First post, by Bethrezen
Hi all
having something of a problem with Privateer 2 - The Darkening deluxe edition and I'm wondering if anyone might be able to help.
After a little messing about I finally got P2 to install and load it turns out it doesn't like NTFS partitions once I installed it from and to my backup fat32 partition it stopped complaining and went in fine it also loads and runs fine even without the compatibility switch set problem is it’s way to fast.
after looking round the web I came across a slow down patch which did slow it down a good deal trouble is the patch seems to have been made to long ago for modern system so as a result it doesn't slow things down enough
specifically it's when you are in space is where it’s still to fast when your on planet/space station the speed is fine so I need to slow down space flight a little more
now in the read me the author of the patch mentions a way to adjust the amount of slow down the patch applies
---TECHNICAL--- To all you hackers out there, this is how P2 works. It ran fine on my Pentium 200MHz back in '97, but is way to […]
---TECHNICAL---
To all you hackers out there, this is how P2 works. It ran fine on my Pentium 200MHz back in '97, but is way to fast on any modern computer, so slowing down each frame is needed to make it playable. Hacking in a call to Sleep() at the end of each frame does the trick.It uses DirectDraw, but only copies directly to the front buffer. There are three functions that do this: one for movies, one for the UI, and one for space combat. Movies already work because of the strict timing required. The rest of the game is typical of a DOS program...
The UI function copies the whole screen at once, so adding a call to the end of this function fixes it perfectly (the sound is fixed too!)
Space combat is different. The function only copies a small part of the screen, so the call to Sleep() had to be added to the main loop.
If it is too fast or too slow, try tweaking the values at 87D79h (UI, default 20ms) and 87D8Dh (space, default 30ms).
trouble is I'm not a programmer and I don't understand ?? so I'm unable to adjust the patch my self so I'm wondering if anyone knows of an updated slow down patch that's designed for modern systems or can perhaps suggest another way to slow things down a little more
