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Merchant Colony (1991, Impressions Games)

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First post, by patastratos

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I consider myself that Merchant Colony (1991, Impressions Games) is an underdog, as I have not found much information on the internet or videos in comparison with other videogames from the same age that I also love.

I will go straight to the point of the technical issue I have with it. I have played it in DosBox and it runs much slower that the original game I remember. If I increase the CPU speed, it seems to run just a little faster, but I never gets the original speed. It is so slow that it makes game unplayable.

Some clues about the issue:

1) I remember that this game was slowed down when I was deactivating the Turbo key from my old computer.

2) This game seems to run normally in some screens, for example during naval battles with pirates, or the main menu (that looks like an office). When mouse hoovers the globe (on the left), it starts spinning in normal speed, and it seems to be sensible to the CPU speed variation. However, at the same time, days in calendar on the right draws on very slowly even if we speed up CPU. In the original game, one day was a second, or even less.

merchant-colony_2.gif

3) There are some in-game natural disasters (storms, plagues, etc.) that happen recurrently. However, it seems that this feature is not working as well, and it happens just once (first pirate sighting).

Any hints about if these issues can be solved?

The English version for the DOS game is available to be downloaded from [EDIT: Links removed.].

"Merchant Colony" is a strategy game set in the 18th century in which you lead an European nation to the colonization of the other continents, by building colonies and trading with natural resources and manufactured products. The other nations colonies and pirates makes your life a bit more complicated. It may sound as the same premise as "Colonization", but this game was released three years before and most important, it was real-time based. I always expected a newer version that improved the original, but it never arrived.

I would appreciate your help to be able to play this game as it was meant! 😀

Last edited by Stiletto on 2019-05-14, 01:11. Edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Links removed

"A Third Shadow is nigh!"

Reply 1 of 6, by collector

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Note that these forums do not support "abandonware". Also, questions involving the use of DOSBox should be in the DOSBox forums.
DOSBox

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

Reply 2 of 6, by patastratos

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collector wrote:

Note that these forums do not support "abandonware".

I put links to external sites thinking that they would make easier to give support, but if forum policies discourage them I understand I should not use them. In fact I own the Europe/multilingual release of the game that I have never seen on these sites (they just have the English version available).

collector wrote:

Also, questions involving the use of DOSBox should be in the DOSBox forums.
DOSBox

After reading your comments, I understand the faults but I have no clue of what should I do to amend it. I cannot move the message to the correct forum nor delete the original message (I guess that only moderators/admins can).

Then... Should I rewrite the message in the correct forum, just removing the URL to abandonware sites, even when it means duplicating messages? Or your message was just a nice way to tell me that I not going to receive any support in this site? 😵

"A Third Shadow is nigh!"

Reply 3 of 6, by collector

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Besides the legal issue one of the reasons that "abandonware" is not supported is that these illegal downloads are very often ripped, hacked, cracked or otherwise altered that introduce their own set of bugs that others with legitimate copies cannot replicate. This may make helping nearly impossible. If you have a legitimate copy you can start a new thread in the DOSBox games forum DOSBox Games/Apps If you do not there are some cheap copies on eBay.

Last edited by collector on 2019-05-14, 01:46. Edited 1 time in total.

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

Reply 5 of 6, by zirkoni

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The game has it's own internal speed settings:
ALT+S Slow speed
ALT+R Normal speed

I guess it runs on slow speed by default. Using normal speed should solve the issue.

https://youtube.com/@zirkoni42

Reply 6 of 6, by patastratos

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zirkoni wrote:
The game has it's own internal speed settings: ALT+S Slow speed ALT+R Normal speed […]
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The game has it's own internal speed settings:
ALT+S Slow speed
ALT+R Normal speed

I guess it runs on slow speed by default. Using normal speed should solve the issue.

That was exactly the solution. Many thanks for your help. 😀

By the way, there was actually a newer colonization game from the same developers, released the year after. This game was "Discovery: In the Steps of Columbus" (Impressions, 1992), and keeps its look-and-feel.

Some years later they would release "High Seas Trader" (Impressions, 1995), being this time a first-person sailing game rather than a strategy game.

"A Third Shadow is nigh!"

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