Heretic is a DOOM engine game, and will not work very well in any NT OS. Turn down the sound quality to improve it. Blake Stone, I'm not so sure about.

Originally posted by GunNuT_33 I'm having a problem with 2 games, Heretic, and Blake Stone. Both are having the same problem, where during the game, whenever a sound is played, the whole game slows down and lags. I can't get music to work for either of them also.

Windows XP Professional

Since you posted this in the DOS forum (even though you're running XP) and since you make no reference to VDMSound, I'm presuming you're trying to run these DOS titles in XP like you used to within Windows 9x.

Understand that there is no DOS in XP. Just a command prompt with some DOS compatibility (emphasis on "some") and basic SoundBlaster audio emulation. The SB emulation is equivalent to a "SoundBlaster 2.0" sound card and not very good.

It will only provide FM audio (AdLib music) if your card actually has an OPL chip on it. Even if it does, it frequently doesn't work.

You need to grab Vlad's VDMSound for DOS programs and install as recommended here.

For Heretic, please use one of the source ports available here. The DOOMSDAY engine is my favorite version (JHeretic), but opinions vary...

BTW, the DOOMSDAY engine also handles DOOM, DOOM II, and Hexen.

hmm...I downloaded VDM sound and the doomsday engine, and Jhexen, but, I'm having trouble figuring out how to use them...I'm kind of new to this, could you give me some advicee?

Blake Stone uses the Wolfenstein 3-D engine, so the same rules should apply to both games. I don't know anything about how the Wolf3D engine runs under 2K/XP so I can't offer any suggestions unfortunately.

Originally posted by GunNuT_33 I'm having trouble figuring out how to use them...I'm kind of new to this, could you give me some advice?

For VDMSound, the recommended install procedure is here.

Once you're up-to-date, you right-click and choose "Run with VDMS" with the musical note on whatever run whatever BAT, COM or EXE file you need to run and it will create VLP shortcuts for you. If you need to adjust settings for one particular game, you adjust them on the VLP shortcut.

Just remember what Vlad's documentation clearly states, it's an audio card emulator, not a PC emulator. So if the program refuses to run on XP, running it with VDMSound may not fix your problem.

For DOOMSDAY, read his beginner's guide and FAQ here.

BTW, Blake Stone seems to run fine except (like many earlier Apogee titles) it tries to use the OPL3 for FM sound. OPL3 emulation isn't working in VDMSound just yet, so you should change the VDMSound emulation from "SoundBlaster 16" to "SoundBlaster Pro".

Go to your VLP shortcut, get it's Properties --> Advanced -->"SoundBlaster" tab -->Change "SoundBlaster16" to "SoundBlaster Pro"-->Click OK -->Click OK.

That should force BlakeStone to use the OPL2 emulation for FM sound.

Using Soundblaster Pro should be an optimal solution because I'm 95% sure that Apogee games (at least of that era) only used 8-bit sound anyways (although Blake Stone may use stereo sound, which the SB Pro supports)