Just an idea, try it without sound (configure it with no sound card) and see if it makes a difference? I remember reading somewhere about an issue to do with sound.

I have never really played Redneck Rampage, but Blood will chug pretty badly even on higher clocked CPUs. What resolution are you running it at?

I think Phil is onto something...

F2bnp wrote:

I have never really played Redneck Rampage, but Blood will chug pretty badly even on higher clocked CPUs. What resolution are you running it at?

They both are forced with VESA 2.0 640x480 as minimum resolution.

Yeah, Phil may be on to something here. I was thinking you were pushing much higher resolutions like 1024x768. Try it without sound or music like Phil suggests. Are you running the games through Windows? Maybe running them under DOS will help?

Nope, I only have MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 installed in there and I always run the games from DOS.
I'll try without sounds and see if it helps, although that can't obviously be a DEFINITIVE solution: what's the point in using an AWE32 sound card if I must play without sound and music ?
I have 512 MB of SDRAM in that computer, by the way.

Elia1995 wrote:

I have 512 MB of SDRAM in that computer, by the way.

If disabling sound doesn't change anything, try dropping RAM to 32 or 64MB...just for fun. I've heard of issues with DOS games and too much RAM. Don't know if this is one of them, but why not rule it out?

I only have this stick of SDRAM so I dunno how to drop the ram to 64 MB via software

EDIT: The sound trick didn't work for Redneck Rampage, it's still unplayable, but I checked and that computer meets all the minimum specs !!!

If you haven't done so already: Since you are using a DOS VESA mode game on a Pentium II/III, you should enable write combining for the LFB. It generally results in double the framerate. Search this forum with keyword 'mtrrlfbe' on how to get that going.

The difference between the build games is strange. Never played Blood mysel, but I would think it is technically identical.

Does your motherboard use an integrated graphics card and if so are you using it?

Can't help you with the actual problem, but as a reference, Blood runs butter smooth up to 1024x768 on my Coppermine PIII 1.1 GHz rig, even without mtrrlfbe. In 1280x1024, the framerate is noticeably lower, but the game would still be very playable if it weren't for the flickering/flashing introduced by the GF Ti4200. With mtrrlfbe it's butter smooth in 1280x1024 too.

F2bnp wrote:

Does your motherboard use an integrated graphics card and if so are you using it?

Yes, I'm using the integrated graphics: TNT2 24MB

kaputnik wrote:

Can't help you with the actual problem, but as a reference, Blood runs butter smooth up to 1024x768 on my Coppermine PIII 1.1 GHz rig, even without mtrrlfbe. In 1280x1024, the framerate is noticeably lower, but the game would still be very playable if it weren't for the flickering/flashing introduced by the GF Ti4200. With mtrrlfbe it's butter smooth in 1280x1024 too.

But are you using some graphics card for that ? Every game I push further than 640x480 becomes unplayable, while Blood stutters at 640x480 and below and Redneck Rampage is completely unplayable at any resolution.

There may be no solution as the stuttering could have to do with drawing transparent elements/overlays and slow read/write speeds to graphics memory.
I currently have no working system(+Blood in DOS) but I remember running it on an overclocked A64 and a GF7600(+mtrrlfbe) on freeDos and frame rates literally collapsed when drawing windows and/or even mirrors.

No guarantees though as there might be some quirks native to your onboard graphics solution.

Once I get Windows 95/98 running in dual boot on that very PC, I'll try from Windows (with all the drivers and stuff) if it gets better.
Because I remember that when I was little and I had that PC as my main I could play Blood and Redneck Rampage quite smoothly, but I used it on Windows back then.

Elia1995 wrote:

I only have this stick of SDRAM

I didn't know it was possible to use a 512 MB SDRAM stick on any Coppermine-compatible chipset.

Anyway, I think the versions of EMM386 and HIMEM included with MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 were inherently limited to 64 MB.

Re: Blood in DOS 6.22 suggests it might be useful to use a configuration that does not use EMM386 at all.