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Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games

This page is for the original 1993 game. For the 2014 remaster, see Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers - 20th Anniversary Edition.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers cover
Developers
Sierra On-Line
Publishers
Retail Sierra On-Line
Digital Activision
Engines
SCI2
Release dates
DOS December 17, 1993
Windows 3.x December 17, 1993
Mac OS (Classic) 1994
Windows (ScummVM) January 28, 2010
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Controls Point and select
Genres Adventure
Themes Detective/mystery, Supernatural
Series Gabriel Knight
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers on HowLongToBeat
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers on IGDB
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers on MobyGames
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers on Wikipedia
Gabriel Knight
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 1993
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery 1995
Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned 1999
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers - 20th Anniversary Edition 2014

Warnings

The Windows 3.x version of this game does not work on 64-bit versions of Windows (see Availability for affected versions).

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a singleplayer adventure game in the Gabriel Knight series.

Key points

Can be run under ScummVM.

General information

Gabriel Knight Omnipedia - Wiki for the series
Sierra Gamers - Game page on Ken Williams' official website
The Sierra Help Pages - Extensive troubleshooting guide
Hardcore Gaming 101 - Comprehensive feature on the series
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Floppy and CD-ROM "talkie" release with voice acting and extra cutscenes.
DOS
Windows 3.x
Mac OS
GOG.com
DRM-free
Pre-packaged with ScummVM
DOSBox version is also available (when using GOG Galaxy).[1]
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

Install the relevant official patch if you are using a retail version. The latest patch is 1.0a (GKCDPAT) for the CD-ROM version and 1.0b (GKPAT10B) for the floppy release.
Install the relevant unofficial NRS patch to correct some game-breaking issues on modern systems (latest official patch required). GK1CD_NRS is for the CD-ROM and GK1_NRS - for the floppy version. For other solutions to these problems, see: Issues fixed.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\RESOURCE.CFG
Windows <path-to-game>\RESOURCE.WIN[Note 1]
Mac OS (Classic)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/495700/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\GKSG.*
Windows <path-to-game>\GKSG.*[Note 1]
Mac OS (Classic)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/495700/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud
ScummVM 2.1+ supports cloud saves on third-party cloud storage services. See the ScummVM documentation for details.

Video

General options
General options

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Fixed at 320x240 DOS; 640x480 Win
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

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
For DOSBox set in the DOSBox configuration file.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Controller types

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music and Sound Effects
Surround sound
MIDI music can be placed in 3D space if 3D MIDI compatible hardware is available
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio
General MIDI audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
Retail only.
German
Retail only; download for digital releases.
Polish
Fan translation, download.
Russian
Fan translation, download and info.
Spanish
Fan translation, download.

Issues fixed

Before anything else, get the latest patches for your respective game version. Also, check out Sierra's help page for solutions for known issues.

Day 5 Phone Call Lockup

Depending on your progress, at the beginning of day five Grace may give you the Rada Drum Book twice, and when the phone rings Gabriel says he'll get it but he never moves. This can be fixed the following ways:

Before you start day 5:

  • In the options, turn the detail all the way down and the speed all the way up.
  • If you are using DOSBox, set CPU Cycles to under 7000.

Day 6 Police Station Timing Issue

Depending on the speed of your computer, it might be impossible to get into Mosley's office on day 6 because the solution is timer based and the distraction might not last long enough to reach the office. To progress, you can use either of the following options:

  • Use a CPU slowdown utility. The Gabriel Knight Mysteries: Limited Edition included such a utility, but it might not work anymore. Alternatively, you can try using CPUKILLER to achieve a slow down.
  • If you are using DOSBox, set CPU Cycles to under 7000.

Note that you do not need to reload if the beignet guy already left the station and you failed to get into the office. In that case, apply either fix and return to the police station, the officer will fall asleep after some time permitting you to get into the office.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes VGA, SVGA
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
Windows 3.x version might be playable on a 64-bit OS using ScummVM.
Mac OS (Classic)

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 5.0
Processor (CPU) Intel 80386
System memory (RAM) 4 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 20 MB (floppy)
1 MB (CD-ROM)
Video card (GPU) VGA
Windows 3.x
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 3.1
Processor (CPU) Intel 80386
System memory (RAM) 4 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) SVGA
Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP
Processor (CPU) 1 GHz
System memory (RAM) 256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) DirectX 7 compatible
Windows requirements come from the GOG.com release.
Mac OS
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 7.0
Processor (CPU) Motorola 68030
System memory (RAM) 5 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 20 MB
Video card (GPU) 256-color support


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  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>/495700/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (495700) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References