I just got the Alien Breed + Tower Assault pack and had some problems. Getting Alien Breed working was pretty simple, though there was no copy protection codes packaged with the game, so I assume that was already 'cracked' so to speak for this version, so typing anything got past that. Basically, our system dislikes Overlay mode of Dosbox and crashes every time we try to use it. :) Switching it to Surface fixes that simple.

Tower Assault however was an absolute pain in the backside, if you'll pardon my expression. Every time I started it, it was fine until it got past the intro movie, then it would hang on a black screen and repeat a single bit of sound, ad infinitum.

HOWEVER (not to blow my own trumpet here), I managed to get it working, and given there are hardly any threads, I don't know if I'll be the only one, so I thought I'd best put my assistance out there.

Here's the thing. Alien Breed Tower Assault has no easy to access setup program that even does anything. Furthermore, this will involve some manual editing of config files, so get your copy-paste fingers ready to backup the configs.

First of all you want to go to the directory that GOG installed Tower Assault to.
You'll notice a folder in there called "TOWER". That's where you want to be.
IN there, is a file called TA.CFG. Open that baby up in notepad or whatever you use, and have a look at it.

You'll notice it's really quite easy to read, but there's a number of settings.
Here's the hard part. You will NEED to know what your DMA, IRQ, and Address of your soundcard are. With modern gamers, most of you won't even know what those are, thankfully there are people who know.

To find out the Address, IRQ and DMA of your soundcard, this guide should be helpful http://www.escotal.com/IRQ.html .

Generally, the setup defaults to Address 220, IRQ 5 or 7, and Low DMA 1 and High DMA 5.
The important ones are Address (nearly always 220 I've found), IRQ, and Low DMA. Ignore all the other stuff.

As an example, ours is set to 220, 7 and 1. Basically, in the TA.CFG file, you'll see basically this:

----------------------------------

SOUND SB

MUSIC 1
EFFECTS 1

SB 220 5 1
SBPRO 220 5 1
SB16 220 5 1
PRO 220 5 1
PRO+ 220 5 1
PRO16 220 5 1
WSS 220 5 1
ULTRA 220 11 1

TSENG 1
DEBUG 0

---------------------------


Right at the top of that list is "SOUND" which is the config's way of going 'What soundcard is being used?'.
I set that to SB16 personally because my Realtek soundcard can do that.

Next I went down the list and saw the SB16 entry. I set the "5" to "7" because that is the IRQ number it's asking for there. Notice the pattern? Address, IRQ, LowDMA. That'll eventually get stuck in your head when you start dealing with old dos games a lot :)

Finally, you'll notice that "TSENG" entry. "Isn't he one of the Turks from FF7?" I hear you ask? Yes, but that's not what it's asking here. Basically that entry is saying "is the VGA card one of those old Tseng Industries VGA cards from the early to mid 90s that were everywhere?" and 1 means YES.

This was the biggie. Setting that to 0 means "no this is not a Tseng" card. Chances are, yours won't be either. Set it to 0 if you are having the same lockup problem I am. Now save the file, and exit TA.CFG.

Now, you'll want to go back one directory to where you'll see the dosboxABTA.CONF file, which is dosbox's config file. It's alright, this one's already explained in the config file for you, but just incase, make a backup.

Here you can scroll all the way down until you get to the sound settings. Dosbox being what it is, you should see it's automatically got your sound settings fine under the [sblaster] tag so you shouldn't need to edit it, but it is pretty self explanatory. Make sure it matches up with what your system says the Soundcard is set at, and make sure it's set to the same soundcard as the one you put in TA.CFG.

Finally, save the file, and try it out. All being well, it should work just peachy now!

Hope this helps!

Nice little guide there,

if your finding your alien breed 1 running a little slow I took the time to work it out, video the change and put a guide up. it helps tower out some too but no where near as much as it helped the performance of Alien Breed

I have just signed up to thank you for this. Yes it has been a pain in the ass but thanks to you here it is finally working.

The way you have explained it here is great and easy to follow. Nice one.

All I need to do now is remap my controls on the Bios and so I can use a gamepad and I will be sitting back and getting stuck into dealing with those pesky Aliens ;)

Thanks for this. Well done indeed to you.