[GrayFox2k7]

Hello there,

I've been pulling my hair out lately, getting my all time favorite, Wing Commander Armada, to work properly with dosbox. I do own both the floppy and CD releases as well as the GOG re-release of the game, but can't get either to work to my liking.

What it boils down to:

• Using my floppy or CD version works well with the armadadb executable (thus allowing the use of my xbox one gamepad in dosbox without any weird behavior), but I can't get the armada 1.0 patch to work, so I can't benefit from the gauntlet mode password system. When I start the updated armada.exe, my gamepad shows erratic behavior in-flight imediately.
• Using the GOG version I have way better results with my gamepad (but still unprecise/wacky at times) AND using the armada 1.0 executable, but it's unneccessarily difficult to get the included dosbox to run the armada installer to switch the soundcard settings to my liking.

Is there any special way to install wc armada, the armada 1.0 patch and the armadadb executable so I can use the armada 1.0 content and still use the armadadb executable with joystick and ipxnet support?

I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

 

[Madman]

The ArmadaDB i believe is a quite old HCL patch https://www.wcnews.com/news/2005/05/05 which fixes joystick support issues with the then current (but now ancient) dosbox 0.64. I would assume that this was built on top of the Armada Patch 1.0 (but i admit it's not clear from his notes).

However i think the later versions (notably 0.65) fixed that joystick bug - see the post here: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2006/04/09. That should mean that the ArmadaDB patch is no longer required? but presumably you're still having issues with it?

There was an updated joystick routines patch which Origin released back in the day - the CIC has it as a WC3 patch, but it supposedly works on Armada too: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Alternate_Joystick_Routines. This is broadly what the JOYA and JOYB files in HCL's ArmadaDB should be doing too?

Generally with the GOG dosbox releases, if you're reasonably familiar with Dosbox itself it can be better to try a different dosbox install as some of the newer versions (Staging and X) have lots of fixes that are not in the base version (and potentially old) that GOG packages. I've not played Armada in a long time (possible since before the ArmadaDB patch was released!) so i'm not sure what problems one would have today.

Long story short though, if HCL's code/the GOG release is not built on top of the Armada 1.0 patch, then I suspect you aren't going to get them to work together.

 

[Madman]

Fascinating - i took a look and indeed HCL's patch is clearly a modification of the original floppy file (723 kb) not the updated Patch 1.0 file (725 kb). so the two are incompatible indeed. Unless someone can reverse engineer what HCL did, I think the only option might be using a newer version of Dosbox in case that fixes the root cause?

ArmadaDB was originally discussed in this thread (https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/online-wing-commander-milestone-reached-may-2-2005.16601/) but unfortunately HCL didn't discuss the details of what he changed.

 

[Madman]

Actually the diff in the two files was fairly small - so assuming that you want to use both https://hcl.solsector.net/armada_floppy_dosbox_joystick_ipx.zip and https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Armada_Patch_1.0 i think the attached executable should do both. I've tested that the game starts, but nothing further - so no promises that the NetBios code still works (i don't understand what HCL's code was trying to do).

Please let me know if it works okay for you?