Oh, btw..

I'm using DosBox ver.0.63.
Forgot to put that in. 😜

Why aren't you using DOSBox .70 or even .65?

Well, I tried using DosBox 7.0.
And everytime it plays weapon or spell animations,
it crashes the game. 😒

Okay after alot of tinkering,
I realise that on Dosbox 7.0,
by over-clocking the CPU to MAX,
the gameplay runs smoothly.
However, casting spells and weapon animations cause the game to crash.
After setting CPU cycles to 1000,
I realise that the the spell animations a running smoothly.

Now, I'm not a tech wiz.
I don't know 75% of the technical terms behind Dos programming.
But, according to my layman reasoning,
If I make the CPU run faster, the game runs better but crashes when trying to play game animations and the sound gets choppy.
If I make the CPU run SLOWER, the game doesn't crash and the game animations play as they should but the game overall runs at an impossibly slow pace.

I'm confused.. 😦

I think you are on the good track. Try a fixed cycles value with dynamic core. You will have to experiment. 1000 is a too low value.

I tried that.
The thing is in order for magic spells, weapon animations and sound
to run smoothly is to set CPU to 1000 or less..
Which is nutz. because the rest of the game and game controls
go to freezing levels of lethargy... 😵

Okay, dug up some info in hopes that someone out there
may help me identify how to go about fixing my problem.

The minimum specs to run Thunderscape are as follows:

MS-DOS® 5.0, 6.0, or 6.2.2
386/DX 33 MHz processor
6 MB free hard disk space
2 MB RAM
2x CD-ROM
SVGA video card

Any takers? 😕

I also have a screen capture of how the crash looks like.
In case it would help.

Erms...anyone?? 😢

Okay,
I have been hunting around in the Forums
AND I re-installed the game.
I think the whole problem has something to do with
the SVGA Card requirement as the installer
cannot determine the one used in DosBox.
(I installed through DosBox.)
Now, in the Forums I found a Thread regard SVGA Chipsets.
Seems I got to download a patch to emulate said chipsets.

And so,
my noobie question is:
(drumroll...)

How do I download and install a patch? 😁
(Note: I went to the download site, but they only had a .diff file for downloading.)

Yes, I know I am a total moron.. 😅

Well it seems to use VESA, so no problem with the chipset or whatever.
Yet you could try ykhwong's build, see the dev forum (change the emulated
chipset in dosbox.conf then).

GARGH~!
I was SSSOOOO close..
now I MUST get it right..
I don't know how.. but just once, ONCE! I got
the game to run totally smooth.
(don't know what I did.)
Then it just started crashing again...
Now I got it back to where I was originally..
I seem to be able to increase the speed of the animations now..
which is good.. but still very very choppy.

Oh, btw, thanks for the help.
I went to the site and got the CSV build
and downloaded the patches provided (just in case.)
I THINK i installed those patches correctly..
we're suppose to run them everytime
prior to running the desired program, right? 😅
Anyway, have tried several ways to do it.
(Including with just using the CSV Build.)
Any advice as to how to config the SVGA settings or just plain get
THUNDERSCAPE to work fine is very appreciated!!
Please also leave step by step instruction if possible
as I am a totally inept moron that half-the-time don't know what I saying.

p.s. I apologise if my thread keeps popping up and annoying people. 🙁

Is the problem reproducable, and how? (crashes right after doing xyz etc.)

Okay, the original problem is whenever I run THUNDERSCAPE
the spell and weapon animations during combat the animations
lag horrendously. This is a very big problem.
If I overclock the CPU cycles too much, like to max, the game
crashes when it tries to play weapon and spell animations.
If I run from Real Dos, the games just crashes when it tries to run.
(I suspect it is due to the CPU being too fast for the game to compute)
The only way to play smooth spell and weapon animations
is when I set CPU cycles to 1000 or LESS.
This slows the actual game down to an imaginary pace.

The following is what I do for the game to actually run in DosBox 7.0:

mount c c:\<insert folder name>
mount e e:\ -t cdrom -usecd 0 -ioctl
loadfix -32 mm2 <-- doing this speeds up the animations slightly.

After trying out two patches:

cd\s3VBE20\s3vbe20 /install
and
tlivesa.exe

And Ykhwong's CSV Build,
I can speed up animations again and sinigficantly beter than before.
The animations are still choppy however. 🙁
Annoyingly, when I was fiddling around with the cpu cycling
I managed to get a smooth animation for about the total of 3secs,
before the game crashed on me.
I tried restarting the game and running through all the
different cycle speeds up to 20000 (in increments of 500),
anymore and the game crashes.
Still nada.. the incident could not be repeated.

The only DosBox configuration,
which I know is safe for running THUNDERSCAPE, is:

CPU=Dynamic <--- Increased animation speed slightly
cycles=3000 <--- I increase as needed manually.
ems=false <--- meant to simulate the NOEMS in autoexec.bat

If I play the game without weapon animations,
which can be toggled, and NO AoE spells.
I can run the game comfortably at max cycles.
But no weapon animations kinda ruins the full gaming experience.
And NO AoE spells is a MAJOR difficulty. 😖

Maybe try "cycles max 50%" or lower values.
For loadfix, just enter it without parameters ("loadfix" that is).

Not to sound noobish,
though that is exactly what I am.
What do I type after "cycles="
to get "cycles max 50%"?

I've tried,
cycles=max 50%.

Sorry for the noobness.. 😁

Okay~!
It must have been all the nice things I've done in life,
the DOS Gods have given me a sign of what is wrong~!

But as I cannot read DOS language
and have no identify scroll at hand..
I still don't know what it means.. 😒

Do you have the game patched?

Fixes in 1.1 version of ThunderScape […]
Show full quote

Fixes in 1.1 version of ThunderScape

>> "No Space Mouse Shape" crash has been fixed.
>> "Dos/4GW professional error [2001]:exception ORH" crash has been fixed.
>> "Divide Overflow" crashes have been fixed.
>> "Read Fault Error" (in Troll caves) has been fixed.
>> Crash after Character Creation has been fixed.
>> "Crash site unreliable, bad wall count..." has been fixed.
>> Decompression error when entering, leaving Troll caves has been fixed.
>> Sound problems including Mel Fatal #110 trap: 20, Ensonic soundscape
problems, and sound stopping after intro to game.

Here's the patch for you.

Also, the game seems to use DOS4GW 1.95 - You should replace it with version 1.97 (it was more stable). You can also check the forum for DOS32a - A free DOS4GW replacement.

UPDATE: DOS4GW 1.96 is embedded inside the main executable, so there is little point in replacing the external DOS4GW.exe