Wasteland and STM 0.881r

One of the more common complaints about STM and Wasteland is the "I/O error" which occasionally pops up when a disk has just been put into a drive. The general caveat here is -- always use the "swap disks" command whenever possible. Opening a disk image over another in drive one usually leads to an "I/O error", so open disks in drive two if there is already a disk in drive one and then swap them. Same with the "empty" command. Just use drive two to open disks you want to swap into drive one, and you should have no problems.

Loading Wasteland

Saving a Game

Restoring a Saved Game

Loading Wasteland

The basic method for loading Wasteland into STM for the first time is a follows:

1) Double-click on wastboot.dsk to launch STM 0.881r and choose Run once wastboot.dsk is in the drive.

2) When you get the S)tart U)tilities menu at the bottom of the screen (whilst the world is blowing up in the main screen), choose S)tart.

3) When asked if you want to Continue the game in progress (or something like that), choose yes.

4) You will be asked to place Disk 1 in the drive. Here's the tricky part: when asked to place a disk in drive one, whenever possible, open it in drive two first and then choose the Swap Disks command from the pop-up menu to get it into drive one; this gets around most of STM's buggy behavior; so put wastmst1.dsk into drive two and swap it into drive one. Then hit return.

5) The program will ask you if you want to enter Ranger Center. Choose yes, delete the characters in the roster, create your own, choose start, and the Wasteland awaits. Whether you survive it is another matter entirely.

Saving a Game

The basic method for saving a game of Wasteland in STM is as follows:

1) Choose the "save as" command from the pop-up menu of drive one; this saves all the changes you have made to the disk in drive one that Wasteland would have tried to save itself (enemies defeated, doors unlocked, loot gathered).

2) Choose the "save" option from STM's File menu; this saves the RAM image/state.

Do 1) and 2) every time you want to "save" your position (if you have to attend to the rest of your life or you want to try something brave/stupid).

Most importantly, do 1) every time you swap a disk out of drive one for any reason; if you don't, all your efforts on that disk are for naught and you will have to repeat them.

Restoring a Saved Game

The basic method for restoring a saved game of Wasteland in STM is as follows:

1) Boot STM directly (i.e., double click on the application icon, not a disk image).

2) Open the disk you were using in drive one when you saved your game using the "open" command from the pop-up menu of drive one.

3) Choose the "open" option from STM's File menu and open the RAM image/state to which you saved your game; the screen should be exactly as you left it.

Back to Ranger Center.