Drugwars... How do I close the game O.o?

Elephiant · Post by **Elephiant** » Sat Sep 07, 2013 4:46 pm

I got DOS 7.10 on a Virtual Machine to play old games.
Before I Always used DosBox so when something went wrong or when I
didn't know what to do I could just close the window and start over.
Now however I'm trying to learn how to work with Dos without restarting it all the time.

Unfortunately I already got a situation were I don't know how to get out.
It's about the classic game 'Drugwars'. There is no way of exiting (as far as I know) the program and there's no menu either.

So my question is: How do I exit Drugwars, or any program without exit possibilities in Dos.

Thanks in Advance!

- Elephiant

Post by **dosraider** » Sat Sep 07, 2013 6:25 pm

If there is really no possibility coded to close the game you're screwed.

But usually there is, don't you have the game's manual?
Some weird existing exit keys:
CTRL+ESC
ALT+ESC
CTRL+C
One of the F keys (sometimes F10)
Or you need to get into the game menu to exit, can be any key .... hammer on your keyb till you find something (or not ...)

Drugwars, hmmm, have it laying somewhere around, if I find it I'll give it a try.

However: for dosgaming on modern systems dosbox beats any VM.... just saying

[Edit]
Seems there are two "drug wars" games
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/drug- ... rug-market
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/drug-wars

Have the first one, must also have the second one somewhere (*somewhere*)
About which one is your post?

Elephiant · Post by **Elephiant** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 2:19 am

I got the first Drugwars from 1984 (is there even a manual xD?).
I tried the combinations with CTRL and ALT, but nothing happened.
Also tried all the F keys but it didn't do anything...

It would be weird if the game really has no exit possibilities, but I can't find any.

Btw I also got DosBox, but it looks like commands like /p and 'dir | more' aren't working with DosBox. So I downloaded Dos 7.10 and installed it on a virtual machine to make sure I got the latest possibilities on commands.

Post by **dosraider** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 2:51 am

'more' isn't implemented in dosbox.
'more' is an external command option, means that it uses a copyrighted small program, they can't include such copyrighted material in dosbox.
However you can get it from freedos, works in dosbox.
however I thought that at some time it was in SVN ....hmmmm, whatever.

DrugWars 1984, weird one to exit:
To exit, once you're ingame hit F4 , you will get a '?' prompt with a 'reset game' or similar message, then hit CTRL+C to get a hard break, this will exit the game.

[Edit]
This is how it looks after hitting F4:

When you hit CTRL+C it will endgame.

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 10:55 am

That is the weirdest exit I've ever seen.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:02 am

Some compiled BASIC:s does that, at invalid data input.
(Referring to the "Redo from start" string.)

Post by **dosraider** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 5:31 pm

Rwolf wrote:Some compiled BASIC:s does that, at invalid data input.

Hmmmm, to be a bit more detailed:
It's not a specific BASIC command.
CTRL+C is a MsDos internal command.
It can be used to:
Shut down running programs (also called hard break)
Shut down running batch processes.
Etcetera.

The 'break' command can be enabled if needed or disabled in autoexec by:
break on / break off
Current state of break comm can be called by simply inputting 'break' on the prompt.

OMG I'm really getting old :/