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Zork seriesHold up, I was reading that.(5 posts)solved(5 posts)solved
(5 posts)solved
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Posted June 17, 2011
Love the Zork games. Glad to play them again. Have encountered small problem, though. When I get to the end, DOSBox zips through the text and closes before I have a chance to read it. Tried pausing before it closed, but I'm not sure if that didn't do anything or if I was just slow on the keys. Turning the speed way down on DOSBox helps a little, but not quite enough.

Any suggestions? Barring that, any transcriptions of the text in question?

Thanks in advance.
This question / problem has been solved by MrParmesanimage
Posted June 18, 2011
Hi,

I haven't bought Zork from GOG but based on other DOS games i have bought from them I think the problem is that they setup DosBox to close as soon as the game exits. This is the process I went through Windows XP to prevent Blake Stone, a DOS game, from closing when I exited it. If it doesn't work for you let me know.

Go to the start menu and right click on the zork shortcut and click "properties", a dialog box should open with the "Shortcut tab" selected.
In the text box labeled "Target" got to the very end of the text and delete this part
-c "exit"

For example mine was
"G:\Program Files\GOG.com\Blake Stone Aliens of Gold\DOSBOX\dosbox.exe" -conf dosboxBlakeAOG.conf -noconsole -c "exit"
and I updated it to
"G:\Program Files\GOG.com\Blake Stone Aliens of Gold\DOSBOX\dosbox.exe" -conf dosboxBlakeAOG.conf -noconsole

click the "Apply" button

also in a text box labeled "Start in", copy the directory listed there into notepad, you may need it in a minute

Close the dialog and start zork and then exit zork. If you are still on the DOS prompt after you exit the game your problem is solved. You can exit the DOS prompt by typing "exit" and pressing enter.

If the game still closes the window then go to the directory you copied from the "Start in" text box from the shortcut properties

find the .conf file, it is probably named something like dosboxZork1.conf
make a copy of the file as a backup

open the original file in notepad and scroll to the very bottom and delete the line that says "exit". Save the file and see if your problem is fixed.

You might want to submit a bug report to GOG since other people will have the same problem.
Post edited June 18, 2011 by MrParmesan
Posted June 22, 2011
Thanks, that helped a bit; DOSBox ends up at a C: prompt now instead of closing outright. Still flushes the text, but maybe a little more tweaking will get it.

Thanks again.
Posted July 10, 2011
I'm glad it helped somewhat.
If you post the contents of the .conf file after the line containing [autoexec] I can try to tweak it some more.

EDIT: This post has more info http://www.gog.com/forum/zork_series/stop_the_endings_from_skipping
Post edited May 03, 2015 by MrParmesan
Posted September 26, 2021
It is well over 10 years later, and I am having this problem now. I deleted the -c "exit" from the shortcut file. I've deleted the "exit" line from the single.conf file, but Zork still terminates DOSbox when the Window closes. That means that if it's my third time dying in, I actually don't know what happens. I'm worried what will happen if I, for example, win the game. Does anyone have any way to solve this?


EDIT: Should have googled slightly longer. I figured it out.

In the single.conf file, the last line should originally read "Exit". In between the Exit and the command prior, add in "Pause". It will then give you a prompt to press any button, and then it finally fully quits.
Post edited September 26, 2021 by Kaitengiri
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Zork seriesHold up, I was reading that.(5 posts)solved(5 posts)solved
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