Please tell me EXACTLY what I need to do to test this 😀

Also I noticed you mentioned a Pentium logo. I couldn't see one.

The pentium logo showed up for me if I set cputype=pentium in Daum. If you examine DARK.EXE in a hex editor you'll find a "GenuineIntel" string. I don't know how the game really detects a Pentium processor, it might be trying to detect a very specific model.

And what do you need to do to test what I said? Just jump around, find a pirate shuttle, take out it's escort and fly over to the blind spot of the shuttle. Switch to rear view mode and fire your weapon. If the speed issue is not a DosBOX emulation bug then your target should be dead within seconds. You should also hear a flood of laser and shield hit sound effects and possibly the "Guns overheating" warning numerous times in a row.

🤣 I couldn't even fly straight with the mouse. I don't think I will be able to test this. Not much of a gamer you see 😊

The game was quite slow though. The MMX 166 certainly struggling a bit to keep the frame rate high.

That spells doom for me, I wonder if Privateer 2 would perform better on a Pentium 2 or a Pentium 3? Would the SVGA card also be a bottleneck?

HINT: Privateer 2 came out when the Pentium 200 (not MMX) was the cream of the crop. The results of it being slow might be either a specific problem or some shock that it's not a 60fps SVGA game (which didn't really exist in 1996 for most Pentium people anyway)

leileilol wrote:

HINT: Privateer 2 came out when the Pentium 200 (not MMX) was the cream of the crop. The results of it being slow might be either a specific problem or some shock that it's not a 60fps SVGA game (which didn't really exist in 1996 for most Pentium people anyway)

Indeed, the deluxe version (and that's running under Windows 95, mind you) lists Pentium 90 and 16MB RAM required, Pentium 166 and 32MB recommended.

I will download from GOG and try on my Pentium 166 non-MMX and let you know how it goes....

Cool, keep us posted 😀

This games engine seems heavily unoptimized... Why the hell does getting too close to any texture mapped object (especially the planets) cause such a massive slowdown? I don't even get that problem in Quake even when Quake runs in DosBOX.

Not every company can afford Abrash.

This company could afford Christopher Walken and Clive Owen though. 😁

OK, here's some updates. I was able to get the GOG version to play in real DOS, well, actually, FreeDOS, but same difference. Thanks Mau1wurf1977 for the cfg file settings. Here's some observations, and this is on a 166MHz Pentium non-MMX with 128 RAM.

1) Yes, video cutscenes have scanlines and are dated. But that's how I remember it. That was the quality of FMV in computer games back in '96.

2) Everything played....really smooth. No problems. Now, before I calibrated my joystick, the sound was stuttering and everything was goofing up. After calibration, and setting controls to joystick (it seemed to default to mouse, really?) it played great. I just did some quick jumping around and dogfighting with maybe 3-4 other ships on the screen, no skipping, lag, etc. I'll play more later and see if this changes with incredibly large battles, but I doubt it. This is the recommended system configuration (actually, much more RAM than necessary!) for this game.

Wasn't there some issue with this game and not having a joystick?

Could you test without the joystick? The game was not smooth at all on my MMX 166 😒

Get yourself into a massive Kindred ambush, (spoilers) like the one when you have to escort Hugo to Hephestaus. That slowed DosBOX to a crawl.

And I remember lack of joystick affecting Privateer 1, but I have a joystick being emulated in Daum but not assigned in the keymapper.

I tested without the joystick, and it ran smoothly (albeit I cannot control the ship with the mouse very well). I think the reason it was wonky the first time was that I hadn't calibrated the joystick (even though the joystick was not selected). Press ALT-O in flight to access the options, calibrate, and see if that changes things...

Not sure why else you would be having trouble. I have a P166MMX coming in the mail soon to replace my P166. I'll install it and see if that makes a difference. Maybe it's a weird bug where it doesn't like MMX chips, though I've never known that to happen with anything anywhere.

Gotta love the Intel Inside logo and sound that pops up when you start. Classic.

Doubt it's the CPU. But then it could also be a subjective thing. Is it 60 fps smooth?

again, 1996 games on 1996 computers can't expect 60fps smooth SVGA software-rendered games. It wasn't until 3dfx accelerators and later Pentium II that 60fps 640x480 became commonplace

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Doubt it's the CPU. But then it could also be a subjective thing. Is it 60 fps smooth?

Don't expect that kind of consistency on P166. P2 or P3 may be smoother though. As leilei said, your eyes got spoiled by the Voodoo(2)s. 😉

I will try the game on my Pentium III-S 1.4 GHz reference platform 😊

Mouse control in this game is a hell of alot better than Privateer 1, but of course I'm playing in Daum not a real system...

DracoNihil wrote:

Mouse control in this game is a hell of alot better than Privateer 1, but of course I'm playing in Daum not a real system...

I must reverse my mouse control.

Tried it on the Pentium III. Firstly the game doesn't run without sound. So I used a AudioPCI. All good.

Game seems to be speed sensitive, like everything from Origin 😀

Like the mouse cursor just spins super fast. Menus open fast. The game also seems too fast. But smoother and with tearing so I guess it reaches a fps > 60.