Bullfrog games prior to Dungeon Keeper 😀

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-27, 09:21:

I would like to try some speed sensitive games to see if I can make them work on this PC. Ideally games that would require a 286 PC through to those that require a slow 486. Can you please suggest any to try?

Check the list of CPU sensitive games on the Vogons wiki, if you haven't already.

leileilol wrote on 2024-10-27, 10:13:

Bullfrog games prior to Dungeon Keeper 😀

Thanks!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-27, 10:25:

Check the list of CPU sensitive games on the Vogons wiki, if you haven't already.

Thanks for reminding me of that wiki. I had seen that some time ago. But forgot about it. That list of games is rather smaller than I was expecting though. Surely there must be more?

XWING and TIEFIGHTER (Random, spurrious gameplay issues on fast CPUs, IIRC.)
Wing Commander series (Unless you LIKE playing at WARP SPEED)
WIzardry 7 (Crashes with a division by zero error on anything faster than a pentium 90)

wierd_w wrote on 2024-10-27, 10:56:

XWING and TIEFIGHTER (Random, spurrious gameplay issues on fast CPUs, IIRC.)
Wing Commander series (Unless you LIKE playing at WARP SPEED)
WIzardry 7 (Crashes with a division by zero error on anything faster than a pentium 90)

Thanks. Some of those games weren't mentioned on the wiki. So I will try them out

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-27, 10:37:

Thanks for reminding me of that wiki. I had seen that some time ago. But forgot about it. That list of games is rather smaller than I was expecting though. Surely there must be more?

The VOGONS wiki list is not exhaustive by any means.

It's also somewhat inaccurate in places. Some of the recommended CPUs don't make sense. For example, the listing for Warcraft is wrong, it should be a 486 DX-33, not a 386. Some of the games listed don't have issues in my experience, while others have issues with certain hardware (e.g. MT-32) but aren't mentioned in that list.

A few speed sensitive games I like to test that aren't in the VOGONS wiki include:

Police Quest II- The intro is speed sensitive and seems to run best on an 8 to 12 MHz 286. Even a 386 will be too fast for it. The rest of the game speed can be adjusted in-game.

Blackthorne- Too fast a system can result in lack of music, particularly during the opening cut scene. Needs 486-level performance to work properly.

Titus the Fox- Music plays incorrectly on systems that are too fast. Same as Blackthorne, seems to work fine with 486 level performance.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-27, 22:30:

A few speed sensitive games I like to test that aren't in the VOGONS wiki include: […]
Show full quote

A few speed sensitive games I like to test that aren't in the VOGONS wiki include:

Police Quest II- The intro is speed sensitive and seems to run best on an 8 to 12 MHz 286. Even a 386 will be too fast for it. The rest of the game speed can be adjusted in-game.

Blackthorne- Too fast a system can result in lack of music, particularly during the opening cut scene. Needs 486-level performance to work properly.

Titus the Fox- Music plays incorrectly on systems that are too fast. Same as Blackthorne, seems to work fine with 486 level performance.

Thanks for these. I will try them out.

So far I have tried:

Police Quest II - Intro seemed ok to me with just the L2 motherboard cache disabled.

Wing Commander I - Seemed a bit slow with motherboard cache disabled and all other CPU features/caches enabled. This appears to be due to the ISA video card, as swapping it for a PCI S3 card made it playable. Should a Trident 8900c ISA card be too slow for WC1? I am aware that there are faster cards like Tseng Et4000AX, but those are rather expensive now. Maybe I can stick with the PCI S3 card, but that I expect may make the psueodo 386 too fast to play some older games?

Alien Carnage - Seemed to work ok

Betrayal at Krondor - Started ok as far as menu. But after some intro stuff when starting a game it just complains of not being able to write to a critical file and goes back the menu

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-29, 08:59:

Police Quest II - Intro seemed ok to me with just the L2 motherboard cache disabled.

That's surprising.

I just tested it on a Pentium MMX 233. I tried with both L2 cache disabled, and L1 & L2 cache disabled. In both cases, it ran too fast.

For point of reference, this is about the speed the intro should run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZXVqrSo7AA

Was it about that speed for you?

indiana jones fate of atlantis has some speed sensitive issues. if i remember it was sound related being an objectively awsome title it would be my first test. 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-29, 12:48:

That's surprising. […]
Show full quote

That's surprising.

I just tested it on a Pentium MMX 233. I tried with both L2 cache disabled, and L1 & L2 cache disabled. In both cases, it ran too fast.

For point of reference, this is about the speed the intro should run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZXVqrSo7AA

Was it about that speed for you?

Hmm, that's not at all what I saw. I'm not familiar with this game at all to be honest. Just checked again, and it seems it was Police Quest 1 that I installed. Doh!

Joakim wrote on 2024-10-29, 12:53:

indiana jones fate of atlantis has some speed sensitive issues. if i remember it was sound related being an objectively awsome title it would be my first test. 😀

Yes. That's one I intend to test when I'm able to get back to the PC to play with it.

Just commenting: I used to like Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis. Fun game. 😀

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-29, 13:26:

Just checked again, and it seems it was Police Quest 1 that I installed. Doh!

Ah, that makes sense.

For a moment, I wondered if there were multiple versions of Police Quest II out there.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-29, 14:25:

For a moment, I wondered if there were multiple versions of Police Quest II out there.

Seems to work ok to me. Internal and external cache set to disabled in BIOS. SETMUL was not used to disable any CPU features.

https://youtu.be/C900PY0svAk?si=harrZp7VbrD5FvAe

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-29, 20:55:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-29, 14:25:

For a moment, I wondered if there were multiple versions of Police Quest II out there.

