Elia1995 wrote:

By the way, I found out that a lot of games that came with 5/1/4 floppies are too fast even on my 486SX2.

5 1/4" floppies were popular up to the late 1980's. They were still used (often together with 3 1/2" floppies) maybe up to 1991? By the early 90's 3 1/2" were the big thing. 😀 But if you look at which cpus were out in those years, your statement will make a lot of sense. If a game came out on 5 1/4", that means it was probably from the mid to late 1980s, which means it was made when 286 processors ruled, which means there was little to no consideration for frame limiting the game.

clueless1 wrote:

If a game came out on 5 1/4", that means it was probably from the mid to late 1980s, which means it was made when 286 processors ruled, which means there was little to no consideration for frame limiting the game.

Besides 8086/88 with higher than 4.77 clocks, in 1984 year was released IBM AT and since that moment any games not taking into account that it may be run on several times faster CPUs is just the example of lame coding. There was a lot games in 1980s which said requirements like "XT/286" - all they did some kind of speed normalization or were synchronized to thing independant to CPU.

Since my 486SX2 PC lacks a Turbo button, is there any way I could play all those games there ? Say, for example, a program that "makes the PC lag" thus allowing them to play normally, it's just an example.

Elia1995 wrote:

Since my 486SX2 PC lacks a Turbo button, is there any way I could play all those games there ? Say, for example, a program that "makes the PC lag" thus allowing them to play normally, it's just an example.

Setmul. SetMul - Multiplier control for VIA C3 / AMD K6+7+8 Mobile / Cyrix 5x86
You can use it to disable L1 cache on your 486. If you'd like to contribute, I maintain a list of cpu benchmarks with cache enabled and disabled. I don't have many 486 results on there yet. 😀

It didn't work, I did setmul L1D and it said it disabled the L1 cache, but the games are still faster than Sonic.

Elia1995 wrote:

It didn't work, I did setmul L1D and it said it disabled the L1 cache, but the games are still faster than Sonic.

I'm reasonably sure it slowed your cpu down *some* but maybe not enough. If you run some benchmarks with L1 enabled and disabled, it should show some difference.

Has anyone mentioned Commander Keen 4/5/6? The annoying jerky scrolling bug disappears when you disable the CPU (PPro) cache.

That's more dependent on video card than cpu though. Huge YMMV

OK I just tried Keen 4 again. This is on a ATI Mach64 chipset. Unplayable at full speed, but runs fine with CPU cache off. (SVGA compatibility mode makes no difference).

What about Apogee's "Secret Agent" and "Crystal Caves" ???

The bar on the bottom with lives, ammo and score goes nuts when the screen is scrolling !!! Even on my 486 !!!

Ah, I almost forgot !!!

The same game, Secret Agent, glitches out like hell on my Intel Celeron 1.10GHz (Socket 370) DOS PC:

It does that after you destroy a scanner/radar antenna thing, when the screen is supposed to flash red, it glitches out like that instead 🤣
If I had my 3D cyan/red glasses, I could play Secret Agent 3D 🤣

Errius wrote:

OK I just tried Keen 4 again. This is on a ATI Mach64 chipset. Unplayable at full speed, but runs fine with CPU cache off. (SVGA compatibility mode makes no difference).

Hey Errius. This is very interesting to me. I am in the process of benchmarking about 20 video cards I picked up, and I am using a rather fast CPU - a Sempron processor to test them. With an Ati Rage 3D II - Mach64, I actually am experiencing a fairly normal Commander Keen 4 and 6 by using SVGA compatibility mode as well as jerky scrolling fix in the game options. Could you share some more details about your card?

Processor-wise, I am running something a much faster than the systems at the time of CK4/5/6, but it seems to be quite playable with both options enabled. I was going to ask around a bit because I thought that the dos pci and agp page could have the scroll bug flag lifted from the box for Mach64 (and possibly others).

It's been awhile since I added a game to the wiki. But I've been playing Might and Magic 4/5 (World of Xeen) and noticed the mouse cursor blinks like crazy and if the system is fast enough, disappears. I've narrowed the ideal speed down to around a 486/40, but will confirm later by jumpering my DX2/66 to 20Mhz bus. Right now I'm playing with L2 disabled (around 486/50 speeds) and it's a lot better, but still blinks slowly.

Need for Speed: Porsche 2000/Unleashed. Low car textures with fast CPUs (>2.0 GHz). And there is the lens flares bug but I'm not sure it's 100% CPU related.

FIFA 2002 fast CPU crash was fixed by Zeus (check the nGlide site)

Gamecollector wrote:

Need for Speed: Porsche 2000/Unleashed. Low car textures with fast CPUs (>2.0 GHz). And there is the lens flares bug but I'm not sure it's 100% CPU related.

are you sure about this? i cant remember any texture problems...

clueless1 wrote:

It's been awhile since I added a game to the wiki. But I've been playing Might and Magic 4/5 (World of Xeen) and noticed the mouse cursor blinks like crazy and if the system is fast enough, disappears. I've narrowed the ideal speed down to around a 486/40, but will confirm later by jumpering my DX2/66 to 20Mhz bus. Right now I'm playing with L2 disabled (around 486/50 speeds) and it's a lot better, but still blinks slowly.

