I am writing a book about Wolfenstein 3D and I am trying to gather the actual fps achieved by PC of the time. The benchmark takes 1mn, it is a modified version of wolf3d able to display the fps.
Ran this modified exe on my 386DX40 but the FPS counter is at 0 all the time...
The counter in the lower left during the 3D sequence ? First time I see this issue. It worked in DOSBOX and many other real PCs (286 and 386). Does the game run normally? Did you use the latest version ?
I have a rather nice DX25 with 8MB & a Cyrix FasMath (which I realize is irrelevant for Wolf3D) that I'm in the middle of putting together. I'll try this on the weekend. 😀
What do you want us to do for soundcard settings? Disabled?
twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!
If you're referring to the one at http://thandor.net/article/10 then you can't use that, the framerate counter it implements is designed incorrectly. The one linked at the top of the thread was developed specifically for Wolf and produces correct results (verified by analyzing video captures compared against the values produced by the .EXE).
shamino wrote:
I know you meant it only for convenience, but I suggest removing the Wolf3D link and any references to that site. This thread is bound to get locked. Please note the message at the bottom of the page, it's not just a disclaimer but also a policy that is enforced strictly.
The linked executable is only for the executable and not the full game. It was compiled, with modifications, from the source code iD released publicly in 1995 on their FTP site (which is still there). Nothing is being violated here; this is just a benchmark request using a specially-compiled executable.
Disclaimer: I benchmarked several systems for this, but my 386dx-40 died before I could get to that system, hence this request of the community.
- It waited for 35 ticks to generate an fps value an multiplied it by 2. You could only get even numbers.
- It used "tics" variable which can never be less than MAXTICS (10), therefore the fps measured could never be less than 7.
This executable has a fps counter which address both these issues.
I get 29 fps (lowest value) & 30 fps (highest value) System specs
CPU: AMD 386DX 40 MHz
Motherboard: Chicony CH-386-33H/40H (UMC chipset)
System RAM: 8 MB
Graphics: Tseng Labs ET4000 with 1 MB RAM
Relevant BIOS settings have been configured for optimised performance
Once I move around a bit and started to engage the enemy, I noticed that it sometimes drops to 27 fps.
I'm not the target audience for this, obviously, but I have to wonder: why aren't benchmarks made to work with the shareware version of games that have one? It avoids encouraging piracy as you implicitly do in the first post, and no one is going to (or at least no one should) buy a game just to run a benchmark anyway.
This is why I haven't participated in the Doom 3 benchmark thread: I only have the demo version, and I wouldn't care to get the full version anyway.
id Software released the source code of the commercial version of Wolfenstein3D. If you attemps to build and run the executable with the shareware assets, the game will crash. This is because the assets ID were generated in .H header files and compiled in the executable. To work, the .H headers have to match the assets order.
Trident 8900cl 1MB VGA
ATI Stereo F/X CD (Soundblaster sound enabled)
Gravis Ultrasound Max 1MB
Gravis Gamepad
No HDD, running from Zip drive
I'm interested in the book too BTW. 😀
For the record I had a MAJOR brain fart during the system build. It was supposed to sport a nice zippy Tseng ET4000, but I completely didn't clue in that card was PCI until I physically had it out of the box in my hands. So I had to make do with a crummy Trident card instead. Willing to bet it lost a few FPS because of that.
twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!
id Software released the source code of the commercial version of Wolfenstein3D. If you attemps to build and run the executable with the shareware assets, the game will crash. This is because the assets ID were generated in .H header files and compiled in the executable. To work, the .H headers have to match the assets order.
Yes, that's right: this is how id did things before Doom. It's one reason modification was so difficult, though I'm sure some people must have figured out how to binary-patch the executable (or did compression make that impossible?).