They might help.

The compensation setting just means in how much time the pot measurement should take.

Actually, the compensation setting just sets the threshold up to what voltage a capacitor is charged through the joystick resistance, and by doing so, it changes the curve somewhat.

If you have extra sound cards you can spare, it should be relatively easy to modify the circuitry around the NE558 quad flip-flop to change the threshold voltage to be lower (perhaps put a trim pot there to select lower voltage threshold manually) or change the capacitor values to smaller (so they charge faster). Or you could mod some extra joypad/joystick for smaller resistances.

But it is up to the game to measure the timing, so it might require some minimum and maximum range for it to work properly.

I tried my Sound Blaster 16 (CT-1750) which apparently has some speed compensating ability, and the problems seemed to go away without having to slow the system down.

I assume that the faster the system, the quicker the read will be on the joystick port. The card may be taking too long to charge/discharge the capacitor at the stock settings. Those speed-adjusting gameport cards, like the Gravis Eliminator, should have a box or a knob that contains a variable capacitor to adjust the reference voltage.

If you are seeking the optimum experience, wouldn't the high-res official "15th anniversary edition" from GOG be the way to go?

Jorpho wrote:

If you are seeking the optimum experience, wouldn't the high-res official "15th anniversary edition" from GOG be the way to go?

I cannot run that in DOS. DOS provides, in my opinion, the closest to the optimal experience that would have been available near the time of the game's first release.

Adlib music output in this game is very quiet compared to the Sound Blaster. Forgot to mention the DOS version also supports the Disney Sound Source (DSS) at 10kHz and 5kHz. The same joystick issue also manifested itself with DSS.

The 15th Anniversary edition is indeed well worth checking out! It was this version that I completed this game with, as a kid the game was too hard for me. AFAIK the Amiga version is the original, but missing a few bits.

With joystick ports, I do remember that computer speed, or ISA clock speed, was a factor. It seems that the newer Sound Cards kept up with the computing speed, hence your Sound Blaster 16 works fine. Do you have enough ISA slots to use a newer Sound Card just as Game Port?

The SB Pro has several issues regarding speed. It's unusable with anything from a Pentium 200 and joystick had issues with simple games like Wolfenstein 3D.

There are a couple of really tough spots in the game, most of which were added to the DOS version.

After you escape, you get to an elevator. You have to go down and into a small room to disable an electrical panel. In the Amiga/ST version, the room is otherwise empty, in DOS, there is a guard there. The guard is very quick and you must shoot the moment you leave the elevator room or he will kill you.

When you are rolling around in the ducts, in the Amiga/ST version, harmless steam spews out at certain points. In the DOS version, the steam will kill you.

The caves are full of difficulties, from the falling rocks, to the tentacles on the ceiling and the pit traps to avoiding drowning after you release the water.

Just after the caves, there is an corridor where you have to fight one guard on each side, and it is difficult to maintain your shields and charge up your gun to kill both guards before one gets you.

When you have to return to the caves, now flooded, an extra screen and pit traps were added to the DOS version in the area where you have to disable an electrical circuit.

Immediately after the sequence were the guards are destroying multiple gates to get at you, in the Amiga/ST version you go straight to the tank. In the DOS version, extra levels are added where you have to rescue your friend twice or so.

The tank in the arena requires you to push more buttons in the DOS than the Amiga/ST version to activate the escape pod.

Spoiler alert 😀

Looks like I will have to keep a speed sensitive port in my system to avoid problems like this. Out of this World is worth it, however.

why not dosbox?

I assume that the faster the system, the quicker the read will be on the joystick port. The card may be taking too long to charge/discharge the capacitor at the stock settings.

I have not heard about a SB16 having speed compensation or being able to automatically determine system speed to change compensation. Is there some program to set this compensation value (like GUS had a program called ultrajoy)?

Without compensation, it always takes the same amount of human time to measure the same joystick at same position, regardless of CPU speed. The faster PC is just able to do the other stuff faster, so there is just more time to waste measuring joystick axes before it has any adverse effects.

It also depends on what is the actual ISA bus clock frequency, how the 33MHz of the motherboard is divided to ISA bus. If it is just divided by 4 to 8.33MHz, that might be too high for your older SB Pro sound card to work while a newer SB16 might work just fine. See if you have a way to set ISA bus clock or its divisor, anything up to 8MHz should be OK. If this is not possible, try underclocking to 20 or 25 MHz FSB (40 or 50 MHz DX2 CPU), or try adding 8-bit (and maybe 16-bit) IO wait states.

Forgot to mention the DOS version also supports the Disney Sound Source (DSS) at 10kHz and 5kHz. The same joystick issue also manifested itself with DSS.

I thought the DSS had its own FIFO, feeding the DAC at a fixed rate of 7kHz +/- 5%, so it should not be possible to select other rates. But if the game has just simple (non-FIFO) parallel port DAC support, then of course the rate is up to the software.

I tried playing with the bus speeds, but that did not work. My BIOS does not have a setting to change the ISA latency and I am too lazy to change the FSB speed jumpers. I recall that other non-speed compensating gamepads behave similarly to the Sound Blaster Pros. I also recall reading in a book that the SB Pro was not "386-aware."

I decided to type up my thoughts about this game and its various versions into a blog post : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/01/a … this-world.html