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03/02/2022 12:50 Press return...

A project log for Reverse engineering a DOS PC FMV Game from 1994

Accidental digital archeology and hijinks trying to dump image, animation, video, and sound info from the MSDOS game "The Lawnmower Man".

cprossucprossu 03/10/2022 at 04:250 Comments

Rather than dig out my likely scratched CD copy, I decided to take a look at archive.org to see if I could find myself an ISO image of the game.
https://archive.org/details/TheLawnmowerManMSDOS
With that out of the way, I mounted the image, made sure it was what I remembered, and made sure I could run the game under dosbox.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's make sure it runs, since I remember going through heck and back just to load it on a real machine. I guess I should build a computer to run this "game", but that can be a distraction for later.

Perfect. I didn't have to muck with anything, and although it's choppy, I recall the same thing back in the day.  It has two modes of operation, booting from the CD directly and installing some files onto the hard drive and presumably running it from there. Let's do that now having proven the CD method works fine.

Normally I would say "Where we're going we don't need any README files, but let's put the contents of it in here for completeness, it could help us out later!
THE LAWNMOWER MAN - (c) The Sales Curve Ltd

Installation
------------

If you wish to play the game with the default settings direct from the
CD-ROM, simply log onto your CD-ROM directory and type 'LAWNCD X' where
X is replaced with the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive.

However, it is highly recommended that you use the INSTALL program which 
will copy about 200k of files to your hard-drive, and allow tuning the
game to the speed of your PC.

In addition you may also use the INSTALL program to place extra data files
on your hard-drive to improve the speed of the game if you have a slower
CD-ROM Drive.

A small batch file is also created during installation, which allows
removal of all installed files simply by typing 'REMOVE' in the installation
directory.

Make sure you re-run the INSTALL program if you change your hardware 
configuration after installing the game.

Controls
--------

The game is controlled from the keyboard using the following keys:

Up              -       Cursor/Numeric Keypad Up    & 'Q'
Down            -       Cursor/Numeric Keypad Down  & 'A'
Left            -       Cursor/Numeric Keypad Left      & 'O'
Right           -       Cursor/Numeric Keypad Right & 'P'
Fire            -       'Space' & 'Enter'
Quit to DOS     -       Esc

Machine Speed
-------------

As with most games, the faster the better! The minimum configuration
is a 386. 

Memory
------

You should have minimum TSRs & drivers loaded before running the game.
If you get an 'Out of Memory' error, the game ran out of Base Memory and
you should remove any drivers etc not required.

1000k of Extended memory (XMS) is required, and HIMEM.SYS should be used 
in your CONFIG.SYS. 

On a 2 megabyte machine, you should disable the BIOS option that uses
'Shadow RAM' to speed up the ROM. This memory will be required by the
game!

Display
-------

A 16Bit Register Compatible VGA Display Card is required.

CD-ROM
------

A CD-ROM with SUSTAINED THROUGHPUT of 150k/sec is required. The INSTALL
program will measure the speed of your CD-ROM.

MSCDEX
------

The Microsoft CD Extensions should be supplied with your CD-ROM Drive. Version
2.1 or above of MSCDEX is required. You should specify at least 20 buffers
to be used with MSCDEX. (ie the parameter "/M:20" should be on your MSCDEX
line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT).

Audio
-----

The DigPak SoundBlaster Driver from "THE Audio Solution" is used for 
digital audio. Creative Labs Sound Blaster, Pro and 100% hardware
compatible clones are supported.

The configuration is read from the BLASTER enviromental variable if
set, as described below. Otherwise an auto-scan will be attempted to
find a Sound Blaster.
Example configuration of the BLASTER variable, as it should appear in
your AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5

This defines a sound card address of 220 and use of interrupt 5.
The above statement must be in upper case and in the order shown.

A message from Advanced Gravis for UltraSound Users 
---------------------------------------------------

Mega-Em is a new utility that enables you to emulate the Roland Sound Canvas,
Roland MT-32 and Sound Blaster Digital Effects using a Gravis UltraSound card.
Ideally Mega-Em should be used with games that support dual sound card
settings (ie. one for music, and one for digital effects). For games and
applications that do not support the Gravis UltraSound directly, Mega-Em is
the ideal emulation because it makes available to you Sound Blaster digital
effects, while taking advantage of the better music quality of the Roland
sound platforms. Mega-Em is not designed to be used with games that take
advantage of the superior sound quality of the Gravis UltraSound directly.

The Lawnmower Man will give optimum performance with the Gravis Ultrasound
card if you use the Mega-Em emulator from Advanced Gravis. As stated, Mega-Em
is a Roland and Sound Blaster (digital) emulator and is provided on the 
Lawnmower Man CD. (See the ULTRASND directory). To set up Mega-Em for use
with The Lawnmower Man, please type the following:

MEGAEM -ROFF
EMUSET

To remove Mega-Em from memory after using The Lawnmower Man, type:

MEGAEM -U

For further details on using Mega-Em, please read the README supplied with
Mega-Em (in the ULTRASND directory on this CD).

At the time of pressing this CD, there still exist some minor Sound Blaster 
incompatibilities with this version of Mega-Em, Ultrasound users, please
contact Technical Support on the telephone number below for an updated version
of Mega-Em.

	Technical Support
	Advanced Gravis INC
	TEL 0101-604-431-1807
 


50 MB looks to be the limit of what we can put on the hard drive, and to be fair, that was quite a chunk of hard drive space in 1994!

All right, that takes care of the install then!And a look at our directory on the C drive after install. Cool.

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