Why not just overclock the 90 to 100 or 133? It should be able to do it.

Just had a look here:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/comanche-ma … erkill/techinfo

The minimum is a 386SX, so it's interesting that it's "choppy" on a 100Mhz 486...

Is this the 320 x 200 resolution Commance with voxel graphics? I am surprised your Pentium 90 doesn't handle it well that chip should beat the 486 133 quite easily. AMD itself branded that cheap as a P-75 meaning it performs at the level of a 75MHz Pentium so a 90MHz model should be faster.

Maybe some configuration issue with your Pentium. Run some benchmarks.

@Squallstrife : I know about the minimum requirement, it would work on a 386 but with all detail setting to bare minimum and even then i dont think it would be smooth.

@Mau1wurf1977 : yes, this very game. And yes, i suspect there might be something wrong with that pentium, considering all the trouble it gave me so far. I also initially believed it could handle this game all right. ill make some more tests.

@Luckybob, that might be an idea :p

Maybe this game utilizes some frame rate limiter in conjunction with speed limiter that it doesn't run too fast on faster PCs. Maybe the frame rate limiter has rather low setting.

Frame rate does not seem to be limited, it gets very smooth on my 6x86 200mhz, but then the game goes too fast.

I ran speedsys on my p90, the memory bandwidth maybe a bit slow, what you guys think?

MaxWar wrote:

@Squallstrife : I know about the minimum requirement, it would work on a 386 but with all detail setting to bare minimum and even then i dont think it would be smooth.

Not really what I was getting at.

I didn't just link the requirements, I went on to say that it's weird how it's not silky smooth on a 100MHz 486, given that the minimum is a 386SX.

I certainly wasn't implying that you weren't able to look up the requirements yourself.

What video card were you using on the 486 machine?

I certainly wasn't implying that you weren't able to look up the requirements yourself.

Sry if that's what my reply sounded like, i did understand where you were getting at though.

The thing with this game is that in the options you have various graphical quality settings, just like 3d games nowadays. You have Low, medium , high Detail level as well as various checkboxes for special effects such as clouds, reflections and even a special check box to remove "small pixels'', It made the game ultra ugly but much faster.

There is a HUGE system requirement difference between lowest and highest settings in Comanche. That is why it can run on a 386SX.

This game was like the Farcry of the time. When it was released the hardware to run it full spec at 60 fps was not even out yet.

Obviously i want to run it full specs, so when i say it is still choppy on a 486, it is with max details.

There was a patch for Comanche,
But the patched game is still not entirely system speed independant.

Cmom3h.zip Comanche: Maximum Overkill update M3H(pentium-update & more) […]
Show full quote

Cmom3h.zip
Comanche: Maximum Overkill update
M3H(pentium-update & more)

Update to all English Versions of COMANCHE. Allows Comanche Maximum Overkill
andComanche CD to be run inside of Windows 95, or in DOS without a boot disk.
Essentially, this update removes the memory restrictions on the game. Includes
a SPEEDLOCK option for fast 486 and Pentium computers. This is a
self-extracting file.Put it in your Comanche directory and then run it. Be sure
to run SOUNDSET before running the game. SOUNDSET will not prompt you with the
previous or correct values for your machine. Be sure to make the correct
choices for your sound card. Check menu options and recalibrate joysticks after
running this file. If you are running inside of Windows 95, a shortcut will be
created on your desktop when you exit the game after running it for the first
time.

@SquallStrife: sry forgot to answer your question in the last post. I do not know what video card there was in the 5x86 100mhz as it is a working pc that has been given to me recently. I did not take it appart and did not pay attention either on the boot screen.

@Gerwin: OMG thanks for this Gerwin, for some reason i was convinced i already had the lastest patch because my cd version is from 1996, but your patch is more recent!

In the meantime i found myself a Pentium-s 120mhz and tried the game on it. This pretty much is as good as it gets i think.

Still not perfect though.

The p120 gave a nice smooth consistent speed most of the time, but the Problem is that depending on what is on your screen the game will slow down or speed up.

-When there are reflection effects and lots of stuff on the screen it visibly slows down, not just gets choppier but slows down.

-When you are in front of a particularly bland area with no enemies and flat landscape, the games goes a bit faster that what is intended for this game.

So it would appear there is no "perfect" system but the sweet zone for this game in full detail would be pentium 100-133 mhz.

Now lets go try that patch and see how things get better 😁

Both the 90 and 120 MHz Pentiums have the fsb set to 60MHz(multiplied by 1.5 or 2x). I believe that the 100 and 133 models that use 66MHz fsb should be better.

Sounds like Wing Commander 😀 That game is also either too fast or too slow.

Maybe the thing to do is play it on a slow system and set your own cognition and reflexes to match it.. with beer! After a couple you probably won't even notice.

So quick question on the "SPEEDLOCK". I'm still seeing things run too fast post the patch. Does something need to be done to enable it (i.e. a command line option, or similar)? I don't see a related option in the game menu.

kolano wrote:

I don't see a related option in the game menu.

I do, it is in the "Detail" submenu, called "Top Speed Lock".

The game also has a Demo mode, but it shows exactly how not to fly the helicopter. I think it got broken...

GUYS, I FOUND THE BEST WAY TO RUN COMANCHE!!!
TAKE A VERY FAST COMPUTER, STICK A CRAPPY ISA VIDEO CARD IN IT!!! BEST FPS LIMITER, MUCH BETTER THAN THE PENTIUM PATCH!!!

