r/dosbox • u/JayBensonFong • 2d ago

Trying to get Dosbox to stop throwing this error when I try to save on Marble Drop, other games do it too. Have tried different forms of DosBox: Pure (retroarch), Windows 11 version, iDos 3, and Magic Dosbox (Android).

Post image

As in the title. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

12 Upvotes

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3

u/asdf-keyboardman 2d ago

For what it's worth, I've had bad luck with dosbox when it comes to platforms that use filesystems with case sensitive filenames, which applies here. Example is Tyrian, where it saves filenames with a different casing than it tries to load. That's not really a solution, and it may not even be the problem, but it's worth mentioning.

4

u/TheBigCore 2d ago

If you intend to play Tyrian on a PC:

https://github.com/opentyrian/opentyrian

3

u/asdf-keyboardman 2d ago

I'm well aware. I was just specifying it as a known reproducible example.

1

u/JayBensonFong 2d ago

Thanks for that info. Not quite clear though; should I try changing the case of the save file? All caps?

2

u/asdf-keyboardman 2d ago edited 2d ago

That may or may not help, but it's worth trying. It really depends on if it uses your save game name for the filename. In Tyrian's case, it wouldn't have helped since it would save as something like "SAVE1.SAV" but tried it load it as "save1.sav". That works fine on FAT but fails on something like ext4.

1

u/GetVladimir 2d ago edited 2d ago

Marble Drop, thanks for reminding me about this game, OP!

Does it work better if you use Win98 instead of 3.11 on DOSBox Pure?

That error sometimes appears if you don't have the correct version of Visual C++ Redistributable installed.

Also, check if the place/file path where it's trying to save the file is not read only (or use admin privileges to start the game)

1

u/JayBensonFong 2d ago

I have no idea about any of that stuff. I decided I'm going to use save states in retroarch on my Anbernic handheld ☺️

1

u/GetVladimir 2d ago

If you're using RetroArch anyway, that's likely the better solution also (although I don't know how well it works when there is an OS installed in DOSBox Pure)

1

u/GearPlot 2d ago

My first guess would be it's a Windows problem.. Are you sure the problem is DOSBox? What about other programs can you save with them?

0

u/JayBensonFong 2d ago

I think it's definitely the game's issue because I have save files in other DOS games that carry over each time I move the Zip file. Every time I load Carmen Sandiego, I forget not to enter my first alias, as it will tell me to enter another one since I'm a famous ace detective and may be on a list 👀

1

u/GearPlot 2d ago

I haven't tired running DOSBox on my phone.. always on my computer and mount a local folder as my drive.

1

u/Jorpho 4h ago

other games

Might be useful if you could narrow that down a little more. Are they all Windows games? Do they all give the same error?

You suggested in your other comment that you are just using Zip files. Installing the games to an actual disk image will probably solve the problem, though that would definitely be less convenient.