one "{" at the beginning next to "DISK1=" and one "}" at the end of the list, in the entire file). Make sure you save this file using notepad (File -> Save).
   
   
5. Almost done.... Now go into the ROTH folder that was installed while setting up the game in DOSBOX (That would be "E:\dosboxhd\ROTH" if "E:\dosboxhd" is your DOSBOX emulated C drive). Open up "CONFIG.INI" in notepad and change "SourcePath" from "D:\" to "C:\hd". Click file and save in notepad and close the file.
   
   
6. (Optional) Now ROTH no longer needs a CD drive to run the game you can remove it from the "Realms of the Haunting.conf" file created while setting up DOSBOX, the D.O.G front end and ROTH from the previous guide. To do this simply remove the line that reads "mount d "l:\" -ioctl -t cdrom" from the [autoexec] section towards the bottom of the file ("l:\" is my CD drive this will probably be different for you). Remember to click file and save in the notepad, then close. (Another way to make this change would be to remove the CD drive in the D.O.G front end and save the profile)
   
   That should be it you should now be able to load ROTH from the D.O.G front end or however you wish to load it through DOSBOX and not have a CD swap in sight Very Happy
   
   

DosBox uses a special codec that is not recognized by YouTube so it is recommended to convert the video with a DivX or XVid codec prior to uploading your videos to YouTube.

If you have any screenshots of interest we appreciate if you would send them to us :-)