The Zork Library Forum

Hello,
I'm having some very frustrating problems with ZGI. For some reason there is no propaganda playing over the loudspeakers right at the beginning. I still get the Fresh Fish women and all the other people speaking, just no propaganda. I've gone through all the walkthroughs I can find to see if theres something I have to do to get the voice going, run my mouse of every part of the screen, still nothing. Gone through all the Vista setup guides, and am sure that I've installed everything correctly. I've turned the volume up, sat my character in front of the loudspeaker, then gone and done something else. Still no propaganda. And because of this I can't get that damn beer!!!

So....anyone got any ideas?

Dr Afrolicless

I have heard of this issue before, I cannot recall the solution, but I will try to help. If you follow the how-to this will guarantee that the files(audio and otherwise) are present where needed by the game. Try this and then get back to me... edit your ZIX files.

I am having the same problem. I have followed your how-to perfectly for the ZGI DVD, and I am still having no luck with the announcer/propaganda. All of the videos play nicely, I even get the Dolby introduction when the game starts up, it just won't play the propaganda. Any ideas, I can't get the beer can?

As a side note, I even have the captions turned on, and the announcer doesn't show up there either.

Someone else noted a problem as posted above, I do not know how to fix it.

First I recommend trying to run the game using 'compatibility mode' try win95/98 etc.

Next I would try to make sure your drivers for your soundcard are up to date, I run an audigy and don't have any problems. Also, if you have sound in other videos and the rest of the game, then personally I wouldn't worry about that one issue. Alternatively if you do not have sound in the game videos(non dolby ones) then I suggest purchasing a soundblaster compatible soundcard if you do not own one.

Lastly, if you are running dolby as you say and there is no sound, its likely you have your audio set to digital output only in this case, any videos you run will not have audio. Check your audio devices in control panel.

I'm having the exact same issue. I just installed ZGI on my netbook using the methods outlined on kevinbecker.net, although I had to go through a few extra steps on account of not having an optical drive on the netbook (copy files from my iMac's CD drive to a thumb drive, run the thumb drive over to the netbook). The audio and movies work fine, but Port Foozle is remarkably propaganda-free, no chatter in the subtitles either. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it almost looks like a form of copy protection, since it utterly prevents you from solving the first puzzle.

Anybody have any advice on this?

Six31 wrote:I'm having the exact same issue. I just installed ZGI on my netbook using the methods outlined on kevinbecker.net, although I had to go through a few extra steps on account of not having an optical drive on the netbook (copy files from my iMac's CD drive to a thumb drive, run the thumb drive over to the netbook). The audio and movies work fine, but Port Foozle is remarkably propaganda-free, no chatter in the subtitles either. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it almost looks like a form of copy protection, since it utterly prevents you from solving the first puzzle.

Anybody have any advice on this?

UPDATE: I broke down and bought an external CD/DVD drive and actually went though the installer, instead of just copying the files over. It worked perfectly, and Port Foozle was just as obnoxious as ever.

Six31, I'm glad you got it working, though sorry I couldn't respond sooner. I have heard of a couple others having this issue, but I haven't run into it myself. I'm trying to figure out what context it happens in. I see that drafrolicless was using Vista. Another person I heard from was also running Vista. Six31, what version of Windows are you running? Also, do you have the CD or DVD version of ZGI?

I'm so grateful that the instructions here helped us (me and my husband) to install the game without any problems in an Acer laptop running Vista. I successfully reached the underground in my game, my husband has never played it before so he's still stuck at the first puzzle in Port Foozle! Ok, I said I don't want to spoil it for him and he told me "oh don't tell me"! Anyhow today I couldn't resist and I said "try something with the speaker hun" he went "hmm... I will try tomorrow" so I'm very expectant! I can't wait!

KM3K wrote:Six31, I'm glad you got it working, though sorry I couldn't respond sooner. I have heard of a couple others having this issue, but I haven't run into it myself. I'm trying to figure out what context it happens in. I see that drafrolicless was using Vista. Another person I heard from was also running Vista. Six31, what version of Windows are you running? Also, do you have the CD or DVD version of ZGI?

I have the CD version of ZGI, and I was trying to install it on a netbook running Windows 7 Starter Edition. Like I said above, since the netbook had no CD drive, I copied the files from the CD to a thumb drive using my iMac, then copied the files from the thumb drive to the netbook hard drive. I'm glad I finally got an external optical drive, because the process is not unlike tranfering the contents of a 2-liter bottle one tablespoon at a time.

I have the same problem. im running vista and have the DVD version installed to my HDD,
does anyone have a solution?

Sorry about the delay in responding. I still haven't run into this problem myself, so here's a few questions that may help shed some light on this issue.

Is the propaganda sound the only sound missing? A previous post talked about all music and videos working, so I'd guess this is a yes.

For those of you with CD/DVD drives, have you done a regular install of the game where you have the CD/DVD in the drive while you play as opposed to using the methods outlined here to install completely to the hard drive? If so, is there a difference? If there is a difference, you may be missing some files from the CD/DVD.

Have you tried compatibility modes, as suggested by DAT?

Have you run into any other sound related issues on this computer, whether in games or elsewhere?

Hello, another unfortunate player here with the same problem. I have used the special instalation method in the How-To thread as I couldn't even get the installer working. Then I copied the whole contents of the DVD to the hard drive. The funny thing is I don't have any music either. Does anyone know in which folder the sounds/and or music are stored so we can compare the number of files in the respective folder? As a last resort, should there be no solution to this problem, could someone who has the game upload a save file just after you get the can and the other item under it? Provided of course there are no more sound cued puzzles further in the game, otherwise it's not really worth the effort....

There are no other puzzles in game that require sound as far as I know, but there are things Dalboz (the guy in the lamp) will say you might want to hear. Providing you have captions on, you might get the caption on the bottom of the screen.

I am sure that the zork rocks sequence is very sound dependent but it could be solved without it, since you get about 1 minute to run with the zork rocks and set them in a safe place...

Here's the file and I really hope it works.

------------

Zork Grand Inquisitor file save (4th save slot):

Raw file: http://www.fileserve.com/file/DzW5MX4
Zip file: http://www.fileserve.com/file/W7cMYqW


Instructions: Do not save into your ZGI folder, unless you have already created a file in-game on save #4 called: PROPAGANDA

When you have done that, then you can safely put this file into your Zork Grand Inquisitor folder, when asked if you want to replace, say "yes" to erase the one you have there.

Wow, I don't know what happened but just when I was about to give up all hope I decided to try the installer one more time and voila! I could actually install the game properly this time, without the need of that workaround. I don't understand why it decided to work all of a sudden. Anyway, now I no longer have that annoying sound bug and everything is working perfectly now!

Thanks MacCentris for the save file anyway and I'm sure someone else might find use for it.

On a side note, as a minor inconvenience, the captions switch in the options menu is missing. Is this because I (accidentally) did a minimum install?

I have isolated the Zork Propaganda issue to the Zork DVD. If your system will not perform a normal install from the DVD and you have to follow the special copy file instructions, you will have no propaganda speaker at the beginning of game whether you are in Windows XP, Windows Vista (64) or Windows Vista (32).

The way I got the game to work was simply going to a shareware site and downloading the CD ROM version of the game. I had no problems after that, and since I had already purchased the DVD rom version, I had no qualms about obtaining free ware files to play a game I had already purchased.