Ok before i realized that, i made alot of tests and started to write an awful long post about all the stuff i did, if you feel like reading all i went through please go on.

I had previously concluded that the "optimal" computer to play Comanche without the Cmom3h patch was around 100-133 Mhz pentium. Now lets see with the patch.

I first tried the patch on my P-120 and was somewhat perplexed. The game just ran very slow and sort of choppy with the speed limiter, and without it the game speed was not locked but it was still slower than the unpatched game

This patch apparently does several things:
-It makes the game runnable from w9x and loosens the memory restrictions, which is a good thing.
-Adds a speed lock option that makes the speed of the game constant but also has a FPS lock that is pretty low. And when i say that it means <30 FPS, not very nice. Apparently Elienda was onto something.
-Without the speedlock option, the patch still makes the game run slower than before. ( which might be a good thing if you are too fast )

Overall I did not find the patch to be a good thing on my p120, the unpatched game just ran better imo.

So i ran the patch on my 6x86 200. With no speed lock was still too fast + speed fluctuations. With the speed lock it was just as slow and sluggish as with the p120 + speedlock. That is when i realized that i may have been in the wrong somewhere. Novalogic apparently intended this game to be pretty slow with a rather low frame rate. The speed lock makes the game run like it was on a 486DX2 66 or something. Maybe this is what Novalogic intended to be optimal. That may have been fine in a 1992 perspective but i guess I have been spoiled by those fast paced constant 60FPS games we see nowadays.

Novalogic's intentions aside I still prefer the game faster and smoother than the486 like speedlocked version so i wondered if it would maybe scale well with a much faster system. I installed the patched Comanche on a Athlon XP 1800+. It turned out the Speedlock glitched very bad when turned on. Slows to a crawl with graphic artifacts, totaly unplayable.

I ditched the athlon XP and installed the patch on my trusty Celeron 500, still the same glitch as the Athlon!!! There seems to be something with the more modern pc architectures that screws this thing up. After all, the patch was designed for fast 486s and Pentiums...

But then i just had an idea. I had this K6-2 500 Mobo + cpu barebone somewhere. I put a test system together with it and could run the patched game on it at 500mhz. The Speedlock did not glitch but was still at the same 486 like speed. It did not seem to scale much, or not in a noticeable way.

But then i went on to do some testing because this K6-2 is a pretty magical thing. The cpu multiplier is unlocked and you can adjust the system speed in the bios so you can switch it anywhere from 166Mhz to 550Mhz in a breeze.
At 166Mhz without the patch it ran pretty well, a bit faster then the p120 but it still not too bad. Then I tried to deactivate the external cache to slow things down a bit. At 166mhz it was now too slow. So i ramped the clock a bit until i found a comfort zone which was around 250-350 Mhz. But then I noticed something, the game ran better and faster with higher FSB. I.E, i could get 300mhz with 60mhz bus and 5x multiplier and the game was sluggish, if i used 100FSB and 3x multiplier it was MUCH better, the game ran at a good speed ( still with no external cache ) but even better, it seemed to be a bit more constant in the speed department.

This is when i had the idea that if I could find a proper hardware bottleneck I could in theory Lock the frame rate with hardware. I immediately thought about the graphic card, sounds like a rather obvious solution now that i think about it...

I took a really crappy 20 year old trident card i had laying around and stuck it in the sole ISA slot of my K6 board, unfortunately that board would not take it for some reason.

I turned back to my trusty Celeron 500 and stuck that trident card in it.
And magic happened! 😁
The CPU can produce the frames very fast but the Isa card bottlenecks the fill rate, result is a perfectly stable speed and Frame rate, no matter whats happening the game.

When the speed is locked in this way the game is slightly faster with very little choppyness compared to the speed lock in the patch.

Now maybe the devs intented the game to be as slow as the speedlock in the patch but i dont have to like it, its way too slow imo.

Comanche was not really a frantic game requiring iron reflexes and such, its more about stealth and tactical approach. So having it running a bit faster than "intended" does not feel wrong, id say it makes it better, it looks more realistic and you get to places slightly faster.

Now the next thing i could try is to use a different ISA card, i would like it to be a little faster and smoother than the trident. I think i will try it with my Ati VGA Wonder 😁

Good point about the 30 fps / slow gameplay. I also think that this is what they game is meant to look like. With the music and night mission suspense is a big part of this game and I guess that's what they tried to achieve 😀

The ISA card solution is interesting. This could potentially work for many games.

The ISA card solution is interesting. This could potentially work for many games.

Yes i have been thinking about that too, its a very nice way to set a Frame rate limit and control the speed of a game. I think descent, to name one, could be improved with this method. For most games though we would need a way to slow down the ISA VGA cards as they are still too fast.
I just tried all my other ISA cards with comanche, 5 in total and they are all too fast except the crappy trident i tried first :p

I never thought id ever be so happy to have this old crappy trident card in my possession. The VGA Wonder XL is the fastest of the lot, a good margin faster than the other ones.

If there was a reliable way of slowing down the VGA cards this technique could be used with very good results in some games. Probably some bios tweaks would help to slow them down or maybe take out some ram chips?? Many cards have them on sockets, hmmm..

Ideas someone ?

Well on a 386 people tune the ISA clock speed for better performance. There might also be other timing settings in the BIOS. So that's where I would look.