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Moved.

That's the thing with disabling caches. It's a great option, but not always perfect. You might have good speed when the action is heavy, but in lighter cpu situations, it still runs too fast. That might be what's going on with MM3.

@infiniteclouds:

You haven't mentioned what VGA card you are using. In situations like you have mention, if you have slowed down the CPU to such extents, but are still using a relatively modern VGA core, then you can get an imbalance. Try using a slow, ISA-based VGA core.

Regarding slow-down programs, they seem to work fine, but can have weird glitches. For example, testing demoscene stuff that are speed sensitive with something like Throttle can cause graphic glitches. But when slowing down using the actual hardware, such glitches are avoided.

I just tested MM3 on my 486 DX2/66. At full speed the man at the Forty Winks Inn was turning pages much faster than normal. I disabled L1 cache and the page turning was still a little fast, but much closer to normal-looking. However, load times are *much* slower with L1 disabled. Arrows shoot at a pretty normal speed with L1 disabled. I estimate my system speed with L1 disabled to be about like a 386 SX/33.

I'm using a Voodoo 3 2000. I'm still learning -- I was under the impression that GPU speeds weren't a factor until the post software-rendering age -- would downclocking the GPU mhz make a difference and is it somehow bad for the card?

Thanks for testing it on your 486, Clueless. I've used SLOWDOWN to emulate that and it seems about right. Wikipedia says the DX2 didn't come out until '92, a year after this game. I think a good test - in addition to the animation speeds - is the smoothness of the mouse cursor. The ideal seems to be when the mouse movement is smooth but the animations as normal. I can accept that the loading times for such a huge game weren't snappy on period hardware.

infiniteclouds wrote:

I'm using a Voodoo 3 2000. I'm still learning -- I was under the impression that GPU speeds weren't a factor until the post software-rendering age -- would downclocking the GPU mhz make a difference and is it somehow bad for the card?

Voodoo 3 series has one of the fastest VGA cores. Downclocking it shouldn't have any adverse affects, but that wouldn't make a significant impact. An ancient ISA card that is bus-limited would be more appropriate.

I actually have the only two ISA slots available used up for sound cards - I'll look into seeing if there are any methods of making the V3 behave more like an ISA card. If there are any DOS utilities or programs that can cap frame-rates that would also be an instant fix that doesn't require swapping hardware.

infiniteclouds wrote:

I actually have the only two ISA slots available used up for sound cards - I'll look into seeing if there are any methods of making the V3 behave more like an ISA card. If there are any DOS utilities or programs that can cap frame-rates that would also be an easier fix that doesn't require swapping hardware.

I don't think there are any options in DOS to underclock a graphics card. Your best option is to use a slower bus (ISA), or a slower PCI graphics card. Maybe a Trident or Rendition Verite. But that seems like a lot of hoops to jump through just to play one game. Maybe in this case DOSBox on a more modern PC would be better?

infiniteclouds wrote:

On a K6-III+ with all 3 cache disabled and clocked @ 132mhz the animations in this game are way too fast. […]
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On a K6-III+ with all 3 cache disabled and clocked @ 132mhz the animations in this game are way too fast.

I'm a bit confused too since Wing Commander, a notoriously speed sensitive game from the same year, runs perfect on the same system which is basically emulating a 386. Would a game like MM3 from 1991 really have run too fast on a 386? Is there a way I can safely slow down the CPU even further? Strange thing further is that the loading times aren't ultra fast, nor are actions like shooting an arrow. However, if you enter the inn and observe the shopkeeper, or the horse-riding trainer at the guild.... way too fast.

So I downloaded SLOWDOWN and experimented with it a bit. Very interesting....

8088 mode at 100mhz - animations are too fast
8088 mode at 66mhz -- animations are perfect, game is sluggish

Using the table they provide to set to a lower mhz (33) but in a 386 mode had the game run smoother, but with the animations still correct. The 486 50hz was the same.

Is this program safe to use? I have to wonder because if it were I don't understand why anyone would fuss around with changing multipliers or disabling caches.

I have played in 1991 with a 386sx20mhz and it was not too fast. When it was released the pc were mainly 286 and 386

Yeah -- I don't want to be swapping out hardware. Unfortunately 3dfx tools doesn't let me bring the clockspeed any lower than 120mhz.

Another very interesting thing I've noticed...

If you enter an inn and observe that the innkeeper is turning the pages of his ledger too quickly and then proceed to wildly flail your mouse cursor about the screen his animation will slow down! Once you let the cursor relax again he will speed up again. Very strange.

infiniteclouds wrote:

Yeah -- I don't want to be swapping out hardware. Unfortunately 3dfx tools doesn't let me bring the clockspeed any lower than 120mhz.

Another very interesting thing I've noticed...

If you enter an inn and observe that the innkeeper is turning the pages of his ledger too quickly and then proceed to wildly flail your mouse cursor about the screen his animation will slow down! Once you let the cursor relax again he will speed up again. Very strange.

Not so strange...moving the mouse like that uses cpu/graphics cycles. The faster you do it, the faster the system has to redraw the mouse cursor location, which means fewer cycles devoted to the innkeeper animation.