[Guess Who]

Does any of you guys have a way to play duke nukem 1 and 2 on windows 7?
I have both copies but I can´t play them in windows 7.

Or maybe someone has a port for windows or something?
I´ll appreciate any help on this matter.

Thanks.

[LeoD]

DOSBox

[TerminX]

Yep, DOSBox is the answer here. You can probably run the first game on the 32-bit version of Windows 7 since it only has PC speaker audio, but you definitely need DOSBox to run the second.

[Guess Who]

Thanks for the support guys, Dosbox did the job, but i experienced a problem with the file "FILE_ID.DIZ" It tells me that was "changed or missing" or something like that and I cannot continue playing more than the first level on each episode.
I have the file in the folder, so I don´t know what is wrong.
Any suggestions?

[MrBlackCat]

I have no idea why that file would even be called... that file is just a Description File use only by BBS software as far as I know. The only use I ever knew of them was as a text file read by the BBS software that contained BBS Advertisements/Info as well as a description of the game it is usually zipped with. It should not even be necessary to have as far as I know.

Does anyone know if the modern 3D Realms Downloads still contain this file?

I could be wrong... maybe some software (other than BBS software) was written to read something from this file? I never heard of that though.

It isn't in the folders with my registered games anyway... other than the ones I downloaded then registered in the same Directory, which was rare.

I just checked myself in case blackharted comes in here and needs sourcing. DIZ does literally mean Description In Zipfile.
Link: Wiki File_id.DIZ

MrBlackCat

[Hendricks266]

The FILE_ID.DIZ was used as copy protection. You see, old bulletin board systems (BBS) used the contents of that file in any .zip as a description. In registered versions, the FILE_ID.DIZ contained a message proclaiming the file to be pirated if on a BBS, and the executable was coded so that it did not work if the file did not match exactly.

[Guess Who]

Ok, I understand what you`re saying, but in another computer with XP works fine, but in windows 7 under dosbox it doesn`t.
So actually the file seems to be fine...

[MrBlackCat]

Hendricks266, on 11 April 2011 - 02:27 PM, said:

The FILE_ID.DIZ was used as copy protection. You see, old bulletin board systems (BBS) used the contents of that file in any .zip as a description. In registered versions, the FILE_ID.DIZ contained a message proclaiming the file to be pirated if on a BBS, and the executable was coded so that it did not work if the file did not match exactly.

Interesting... I have never heard of DIZ files being used that way.

MrBlackCat

[Inspector Lagomorf]

MrBlackCat, on 12 April 2011 - 11:39 AM, said:

Interesting... I have never heard of DIZ files being used that way.

MrBlackCat

On the contrary - there are a lot of Apogee games that you are simply unable to play without the FILE_ID.DIZ file being intact or unmodified, including Blake Stone and Bio Menace. It's rather ingenious. Probably one of the best early methods for stopping piracy.

Edit: Until, of course, you find out that all you would need to do is rename it something like FILE_ID.DIC and put a README file in the same folder that says "RENAME THIS FILE!"

[MrBlackCat]

The Mighty Bison, on 01 May 2011 - 11:03 AM, said:

On the contrary - there are a lot of Apogee games that you are simply unable to play without the FILE_ID.DIZ file being intact or unmodified, including Blake Stone and Bio Menace. It's rather ingenious. Probably one of the best early methods for stopping piracy.

Edit: Until, of course, you find out that all you would need to do is rename it something like FILE_ID.DIC and put a README file in the same folder that says "RENAME THIS FILE!"

I guess I just never ran into it before. I saved all my original ARJs and ZIPs for shareware back then anyway. Because the BBS software always had custom *.DIZ files with their own information in it, I guess I never exampled the file structure or looked up the format specs. I never programmed, back then, the kind of software that would have been on BBS's... just commercial stuff with DBase and FoxPro.
I bought most of old Apogee games as you mentioned and just never fooled around with the files in a way that would have caused this practice to surface.

MrBlackCat