Seems to work ok to me. Internal and external cache set to disabled in BIOS. SETMUL was not used to disable any CPU features.

https://youtu.be/C900PY0svAk?si=harrZp7VbrD5FvAe

Interesting! It looks like the version you have isn't speed sensitive.

On my version the animation will slow down when both characters are on the screen, but go faster when only one character is visible. On the video you posted, there doesn't appear to be any change in animation speed.

I'll have to look more into the different versions of this game...

Edited:

On rewatching maybe there is a change in animation speed? It was a little hard to tell.

I just installed the GOG version of Police Quest 2 and it's still speed sensitive.

I also noticed the video description says 100MHz, whereas my testing was at 233 and probably with a faster video card.

I was thinking Alian Carnage!? I've run that on much faster PC's
Then saw it just requires the TPPATCH, This is a bug with Turbo Pascall not the actual game so don't really consider it speed sensitive as the 1 generic patch will resolve multiple games.
Much like Windows 95 requires a patch for faster CPU's.

I know your trying to cover all eras but rather than try and find problems your much better off focusing on your specific games liberty.
However my gaming years are similar to you (1995 - 2006) with a few games dating from 89/90.
99% of my games run fine at any speed, my slowest PC is a 486/66 and only game I can think of is Wolf3D feels a bit too fast and gives me motion sickness.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-29, 22:55:

Interesting! It looks like the version you have isn't speed sensitive. […]
Show full quote

Interesting! It looks like the version you have isn't speed sensitive.

On my version the animation will slow down when both characters are on the screen, but go faster when only one character is visible. On the video you posted, there doesn't appear to be any change in animation speed.

I'll have to look more into the different versions of this game...

Edited:

On rewatching maybe there is a change in animation speed? It was a little hard to tell.

I just installed the GOG version of Police Quest 2 and it's still speed sensitive.

I also noticed the video description says 100MHz, whereas my testing was at 233 and probably with a faster video card.

I will try the GOG version to see if it is different. I dont know the source of the version I am currently using. It was on a hard drive that I bought on ebay. There are hundreds of games on it. Just been trying out a few on this machine:

Castle Wolfenstein (1984) - corrupted graphics and keeps restarting
Bouncing Babies (1984) - too fast
Snake (1984) - Die instantly
Sopwith (1984) - Too fast. Though I think there is a version out there that works on faster machines. I used to play this at school on their 486 PCs.
Tetris (1987) - works
Xenon 2 (1990) - works
XQuest (1994) - seems to work, but I have no mouse at present to play it. I used to love this game. Simple but addictive.
WIzardry 7 - starts OK to menu. But can't play, as needs mouse
Ultima 7 - I think it works, but hard to use without mouse.
Hi-Octane - Works

I am not sure if any of the games on this HDD have viruses TBH. So, the games I play will typically come from GOG or original disks. But this is an easy source of games to just quickly see what this Pentium MMX can do.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-30, 03:01:

I was thinking Alian Carnage!? I've run that on much faster PC's Then saw it just requires the TPPATCH, This is a bug with Turbo […]
Show full quote

I was thinking Alian Carnage!? I've run that on much faster PC's
Then saw it just requires the TPPATCH, This is a bug with Turbo Pascall not the actual game so don't really consider it speed sensitive as the 1 generic patch will resolve multiple games.
Much like Windows 95 requires a patch for faster CPU's.

I know your trying to cover all eras but rather than try and find problems your much better off focusing on your specific games liberty.
However my gaming years are similar to you (1995 - 2006) with a few games dating from 89/90.
99% of my games run fine at any speed, my slowest PC is a 486/66 and only game I can think of is Wolf3D feels a bit too fast and gives me motion sickness.

Yes, I get your point. I don't really have any favourite games from the 386/486 era though, as I went straight from a 286 to a Pentium 120Mhz back in the day. The suggestions here are useful to indicate the kind of games that other people are trying to play in modern times. But, yes, I do have an idea of the games I want to play as well. Wing Commander 1+2 being high on my list. WC4 was my first WC game. I still have the disks.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-10-30, 07:57:

I will try the GOG version to see if it is different. I dont know the source of the version I am currently using. It was on a hard drive that I bought on ebay.

I would be interested to see if there is any difference. I tried looking up different versions of PQ2. There are different version numbers on different disk releases. Not sure what version the GoG (or Steam) ones are supposed to be.

FWIW, I tried again slowing down my Pentium MMX 233. I set it to 120MHz (slowest the motherboard will allow), disabled L1/L2 cache, and used an ISA video card (Tseng ET4000AX chipset). Even with that, it wasn't slow enough for Police Quest 2. 3DBench reported 10.7 FPS. This is about 2.7x faster than my 12MHz 286, which gets 3.9 FPS on the same benchmark.

Just been trying out a few on this machine:

A lot of the earlier 80s games probably need an original XT to run properly.

Ultima 7 - I think it works, but hard to use without mouse.

This would be an interesting one, since it reportedly will re-enable cache even if disabled beforehand. I've found on my Pentium 4 setup, it won't enable cache and runs perfectly fine with cache off (mid-range 486 performance).

Though if you're running it already throttled via FSB/multiplier and an ISA video card, it might already be slow enough for that game.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-30, 21:01:

FWIW, I tried again slowing down my Pentium MMX 233. I set it to 120MHz (slowest the motherboard will allow), disabled L1/L2 cache, and used an ISA video card (Tseng ET4000AX chipset). Even with that, it wasn't slow enough for Police Quest 2. 3DBench reported 10.7 FPS. This is about 2.7x faster than my 12MHz 286, which gets 3.9 FPS on the same benchmark.

You can stack SETMUL BPD VPD on top of that for a bit more slowdown.

Doubt it will get you to 286 speed but it might shave off a point or two in 3DBench. Loosening memory timings in the BIOS can slow things down a bit more as well.