Frontier - First Encounters(Elite3)

[duke o' york]

Out of interest, how large is the download file?
I've only got dial-up I'm afraid, and at the moment I'm sitting waiting for a 30MB file to DL. It'll end up being nearly 2 hours.

[J Bytheway]

I think the game was originally released on floppy disc(s), so it can't be very substantial...

[DrSpike]

Depends. With Monkey Island 2 there were 12 disks.

[Gamecube64]

I'm no DOS expert, how do I run this thing? I typed in the file name but I just got an error. I have it in
C:\Program files\firstenc

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by duke o' york
Out of interest, how large is the download file?
I've only got dial-up I'm afraid, and at the moment I'm sitting waiting for a 30MB file to DL. It'll end up being nearly 2 hours.

well the one you want is 2.34Mb - its the complete patched(v1.06) version(and the one i'm using). From that first link in my first post, you can also get the Floppy disk version which is around 440K approx[EDIT: NO this is for the disk version of Frontier(elite2)].

Still 2.34mb should be ok even on dial-up?

@Gamecube64,

ok i take it your going with the DOS version then(the full shareware version).

Ok do this:

1: restart in DOS mode only
2: goto the directory 'C\Program files\firstenc'
3: then type 'firstenc.bat'

(ignore the quote marks-i'm just putting them in to show that its the bit between you need to type).

you should see the opening shareware agreement title screen, from here it asks you to type Y or N to continue to the game.

At this point if you type Y you should see the opening title animation. If so then everything is working.

A few more things are worth doing to make things better.

1. You may not have any sounds/music
A: before typeing 'firstenc.bat', first type 'setsound(either .bat or .exe)', this should bring up a dodgy old DOS looking soundcard testing screen.

The trick here is to try all the options if your not sure what soundcard you've got, untill you prefrably get both digital and midi sounds working.

For example on my machine i've got a Creative AWE32 soundcard.

In the digital mode the program recognises it and i get sound when i run the test.

In Midi mode it doesnt like the port setting, so i started chooseing other card options for Midi, in the end the best sound i could get was by selecting the Soundblaster Pro for Midi. Not exactly correct, but it works.

So you may have to play around with these settings untill your happy.

2. You will need a dos mouse driver, which you would load before running 'firstenc.bat'.

I use a small one called Mouse5.exe. You need to install the mouse driver for sure before running the game, as once your in the game you cant exit without a mouse - i got caught out by this and had to do a hard reboot to exit the game!

There are a few other things that are good to run in the DOS version(a program called 'forcecol.exe' for example that makes space black, rather than the default blue!) .

What i'll do is bring in and attach the files i use tomorrow. I'll also add a step by step guide to getting the game running in DOS mode

I prefer to run in the DOS version - the graphics just move much more smoothly, although there is one big drawback - you have no 'Roll' (left/right) keyboard command! which makes manual landing pretty tricky!

hopefully i can find a file to fix this and add it to the others.

[Gamecube64]

When I start DOS the command line looks like this
C:\WINDOWS>
Yeah... I moved it into the windows directory and it still said bad filename. Moved it out since I don't want to lose it in the infinite depths of Windows.
So it was,

"C:\WINDOWS>firstenc"
"Bad filename"

[DrSpike]

You need to browse to the directory the .exe is in right?

cd c:\games\frontier (or whatever), then firstenc will run the .exe.

[child of Thor]

as Dr.spike said - you need to use the 'cd' command to tell it to change to the correct directory.

RUNNING DOS(SHAREWARE) VERSION OF FFE:

(or the way i get it working )

1. download the shareware(v1.06) game from http://www.eliteclub.co.uk/download/

2. It will install by default into 'C:\Program files\firstenc', but you can put it where you want - just change the relevent info in the instructions below to make it apply to your installation on FFE.

3. next make sure you have a DOS mouse driver in the same directory(you can use the one below in the ffefiles.zip file, its called Mouse5.exe) before running the game in DOS mode.

I've also included a file called forcecol.exe - this will turn space black, you will also need to put this in the 'C:\Program files\firstenc' directory.

Both these files just need to be unzipped/extracted into your firstenc directory, its easy in windows.

4. Now restart in MS-DOS mode.

5. At the prompt type 'cd..' this will clear you into the plain 'C:\>' prompt.

next type 'cd progra~1' this will give you the prompt:
'C:\Program Files>'

[NOTE: type 'dir' to see what your Program Files folder has beed shortend to. In mine its always 'PROGRA~1', use whatever its called in your dir listing.]

next type 'cd firstenc' this will give you the prompt:
'C:\Program Files\Firstenc>'

[NOTE: this is longwinded, but you will not get any 'invalid directory' comments]

6. now type 'mouse5.exe' - this will run the dos mouse driver

7. now type 'forcecol.exe' - this will run the program to turn blue space into black.(This is an opptional step, if you prefer blue dont bother with it)

8. now type 'setsound' - this will run the DOS soundcard setup program. First run Auto-detect, if you still get no sound after this(or your pc hangs up!) then you will have to just go through each soundcard in the list and try the various settings.

9. now type 'firstenc.bat' - this will run Frontier First Encounters. First you will see the shareware agreement title screen. If you agree with it type 'Y' to run the game.

At this point you will see the opening animation - and hear some music. hit the space bar/Return key/left mouse button to start the game.

If all this seems like too much hard work - then have a look back earlier in the thread to where the JJFFE program was discused - its a windows friendly version, no messing around in DOS required
Although you will still need the shareware version to get all the sound and music.

[Gamecube64]

Hmm... I guesse I should have read the manual. (never got off the ground, I guesse I have to figure out how to close the airlocks or something...) forcecol.exe gives me a runtime error and everytime I select a sound driver my computer freezes.

[DrSpike]

Welcome to the joy of old games.

[child of Thor]

yes i should mention that this game was designed for a 486! I run it on a P166, an old PC i keep specificaly for running old games - it saves so many problems.

XP wont like the DOS mode. And by running it in DOS mode it needs to be full DOS mode, not the MS-dos prompt you can get in win98 from the start>program files menu. You need to do a Start>Shutdown>restart in MS-DOS mode only. then try the steps from 2 or 3 above.

If it crashes all the time when trying to set up the sound card then chances are you card is too modern, so you will just have to skip this step(8) and play without sound or music.

The cure to your problems would seem to be trying the JJFFE option - look for the post by reds4ever further up - this will give you the link and that site has all the info you will need to get it running in Windows enviroment, you wont need to mess around, simply double click the JJFEwin28.exe to run the game

And as Doctor spike says.

Windows has its advantages

[J Bytheway]

There's always DOSBox. That's how I play Frontier under XP, since there is no analogue of JJFFE for Frontier.

[Gamecube64]

Hmm... How do you reccomend getting to Sol/Barnard from the starting area? I can't find a way that isn't littered with pirates.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Gamecube64
Hmm... How do you reccomend getting to Sol/Barnard from the starting area? I can't find a way that isn't littered with pirates.

If you sell extraneous equipment (weapon, etc.) you can probably fit enough fuel to make all the necessary jumps back to back, and thus avoid pirates.

[Gamecube64]

Silly me, I didn't realize you could store extra Hydrogen fuel. Darn pirates always blowing me up before I can see them.