VOGONS


Weird Corncob 3D Issues

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First post, by Taco_Joe

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Hi everyone,
I'm new here and this is my first time posting.

I'm having a few problems with Corncob 3D on my Unisys CWD-4002. And I'm trying to figure out if it's related to my setup or the program itself. I've been playing this game since I was about 4-5 years old and have played it on everything from my old 386 back in the early 90's in PC-DOS, to DOSBox on various Windows and Mac platforms, and now back on DOS 6.22 on the 486. So I think that I'm fairly familiar with the way the game is supposed to play.

Anyway, these are the issues that I am having:
1. After 30 seconds or so of gameplay, the cannons seem to fire whenever I manipulate the controls (arrow keys), and sometimes just on their own (cannons are normally fired by pressing the left shift key). Now, it will stop within the last 10 seconds or so as I am landing. This happens every flight.
2. The plane every once in a while will start flying sideways throughout the sky, as if the left rudder is being partially pressed, but there not indications that the rudder is being pressed on the instrument panel. The little red ball on the radar screen that shows the relative airflow will be halfway between the left of the screen and center. (I actually have the game running as I'm typing this and the plane in straight and level flight, and this isn't happening, but if I put the left rudder, the plane will do a perfect level-winged 360 left turn, with no change in airflow, but if I do it to the right, it acts normally. And as I keep typing, it's now sorted itself and the rudder works on both sides) This is an intermittent problem that doesn't happen every flight and sometimes can be fixed momentarily in-game by engaging the autopilot for 5 or so seconds and then disengaging it.

Now, the cannon problem doesn't break the game, but the control problem does. As skidding through the air slows down the plane and affects the climb rate and the ability to maintain level flight and the wing seems to stall quite easily. Being someone who flies jets for a living (and therefore should be able to fly an early 90's flight sim with ease, especially one that I have probably have more time playing than actual flight time) it makes it very frustrating.

I've noticed this problem on both my 486 and recent installations on DOSBox in Windows 7 and 10, however it seems to work fine on DOSBox on MacOS High Sierra 10.13. This has also been an issue with pretty much every version of Corncob 3D that I've been able to find (2.00 to 3.42, shareware and registered version as well as OWC. I wish I could locate my original disks from the 90's, but oh well). I've also tried different keyboards, using a boot disk, trying from within Windows, DOS, it doesn't seem to make a difference. I also can't seem to find anything online that talks about this happening.

Does anyone else have these issues or have an idea of what it may be?

This is my setup in case something thinks this is a system issue:
- Unisys CWD-4002 486DX2-S 66 MHz
- 16 MB RAM
- 335 MB HDD
- AOpen FX-3D Plus sound card (AD1816AJS)
- DOS 6.22
- Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (installed for networking as well as the soundcard) - I do not boot into Windows on start
- CuteMouse v2.1 beta4

My AUTOEXEC.BAT:
C:\WINDOWS\net start
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
LH /L:0;2,45456 /S C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X
LH /L:0;3,3104 /S C:\UTIL\CTMOUSE.EXE
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\DOS
SET TEMP=C:\DOS

My CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS I=B000-B7FF
BUFFERS=15,0
FILES=30
DOS=UMB
LASTDRIVE=Z
FCBS=4,0
DOS=HIGH
DEVICE=c:\adisound\dos_util\AD1815_6.SYS /L0=B220B388B530I05D1D0 /L1=B330I09 /L2=B200 /L3=B300
DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12048 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICEHIGH /L:1,4560 =C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS

Reply 1 of 4, by Davros

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I used to play this on a 386sx-16
maybe its a speed issue

Guardian of the Sacred Five Terabyte's of Gaming Goodness

Reply 2 of 4, by Taco_Joe

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Davros wrote:

I used to play this on a 386sx-16
maybe its a speed issue

It could be, I don’t want to rule anything out. Maybe I’ll try a slowdown utiliy to see if that does anything.

It’s still odd to me that it works perfectly in DOSBox on macOS and not on Windows 10 or in MS-DOS 6.22.

Reply 3 of 4, by Taco_Joe

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Taco_Joe wrote:
Davros wrote:

I used to play this on a 386sx-16
maybe its a speed issue

It could be, I don’t want to rule anything out. Maybe I’ll try a slowdown utiliy to see if that does anything.

It’s still odd to me that it works perfectly in DOSBox on macOS and not on Windows 10 or in MS-DOS 6.22.

I tried it with AT-SLOW and it didn't seem to fix anything.

Reply 4 of 4, by Taco_Joe

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I eventually went back to my Windows 10 PC and changed some of the settings in DOSBox to see if Davros' thought of speed being an issue was the culprit . I messed around with the core, cputype and cycles (as I had them tweaked for other games, e.g. I had cycles on "max" for a few games) and found that bringing them all down to either auto or something lower made the game run just as I had remembered it. Several aliens were blasted in the process.

I might mess around with the jumpers on my 486 to bring it down to 50 MHz to see if that makes a difference, and I'll update you with if/when that happens!