VOGONS

Suggestions for "finicky" DOS games to test

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First post, by gaffa2002

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Hey everyone.
Recently I've been messing around with my (only) MSDOS PC and thanks to setmul, throttle and ramdisk I am being able to set it speed from an Athlon 750mhz down to a PC XT (according to benchmarks, at least). Now I want to put this machine to the test by running the most annoying games ever made.

So far I tested and was able to run successfully:
-Alone in the Dark 1 and 2 - If CPU is too fast running in-game becomes impossible. Also messes up midi music in AITD2
-Theme Park - Game runs too fast on faster CPUs.
-Alien Breed - If CPU is too fast, cannot set sound options. Game will also not run if CPU is too fast and with more than 16mb of RAM
-Striker - Runs as fast as your CPU goes, runs fine if I set maximum throttle and no L1 cache
-Outlaw97 - Divide error if CPU is too fast
-Ultima 8 - Does not work with more than 64mb of RAM

Do you guys have any other suggestions? I want to see if this system can handle it 😁

Btw, system specs are on my signature.

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD

Reply 1 of 3, by Cuttoon

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The original Wing Commander keeps getting mentioned as being speed sensitive.

The only game I have hands-on experience with is the original Version of X-COM or "Ufo - Enemy Unknown".
In the battlescape options, you could set a scroll speed - how fast the map should scroll when the cursor hit the edge of the screen.
Think with anything past a P1 it was way to fast in the slowest setting, rendering that game unplayable.
Academic though, since they've released a Windows version. (But that has the very same problem on later machines, iirc.)

The attachment UFO_options.JPG is no longer available

As for overall DOS compatibility of the VGA backend, there's the almight gona list, but the gf4 mx is already on it:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS

I like jumpers.

Reply 2 of 3, by jheronimus

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I remember Crusader and Sanitarium having issues with very fast systems (faster than P166, I think)

Legend Entertainment titles have issues with MT-32 music on Pentiums, not sure about other standards.

MR BIOS catalog
Unicore catalog

Reply 3 of 3, by gaffa2002

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Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-04, 19:12:
The original Wing Commander keeps getting mentioned as being speed sensitive. […]
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The original Wing Commander keeps getting mentioned as being speed sensitive.

The only game I have hands-on experience with is the original Version of X-COM or "Ufo - Enemy Unknown".
In the battlescape options, you could set a scroll speed - how fast the map should scroll when the cursor hit the edge of the screen.
Think with anything past a P1 it was way to fast in the slowest setting, rendering that game unplayable.
Academic though, since they've released a Windows version. (But that has the very same problem on later machines, iirc.)
UFO_options.JPG

As for overall DOS compatibility of the VGA backend, there's the almight gona list, but the gf4 mx is already on it:
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS

Thanks for replying. XCOM is one of the first games I tried to run (sorry, forgot to mention it on my list). It’s also running fine by disabling cache or reducing CPU speed. Otherwise game gets too fast on both battlescape and geoscape like you said. The windows version had issues with geforce cards so I never bothered to try it in this system.
As for Wing Commander, I just tried it as per your suggestion and this one seems to run fine, but only with a very specific combination of disabled cache and cpu throttling (I’ve used Phil’s videos as reference on how fast the game should run).
Once I have some time will try the Crusader games and other suggestions (thanks Jheronimus)

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD

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