For some reason the game is demanding. You need a Voodoo3 and a PIII to make it go really smooth natively and this is a game that was supposed to be for Pentium Classics.

Demanding where? My pic shows neither gpu or cpu are being loaded at all. Is there some sort of Dosbox setting that is throttling the game back somehow?

GPU load is meaningless because it is a combined measure of unknown aspects. So some part of the GPU might be peaked while others aren't and you won't see 100%. That's not to say that I think GPU load is the problem but I suppose some part of the Glide -> OpenGL translation could be.

I've tried Carmageddon in DOSBOX with Glide too and it wasn't as smooth as on a P3 with a Voodoo3. It's just something with the emulation and Glide/OpenGL connection. Try the game in software mode once and see how fast it is. Also, try DOSBOX normal core just for kicks but it will probably be the same or slower.

I was using DGVoodoo when I tried it though. You may want to try that out as well. I think it was faster than 10-15 fps.

I've tried every trick in the book to try and get dgVoodoo to work native and in VMware(winXP). Native OS just crashes right off the bat. VMware does run with menus fine but once actual race starts its black screen.

I've swapped out nGlides glide2x.dll with dgVoodoos and can get to race through messed up menus but frame rate is no better and hud elements in race are missing.

Something is holding up this game from using all hardware power. Too odd.

So dosbox is the only one that runs it at all? Cool.

wd wrote:

So dosbox is the only one that runs it at all? Cool.

Only special glide enabled Dosbox versions. Vanilla DB did not work.

Of course DOSBox runs the non-3dfx version, and the Glide-enabled version runs the 3dfx version. That's quite easy to understand.

wd wrote:

Of course DOSBox runs the non-3dfx version, and the Glide-enabled version runs the 3dfx version. That's quite easy to understand.

True, I was just stating that because I was unaware that different specific versions of Dosbox existed.

Anyway, I've given up. Find it amazing that all of todays computing power can't run a very old game in full glory smoothly. 😖 😳

Be patient. Play other games.

core2duo and "today's computing power" are quite the contrary.

wd wrote:

core2duo and "today's computing power" are quite the contrary.

What's your point? Does this game all of a sudden run 60fps+ on a i7?

Of course, but not if you're using a full PC emulation layer with it like dosbox.
And what happens if the emulation layer doesn't cope with as much detail as
dosbox does can be seen with all the other emulators/virtualizers you tried,
they simply don't work with that game.

What i think alot of you are failing to understand is dos box is SOFTWARE EMULATION for actual hardware. And as such, no matter how fast your host computer is that's running it, it will have certain performance limitations because it's just software.

It's never going to be as fast as a real pentium3 (or P4) with a real voodoo3 in it, running ms-dos or Win98 with the proper drivers, it's just not. No amount of tweaking or modifying will make it go any faster. It's just going to be a poor substitute for the real thing and you need to either accept that, or go to all the trouble of actually acquiring older hardware and building a P3 with a voodoo3 (the parts are actually very cheap these days if you look around and know hardware).

As an example:
I saw a P3 motherboard with 1.2ghz processor with heatsink, and came with 512mb ram for $25 (with i think like $10 shipping) on ebay last week (Sold now though) and saw a voodoo3 AGP Card for $9 with free shipping last week as well, also sold now. Something like that would be great for older games, if you like, already have a chassis / case and older power supply maybe. A system like that wouldn't need more than a 200 watt power supply, those are dirt cheap these days too.

I'm finding out the 'yon' setting in options.txt makes a huge difference in frame rate. Set it to 25 and the game is pretty fast but lots of popup occurs.

Set to 100 and has nice draw distance but frame rate absolutely chugs.

I'm also using nGlide myself.
Be sure to put core=dynamic and cycles=max in your dosbox.conf.
If this makes no difference, try latest Yhkwong's build for dosbox
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/
Also you should use carmageddon's 3dfx voodoo 2 patch not voodoo 1, it's the one with the voodo2.exe, not the carmav.exe.
Execute like this
voodoo2.exe -vrush
or you'll get no mirror, no miniscreen on the map and no wreck gallery.
Don't map R key to anything in game, because it turns the car into a coordinates vector sign.

Raideoul wrote:

I'm also using nGlide myself. Be sure to put core=dynamic and cycles=max in your dosbox.conf. If this makes no difference, try l […]
Show full quote

I'm also using nGlide myself.
Be sure to put core=dynamic and cycles=max in your dosbox.conf.
If this makes no difference, try latest Yhkwong's build for dosbox
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/
Also you should use carmageddon's 3dfx voodoo 2 patch not voodoo 1, it's the one with the voodo2.exe, not the carmav.exe.
Execute like this
voodoo2.exe -vrush
or you'll get no mirror, no miniscreen on the map and no wreck gallery.
Don't map R key to anything in game, because it turns the car into a coordinates vector sign.

What frame rates do you get with yon set to 100?

I have about 40-45fps with default Yon (it was 35. 00000 for me). Changed to 100 as you said and the game was 35fps and choppy. Then changed it back to 35, tried again, exit, opened the options.txt and Yon was 50. 00000. So this is a variable of the program and i think changing it doesn't bother at all, 'cos the game will keep changing it again and again. Try what i mentioned and tell me if it works. I'm also using Vista 32 so maybe it's your 64 system what is making all this trouble. Sorry for my bad english.

Raideoul wrote:

I have about 40-45fps with default Yon (it was 35. 00000 for me). Changed to 100 as you said and the game was 35fps and choppy. Then changed it back to 35, tried again, exit, opened the options.txt and Yon was 50. 00000. So this is a variable of the program and i think changing it doesn't bother at all, 'cos the game will keep changing it again and again. Try what i mentioned and tell me if it works. I'm also using Vista 32 so maybe it's your 64 system what is making all this trouble. Sorry for my bad english.

Your English is fine. 😀

Are you actually measuring the frame rate or just guessing? I'm using FRAPS for frame rate. With the game menu set to max, the following below settings, I get around 17-23fps. Can you please test the same using FRAPS?

1YonFactor 1.000000
2SkyTextureOn 1
3CarTexturingLevel 2
4RoadTexturingLevel 1
5WallTexturingLevel 2
6ShadowLevel 3
7DepthCueingOn 1
8Yon 50.000000
9CarSimplificationLevel 0
10AccessoryRendering 1
11SmokeOn 1
12SoundDetailLevel 2
13ScreenSize 2
14MapRenderX 6.000000
15MapRenderY 6.000000
16MapRenderWidth 64.000000
17MapRenderHeight 40.000000
18PlayerName 0
19MAX DAMAGE
20PlayerName 1
21DIE ANNA
22NetName 0
23RON TURN
24EVolume 4
25MVolume 4
26KeyMapIndex 3

This is in winXP32 taewoongDosbox, nGlide

It's definitely not a hardware thing. I used to play Tomb Raider 3Dfx on a similar machine using DOSBox and it was running extremely smoothly. Never tried Carmageddon though. It could be a software bug or something.
You can try GliDOS and see how that works.
There's actually a highres option for the software mode of the game actually, just type carma.exe -highres and it should load in 640x480. You lose some of the effects and stuff from the 3Dfx version, but it's better to nothing.
Also, I don't know why you'd need a Pentium 3 and a Voodoo 3 to get Carmageddon 3Dfx running smoothly, it worked just fine on my Pentium MMX 233 and Voodoo 1, I don't think I ever even got it to run on a Voodoo 3. Early Pentium 2's also run the game quite fast.