I confirmed 40Mhz is about perfect. The mouse cursor still blinks a little in the upper third of the screen, but for the lower 2/3 its solid and never disappears. In the 20Mhz range the game starts to feel a bit sluggish. I'd say a 486DX/33 is probably the ideal cpu if running at standard speeds. DX2/40 is non-standard, but feels like the perfect speed, and is what I'm playing it at. Yeah, I downclocked my cpu just for one game. 😉

mrau wrote:

are you sure about this?

Up - w/o the fast CPU patch, bottom - with the patch. The grille and the nameplate. W/o the patch the game uses medium textures.
640x480 with maximum graphics settiongs (high/high/very high/very high).
P4 3.2E, Radeon HD3850 AGP, WinXpSp3.

Imma gonna throw this out there - Can we move to individual game entries on vogonswiki? Unless there is another one somewhere already that provides this information, the ability to search for a particular game and get some version history/patch notes that were made, requirements from box (if we want), and specific speed-based compatibility information would be very useful.

Currently, this thread is tied to http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_C … sensitive_games. It is a helpful list, and I am glad it is there. And thanks, clueless1 for picking up that ball and rolling it again! I think we could retain the list and(or?) use separate game entries. Eventually push beyond speed issues and even list anything related to tweaking settings, sound specifics - i.e. "16-bit recommended for sound mixing" or "Sound was originally composed using an SC-55," or "trouble with Sound Blaster DSP ver xxx," etc., EMS needed/recommended.

In theory, you could build some quality pages for specific games over time. You wouldn't have to always Google-fu your way through vogons threads for specific title issues, and you would be aware of recent patches for old games. For instance - is everyone reading this thread also aware of the incredible updates that have recently been made for sound and animation issues in the Jill of the Jungle trilogy? Jill of the Jungle Sound Effects Newrisingsun's most recent patch was released one week ago.

It would be nice for anyone to be able to install a game, hit the wiki, and possibly nip an issue in the bud. ("Why is Commander Keen 4 having some scrolling problems in my new build? ... OOH. I am using a Matrox Millennium. Hmm.")

Yeah. It would be a lot of work. But I'm willing to put some time in on it if we can establish a format.

I considered creating a new thread about this, but the birth would come from the speed sensitivity notes here.

ratfink wrote:

warcraft 1 speed issues can be solved by: […]
Show full quote

warcraft 1 speed issues can be solved by:

- using a rendition verite card [chokes the video from updating too fast] - worked for a socket 7

- disabling l1/l2 cache on socket 7's or even athlon 700 [though athlon 700 is on the fast side of slow it just seems the water is a bit choppy today]

- using a more period-correct slow cpu like 386dx33

I can't remember if 486 is still too fast but of course there are l1/l2 tricks there too.

I know I'm replying to a very old post, but it seems more appropriate to do this than to create a whole new thread on the exact same topic.

I'm trying to recapture the experience I had playing Warcraft I back in ~1994-1995, and I assumed that a 386DX40 would be the best hardware to do it on. (I used a 386SX40 at the time, IIRC.) Unfortunately, my 386DX40 is far too slow for Warcraft I, even with the speed on "FASTEST". I know that the knee-jerk response is that it's probably a cache or turbo switch issue, but it's not either of those things. The chip does come in low on the CPU benchmarks I got from Phil's Computer Lab, and I really don't know why.

On the other hand, my 486DX2-66 is a little too fast for the game, because of the palette rotation on the water. Using the turbo switch on the 486DX2-66 makes it too slow. Gahh!

Really trying to figure out what to do with this one. I've been craving that original Warcraft I experience for many years, and now that I've built these vintage machines, it's pretty frustrating to have somehow missed the mark. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

In case it's not clear, I AM, in this case, trying to do something relatively period-correct. So I don't want to use the Rendition Verite approach(even though I have one of those cards!) or disabling the cache on the 486 or P-II that I have, etc.

aquishix wrote:

On the other hand, my 486DX2-66 is a little too fast for the game, because of the palette rotation on the water.

Is palette rotation the only problem? If so, I wouldn't bother researching any alternatives.

dr_st wrote:

aquishix wrote:

On the other hand, my 486DX2-66 is a little too fast for the game, because of the palette rotation on the water.

Is palette rotation the only problem? If so, I wouldn't bother researching any alternatives.

The map scrolling speed is also too high on a system which is too fast. I could deal with the scrolling problem without caring too much about it, but the palette rotation being too fast really bothers me.

I know I'm more obsessive than a lot of people when it comes to stuff like this, but I really believe in playing the game the way the creators intended for it to be played. The water animation is supposed to look a certain way, and it just looks wrong on a system which is too fast.

On the other hand, the 486DX2-66 came out in 1992 if I'm not mistaken -- two years before the release of Warcraft I. So you'd think that Blizzard would've made the game with that in mind. But maybe they didn't, and were targeting the mid-level machines of the day. My family couldn't afford anything nearly that fancy back then, so my memories don't help me in this case. I still had a 10MHz XT-turbo clone until ~1994, when I got my 386DX40.