Little Big Adventure Collection (DOS games)

Somewhere in the universe, there is a beautiful planet called Twinsun. It is populated by four different races, which have been living in peace and prosperity, until a mad scientist Dr. Funfrock of the Quetch (human-like) race used his newly invented cloning and teleporting techniques to create an army of fearsome soldiers and become the planet's dictator. Twinsun's inhabitants have not lost hope, placing their faith in the old legend about the benevolent goddess Sendell who would save the world. However, Dr. Funfrock totalitarian regime forbade displaying any images of the goddess and her worship.

A young Quetch named Twinsen was just a regular fellow until he had a dream, which surprisingly involved the outlawed goddess. It seems that Dr. Funfrock was no stranger to mind control; in his opinion, even dreaming of the goddess was illegal, and he promptly ordered to put the perpetrator in prison. Now the unlikely hero must find a way to escape and eventually save his planet from the clutches of its insane ruler.

Little Big Adventure (Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure in the US) is primarily an adventure game with strong action elements. As usually in adventure games, the hero must talk to other characters, and collect and use objects. However, not all the problems have to be solved with dialogue and item manipulation. The player can activate four different behavior modes for Twinsen: Normal, Aggressive, Athletic, and Discreet. The first is used for peaceful exploration and conversations; Aggressive mode allows Twinsen to punch and kick other characters; Athletic mode must be applied when it becomes necessary to run quickly and jump; Discreet effectively puts Twinsen in a stealth mode, making it possible to sneak by hostile character unnoticed. While activation of a particular mode is often required to solve a problem, many situations can be dealt with in different ways.

The game universe is rendered with characters in full 3D, while the environment uses isometric graphic tiles. The CD version (which was released earlier than the floppy one) features pre-rendered animated cutscenes, audio music and speech; all these features are absent from the floppy disk version.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/relentless-twinsens-adventure

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After freeing the world of Twinsun from its evil dictator in the previous game, the hero Twinsen has since gotten married, is planning to have a child and has settled down at home. One day, Twinsen finds out that his friend, a creature known as the Dino-Fly, is struck by lightning and hurt. Further investigation reveals that there is something strange going on in the skies on Twinsun; and indeed, visitors from outer space have arrived. Do they come in peace, or is there a sinister goal behind their appearance? Twinsen once again embarks out on a quest for the good of his world...

Like its predecessor, Little Big Adventure 2 (Twinsen's Odyssey in the US) is an adventure game with action elements. The game's interface and controls are similar to those of the first game. The focus is still on exploring the game's world, interacting with its characters and objects. The four stances - Normal, Aggressive, Sneaky, and Athletic - have also returned, and must be used in the right situations to advance the plot. The game's world is quite large, containing some optional objectives and quests, which makes it similar to sandbox games. It retains the isometric perspective from its predecessor for indoor locations; outdoor navigation now features rotatable camera, and the world is rendered in real 3D.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/twinsens-odyssey

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There's a start script included to start DOSBox (for both Windows and Linux). The Linux script is called 'start.sh', and the Windows counterpart is called 'start.bat'. The Windows launcher batch script is only 1 line, though you may need to change the path to the DOSBox executable if you have a different version installed.

Install instructions for Little Big Adventure 1:

Extract 'lba.7z' to get the game directory. 'lba_start_scripts.7z' should be extracted inside the game directory. Extract 'lba_cuebin_flac.7z' into the game directory as well, to get the in-game music.

Install instructions for Little Big Adventure 2:

Extract 'lba2.7z' to get the game directory. 'lba2_start_scripts.7z' should be extracted inside the game directory. Extract 'lba2_cuebin_flac.7z' into the game directory as well, to get the in-game music.

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LBA1 seems to be DOS only, but the LBA2 executable is for both DOS and Windows. If you're gonna run the Windows version, you need to burn the CUE to a CD-R.

If you run the DOSBox start files (start.sh, start.bat), you get in-game music automatically, because the image file is mounted by DOSBox.

Oh, and you need to have DOSBox installed on your system.

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Use these sound settings for Little Big Adventure 1:

Choose "Music Sound Card Configuration", choose "Sound Blaster
Pro 1 (OPL2)", choose "220"
Choose "FX Sound Card Configuration", choose "Sound Blaster Pro
1", choose "220", choose "7", choose "1"

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Use these sound settings for Little Big Adventure 2:

Choose "Select and configure digital audio driver"
Choose "Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32"
Choose "Attempt to configure sound driver automatically", choose
"Done"

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Looks like ScummVM is adding support for Little Big Adventure. Right now, it seems to only support the first game.

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This is a good resource for all things Little Big Adventure:

https://www.magicball.net/

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The engine source code for LBA1 and LBA2 has been released as open source:

https://github.com/2point21/lba1-classic
https://github.com/2point21/lba2-classic

Community repos:

https://github.com/2point21/lba1-classic-community
https://github.com/2point21/lba2-classic-community

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File and directory names inside the game directory have been recursively changed to lowercase.

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The BIN file, FLAC files and CUE sheet were made with this script:
https://github.com/linux4ever07/scripts/blob/main/cuebin_extract.sh

The source image files for the games are these Redump releases:
Little Big Adventure (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It)
Little Big Adventure 2 (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It)

This is the script I used to recursively lowercase the game directory:
https://github.com/linux4ever07/scripts/blob/main/ch_case.sh

Maybe these shell scripts can be helpful to other people who want to upload DOS games. I'm mostly uploading this as a proof-of-concept, to show how DOS games with CD audio can be packaged to save HDD space and bandwidth.

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To acquire good copies of games, I recommend browsing the Redump uploads on archive.org (https://archive.org/download/redump_pc_A). Simply change the letter "A" in the URL to whatever letter in the alphabet you need. You need an account @ archive.org to be able to download the games though