Queen: The eYe

How to Play

Full RIP

Retrogramer Joachim submitted his full RIP of the game :

The zip is about 1.5 GB and unpacks to about 1.8 GB. It has the full game with all five CDs' data merged into one folder, plus the CD music converted to WAV. It runs with no CD, no CD images and no MSCDEX, either in DOSBox (configs included) or on a Windows 98 / MS-DOS machine. I have tested on real hardware, but Claude is responsible for all the hacking itself. There's no installer involved or needed.

What's changed

Both executables (normal and trained):

• No CD needed. The game reads everything from the hard disk and never asks you to insert or swap a CD.
• CD music plays from disk. The original Redbook audio tracks are WAV files in QUEEN\MUSIC. They play through the game's own sound driver, so the music works on real hardware with no CD drive.
• Runs from any folder. The original expects its files at the root of a drive. It now treats its own folder as that root, so it can be installed somewhere like D:\Games\Queen.
• Two music errors in the English release fixed (they're correct in the German and Spanish releases):
• Arena Domain track 13 was a second copy of "Liar". It's now "Party", as intended.
• The glitch at 3:20 in "You Don't Fool Me" (Theatre Domain), which put the beat out of step, is removed.
• Pick Up works in battle mode. Before, pressing Pick Up with Dubroc's fists raised did nothing. Now he lowers his fists first and then picks up the item.

Optional trained version (TRAINED.BAT), meant to make the Arena fights playable:

• Dubroc takes 40% damage, his hits do 250%, and health pickups give 150%.
• No stun-lock: enemies can't hit Dubroc while he's reeling, or for about one second after he recovers.
• After being hit or thrown, Dubroc turns to face his attacker.
• It never kills Dubroc where the original wouldn't have, and never keeps alive an enemy the original would have killed.

Also included: a README with install notes and controls, a walkthrough of all five domains, SETSOUND.BAT for sound card setup, and ready-made DOSBox configs. I have not included DOSBox, as I'm on Linux, and I suspect most of your users are not.

How it was done

The game data was extracted from all five CD images and merged into one directory tree. The CD audio tracks were converted to 22 kHz 16-bit stereo WAV.

The executable (a DOS/4GW LE binary) was disassembled in Ghidra to work out how it finds its CDs and plays music. Changes were made by injecting new code into the executable, not by editing the game data:

• CD check: the game's MSCDEX detection was patched to report the hard disk as the game CD.
• Music: the nine CD-audio functions the game calls were replaced with a sC. It feeds audio through the Miles Sound System library already built into the game, using double buffering. This also needed one extra mixer channhas a free voice.- Folders: a small DOS INT 21h hook adds the install folder in front of th it runs from any directory.
• Gameplay changes: the Pick Up fix and the trainer code are small hooks into the game's input and damage routines.

The new code was written in C and assembly and compiled with GCC/NASM and tool injects it into the LE executable and adds the relocation fixups DOS/4GW needs. The original EXE is left unmodified as the build input.

Tested in DOSBox (0.74 and Staging) and on a real Windows 98 machine.

Notes

• DOSBox configs use ems=false. DOSBox Staging crashes at the Arena intro the unpatched original.
• Keep the install path short (DOS 64-character path limit).