King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity Game Technical Help
Sierra’s King’s Quest: Mask of Eternitycontains many bugs and has given players a good number of problems with their computers. It is recommended that when playing the game under Windows, no other programs should be running, such as screensavers, virus protection, etc. If the game is crashing and it seems like the patches are not working, try reinstalling the game. Currently, this game does not support gamepads or joysticks, and may have problems at higher resolutions such as 800×600. I have not heard of a version for Macintosh computers. If you need saved games, they are on the goodies page. There are three patches and an online technical document for this game.
King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity Installation Requirements
Pentium 166 with 32 MB of RAM
400 MB of free hard drive space (before install)
4X CD-ROM drive
Windows 95 or 98
DirectX compatible SVGA (640 x 480 x 16-bit High Color) video card
DirectX compatible sound card
Mouse and Keyboard
However, this is a game where it is best to have at least a Pentium 266 with 64 MB of RAM and 3D accelerator card (3Dfx or Direct3D) to work well and eliminate some technical errors. Many people have had tons of problems running the game with just the minimum requirements.
King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity Installation Procedures
Insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive. At the King’s Quest Mask screen there will be the options to INSTALL or EXIT. Select INSTALL. If this screen does not automatically load, you can install the program by clicking on START button, Run… and then typing D:\SETUP.EXE and clicking OK. If your CD-ROM drive is a letter other than D, substitute the appropriate drive letter. Sierra highly recommends to go ahead and auto-update the game, so that the latest patches are installed to eliminate a great number of errors.
Uninstallation Or Reinstallation Procedures:
There is a certain procedure needed to completely uninstall the program. If the game is crashing and it seems like the patches are not working, try reinstalling the game. However, many players have tried to reinstall the game for whatever reason and suddenly came into problems because they are not reinstalling it correctly.
To Uninstall The Game:
In the MASK folder, there is a SAVE folder with all your saved games. Move that folder to another place. This step is to keep your saved games from being deleted. If you do not want your saved games, then leave the SAVE folder where it is.
Uninstall the game using the Sierra Utilities program. This program should be the SUTIL32.EXE program in the C:\PROGRAM FILES\SIERRA ON-LINE directory or in one of the Start Program menus. If this program is not working for some reason, you can try uninstalling the game from the Windows Control Panel. In Control Panel, select Add/Remove Programs and select Mask of Eternity.
The uninstall program will probably not get rid of all the files, so the next step is to delete the MASK folder completely from the hard drive. Find this folder (usually C:\SIERRA\MASK) using My Computer or Windows Explorer and delete it and all of its remaining files completely.
To Reinstall The Game:
Uninstall the program completely. See the above procedures. Nothing should be left, not even the MASK folder.
Reinstall the game again. If you get any messages asked to overwrite any files, then the game was not completely deleted. The game must be completely deleted from your hard drive to eliminate errors.
Once the game is reinstalled, install the latest patch called MOE13FG.EXE. This should be the only patch installed in the game.
Now move back any saved games you had before into the SAVE subfolder of the MASK folder.
Now start the game.
King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity Game Patches
Sierra has two patches for King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity.
King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity PATCH 1 – KQ8PATCH1.EXE – 97.8 KB
This patch fixes the feather of truth bug that the first patch fixes plus other stuff: elevator operation problems between the Barren Region and the Frozen Reaches, difficulties moving Connor over ramps after jumping, problems crossing the solved lava tile puzzle in the Barren Region, problems with the left door in the Swamp containing the hand print, a potion of protection will no longer interfere with picking up a new piece of armor and increasing armor statistics, game crashes when an inventory item was used while Connor was describing it, Connor falling off the hill above the Basilisk if he went away from the attack position while in first person view, game crashes when Connor enters the Mask Altar room and stops at the bottom of the stairs.
King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity PATCH 2 – KQ8PATCH2.EXE – 466.0 KB
This patch can be installed in English, French, or German. It fixes all the problems mentioned in the previous two patches plus other stuff: enables Connor, Monster, Character, and Object shadows for Direct3D, supports translucent polygon rendering for Direct3D, addresses random crash in shadow code, addresses problems with incorrect perspective texture rendering in Direct3D.
Once it is downloaded, run the program like any other installation program. For this patch, unzip all the files to the same folder as your King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity game. Then read the README.TXT or README.BAT file and follow the instructions. Once the patch is installed, restart the computer and play the game normally. You no longer need the patch program, so just delete it off your floppy disk.
King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity Technical Document
Sierra has composed an online technical troubleshooting document for King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity. In this document, you can find information concerning the following problems plus other technical tips:
- When installing the game, you receive an out of available space on destination drive error message.
- An error message at the end of installation says that “some files could not be verified.”
- Information about DirectX drivers.
- Mask quits to Windows, gives a black screen, or an error of an “invalid page fault” after any “loading” screen.
- Your computer fails the sound card test, you cannot hear the voice in the Wave test, or you get no sound in the game.
- You have choppy, bad, static sound or no sound at all.
- You experience “flashing” screens in either the menu or the game while using a Voodoo2 card.
- The option for Direct 3D is not available in the Graphics Option.
- Click here to view Sierra’s King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity TECHNICAL DOCUMENT.
Note that these technical documents are rather outdated, and Sierra is no longer updating them. In fact, Sierra Planet was lucky enough to save a copy of the document before Sierra deleted all of them. If your problem is not listed there or not resolved, check out Sierra’s technical support knowledge base for more updated information.
King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity Other Game Problems
This is a list of problems I know of and/or have experienced for myself when playing this game. I will hopefully expand this section as I become aware of any other problems with the game. If you have not run scandisk or defragment your hard drive lately, doing so may help.
- For some people, the crashes later in the game can be attributed to a virtual memory swap file being less than 50 MB. You can configure this by going to Windows Control Panel, selecting System Properties, and choosing Performance Tab. This size also must be controlled by Windows. It is also a good idea to make sure your hard drive free space is unfragmented, so the swap file can grow. Run the defragment or defragmenter program to unfragment your hard drive. This is a problem that likes to get worse as you get farther into the game if left unfixed.
- You need at least DirectX 6.0 drivers fully installed on your system. Some other programs may install older versions of DirectX over your existing new version, so beware! Some of the later worlds in the game are more sensitive to driver issues than earlier worlds, so this problem may not happen right at the start. The Mask of Eternity CD-ROM has an installation program for DirectX 6.0 for you to manually install.
- When viewing the intro, ending, or any middle movies, you suddenly get a “can’t find vids:iv50 compressor” error message and a blank screen. There have been problems with the installation program not correctly installing the Indeo Video Codec Drivers onto the computer system. You will need to manually reinstall the drivers yourself.
- If you get an access denied error, exit the installation, go into Windows Explorer and select “Arranged Icons — By Name” from the VIEW menu. Go to the ..\Windows\System directory and scroll down until you see a file called IR32_32.DLL. Right-click once on this file and choose “Properties.” At the bottom of the “General” tab, make sure the file attribute is set to Archive. (If it is set to read-only, change it to Archive.) Repeat this procedure for each of the Indeo software files on your system. If Windows Explorer is configured to “view by name” all of the Indeo software files will be listed in order starting with IR32_32.DLL. Now try reinstalling the Indeo software.
Other Contact Information
If you need more technical support, then try SierraHelp.com. More experienced players might be able to help you out relatively quickly.
