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does anyone know where I can find the reference card for Blackthorne? (NOT the manual!)

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First post, by EdmondDantes

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Just to be clear, I'm using my own vintage floppy disks of Blackthorne, NOT the freeware release!

I'm trying to solve an issue running the game on actual vintage hardware. The issue in question (music cutting out once the actual game begins) is one I can solve by running it in Dosbox, but I'm trying to investigate and see what's causing it to begin with.

Thing is whenever I use search engines, they return the MANUAL for Blackthorne... but what I'm looking for is the reference card, or whatever you call the sheet of paper that instructs you on how to make a boot disk and what configuration it should have. I want to try that to see if it solves the problem, because that would give me a clue as to what's even happening.

(Why bother if I can just play it in Dosbox and avoid the issue? Personal curiosity).

Thanks in advance.

Reply 2 of 3, by feda

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Blackthorne is speed-sensitive. The sound and music will glitch on a fast system.
You can replicate it in Dosbox by cranking up the cycles really high, but it runs correctly at ~12000 or less.

Reply 3 of 3, by EdmondDantes

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kixs wrote on 2025-05-18, 16:34:

What is your computer configuration (mobo, cpu, sound card, OS...)?

Epox-8KTA+ mobo
AMD K6-2 700mhz processor
Soundblaster 16 ISA slot
Windows 98SE tho I made a boot menu so I can go into DOS (both with and without emm386).

feda wrote on 2025-05-18, 17:47:

Blackthorne is speed-sensitive. The sound and music will glitch on a fast system.
You can replicate it in Dosbox by cranking up the cycles really high, but it runs correctly at ~12000 or less.

On my PC I actually had to run it at 6000 cycles, I can go to about 7000 before I start seeing weirdness (I actually usually HEAR weirdness first).

But yeah, speed turned out to be the issue. In actual DOS using Bret Johnson's Slowdown program I found that if I set the PC to around 30mhz (I think less actually) it works fine. In both real Dos and Dosbox I find that the game sometimes slows down if a lot is happening on screen but I believe that's just how the game always was IIRC.

Using Dosbox 0.74 BTW because that's just what I have and I knew it would run on Win98SE.

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