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Crystal Caves

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games

For the HD remake, see Crystal Caves HD.

Crystal Caves
Crystal Caves cover
Developers
Apogee Software
Publishers
Apogee Entertainment
Release dates
DOS October 23, 1991[1]
Windows (DOSBox) August 7, 2014[2]
macOS (OS X) (DOSBox) August 7, 2014[2]
Linux (DOSBox) August 7, 2014[2]
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Microtransactions None
Modes Singleplayer
Perspectives Scrolling, Side view
Genres Platform
Art styles Pixel art
Themes Sci-fi
Series Crystal Caves
Crystal Caves on HowLongToBeat
Crystal Caves on IGDB
Crystal Caves on MobyGames
Crystal Caves on Wikipedia
Crystal Caves
Crystal Caves 1991
Crystal Caves HD 2020

Crystal Caves is a singleplayer scrolling and side view platform game in the Crystal Caves series.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
DRM details are not known
Use DOSBox.
DOS
GOG.com
DRM-free
Also sold together with Crystal Caves HD. Pre-packaged with DOSBox.[3]
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Windows
macOS (OS X)
ZOOM Platform
DRM-free
Windows
Publisher website (unavailable)
DRM-free
Pre-packaged with DOSBox.
Windows

Essential improvements

Level completion

The game will indicate that all crystals have been collected, and that you can head to the exit, by sound cue and the border (overscan area) colour changing from red to green.

The issue is, that the overscan area is never shown on emulators such as DOSBox, so you must pay attention to the sound cue.

Use DOSBox-X

DOSBox-X has optional support for showing the border (overscan) area. Set the following settings in your DOSBox-X config file: [sdl]
overscan = 10

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\CC*.CFG
Windows <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
macOS (OS X) <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
Linux <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/358260/pfx/[Note 2]
All files have a number (1-3) corresponding to the episode.
It's unknown whether this game follows the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux. Please fill in this information.

Save game data location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\CC*-*.SAV
<path-to-game>\CC*.HS
Windows <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
macOS (OS X) <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
Linux <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/358260/pfx/[Note 2]
All files have a number (1-3) corresponding to the episode.
CC*.HS contains high scores.

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

Alternative display option.
Alternative display option.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
320x200 only.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
For DOSBox toggle with Alt+ Enter (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
70 FPS max.[4]

Input

Keyboard rebinding settings.
Keyboard rebinding settings.
Controller configuration screens.
Controller configuration screens.

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Simple On/Off toggle.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Everything is text-based.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes EGA

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 4.0
Processor (CPU) Intel 8088/8086
Intel 386 (for CD-ROM release)
System memory (RAM) 512 KB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 1.7 MB
Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10
Processor (CPU) 1.8 GHz
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 500 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 9.0c compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to <path-to-game>/cloud_saves/ even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in the cloud_saves folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).
  2. 2.0 2.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/358260/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (358260) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

  1. Crystal Caves - 3D Realms - Firepower Matters - last accessed on May 2023
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Release: Crystal Caves ● GOG.com
  3. List of GOG games using DOSBox, page 2 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023
  4. Verified by User:Cptmold on 2020-03-15
    Tested with RivaTuner Statistics Server on DOSBox.