The game crashes whenever I save it. I've looked, but there are no current "help" topics covering this (And trying to get tech support from GOG seems to be an endless loop that goes nowhere.) Any ideas why it would crash when I save game? It does save it--but it drops to desktop and forced me to reload to continue playing

Which game and which platform?

Both games save just fine for me on Windows 10. If on Windows, make sure you didn't install into a Program Files folder (permissions could be the cause).

Got the same Problem with First Dark Sun,first Time saving ran well,after second time it always throw me out of the Game.
Installation is in a Special Games folder on my System.
Using Windows 7,first Prob i ever had with old Games from GoG

Ah, well I put this in the Dark Sun folder, but neglected to indicate that it was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands it is on Windows 7.

I installed it in a special folder just for GOG games (as suggested by the installer, but on D drive rather than C as my C drive is packed.)

Yeah it's cool, I'm not sure what the pattern is here. They literally wrap their shortcuts around DOSBox and its config files, so the issue is almost certainly DOSBox itself.

Look in stdout.txt or stderr.txt if there is one (in the DOSBox folder). Also, you could try editing dosbox_darksun.conf. Try a different output or perhaps windowed.

Direct link.

I'm running Ubuntu here, and having this issue consistently. I bought this game from GOG, because I've tried to get it working forever in dosbox and kept having this exact problem. So, I figured I'd just pay the $10 bucks to have it just work. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they figured out the problem either. I've got it on both a laptop with Iris graphics and a desktop with nvidia.

I do have a stdout.txt, so what am I looking for?

I haven't bought this game from GOG yet, but I own it from a long time ago. For many other GOG releases, this type of issue is caused by file / folder permissions and when the game is installed by a privileged user, other users that run it do not have permission to write to the install location. What might be worth trying is temporarily increasing the folder permissions so that anyone can read/write to the Darksun folder.

Savegame files are named SAVEXX.SAV and are put in the same folder as all the other files (like DSUN.EXE and DARKSUN.BAT). The above is the case in the original but I can't confirm for the GOG release.

Errors. You might not see any though since it's a hard crash.

rmeakins is right, it's probably permissions since we have a confirmed failure for DOSBox on Ubuntu. Check the folder security on the game, make sure read/write is available for everyone. Since you're on Win7 maybe turn off User Access Control.

Other than the above, I don't know. I'd grab Ubuntu to troubleshoot but am too strapped for time.

Hmm. I've got the same crash on save problem. It's not a user rights issue. I've been able to get the game to save 1 or 2 times in a single sitting before crashing by running with no sound, no animations and launching the dsun.exe instead of the darksun.bat that is default. Coincidently, launching dsun.exe will land you at the dosbox console upon crash rather than dropping you completely out, so a slight improvement.

I'll keep working on it to see if I can't find a work around.

So, I think I have a work around for the crashing.

I've been able to consistently avoid crashing by going into the game menu to save, rather than using the menu that comes up when pressing ESC. Sun Icon (top right) -> Game Menu -> Diskette Icon -> Save game.

I'm running with no sound, and no sound devices in my dosbox conf file. Also, I've lowered the amount of RAM available to the game.

Esc is the hotkey to quit the game. F1 is the hotkey to save. So you are basically telling the game to quit, and it asks you if you want to save before quitting. If this is happening when you press Esc to save like it happens with chalne, then it is the expected behavior. If it happens when you save with F1 or through Tab->Save, then no idea.

Nope, not a permission problem as the game is installed in my user's home directory that I'm running it as in Ubuntu. But, for the Hell of it, did chmod -R 777 on the Darksun folder, and it didn't help.

As for Chalne's workaround, it says that it saved the game, and didn't crash, but no save was created. So a tiny bit better, in that it didn't crash, but still didn't save either.

That works for me as well. Just tried it. No problems. Thanks.